December report

Goodbye Spring!  Hello summer!  December marks the official first month of summer in Australia. It’s time for the temperature to rise and have storms in the SE states of the country. But some tropical areas of Australia can be known to have tropical cyclones hit too.  While I was away on holidays I did see TV reports about two cyclones forming in the ocean near WA and the Coral Sea (near QLD).

Has been a busy month finalizing my Christmas card list, presents and catching up with afew friends before summer holidays started. Also I managed to watch four new release movies at the cinema.

There was only two weeks left of the school year.  Rachel had graduated her primary years at school.  She will start high school in 2013.

In the girl’s last week of school they had a fun day excursion at a water theme place.  The year 7’s had their end of the school year celebrations at Southbank while the junior grades at high school had a day at WET “N” WILD WATERPARK on the Gold Coast.

School holidays started from 15^th December and the kids will be on holidays for six weeks. In the first week Rachel was off to Grandma’s for a four week holiday in Hervey Bay. In the following week Monique and I went on our summer holiday to Central QLD for 11 days while Frank stayed at home to look after our pets and house.  It was late on NYE by the time we got home from our lovely holiday. We had a long drive home from Mackay (which about 1000km north of Brisbane).

We spent three days in Gladstone to catch up with some friends.  We managed to do some sight seeing around the town and had an afternoon 4WDriving on the beach.  It was our first time to experience this kind of drive and we loved it!! I saved money on accommodation by sleeping over at two of my friend’s houses.

Then it was time to check out and head up further north on Christmas Eve.  We spent seven days In Mackay.  We stayed in a cabin at a caravan park, west of the city centre. In the first three days we were busy catching up with relatives on my father’s side. It’s been about six years or more since I last seen most of them. It was great to catch up over Christmas!!

The next four days was spent on shopping, social bowling and a lot of sight seeing around the beaches at Mackay, Sarina and the harbour.  There were a lot of boats docked at port of the harbour.  Out to sea we could see big carbo ships carrying the sugar cane.

Another interesting highlight of going to the beach was seeing about a kilometres of mango trees at one beach area.  Not surprise the street is named Mango Avenue. These mango trees were on both sides of the road.  I do wonder how many residents grab these mangoes.

All the best for a great 2013!