'Neat Queenslanders – both houses and residents – inhabit this upwardly mobile city straddling the coast and the outback. Even with its sprinkling of cosmopolitan cafés and boutiques, Townsville still feels like a big country town surrounded by pink hills from which sky-high sunsets plunge into a scaled-down Riviera dotted with water craft.'

Lonley Planet, Townsville

We flew to Townsville to see my family and to attend a friend's wedding. It was wonderful catching up with friends at the wedding!

With Louy and Lisa

Terry and Jenny

Paula and Charles during the cermony

Louy and Liam

Louy was impressed by the food!

Not as drunk as we look given it was a lunch time wedding.

They say in Queensland it is beautiful one day and perfect the next but we were glad it rained for a couple of days to cool things down. We still managed to get out of the house for a walk.

Dad was worried about cars seeing us and gave me his rain jacket!

After many catch ups over food we decided walking would be a good idea.

We took a long walk along The Strand.

We also walked down to 'Riverways' to meet friends for morning tea and enjoyed the shade on offer.

We helped mum place an ad on Gumtree to sell dad's lawn bowls.

Nick thought this photo would attract the buyers!

We still had not worked out a way to get to Lismore for our house sitting stint so we went to Magnetic Island for the day to look at a van that we liked on Gumtree.

Alma beach

We agreed with this sign at a cafe in Geoffery Bay!

Magnetic island

The view from the boat coming back into Townsville.

We went back to Magnetic Island today to buy the van. Meet the newest addition to our family!

We still need to give her a good Queensland name.

Waiting for the car ferry. He might have been wicked but our girl is sexy!

On the car ferry on the way home.

We are leaving Townsville tomorrow morning after two terrific weeks to head South where house sitting and more adventures await for us in Lismore.

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We managed to squeeze a lot into our seven weeks back in Melbourne!

I played one game of touch rugby and won a grand final!.

Nick finally had his hair cut! He went to Fluff, a salon in Smith Street that specialises in curly hair!

Before

After

We looked after our cats in our Brunswick place over the Easter weekend. It was great to be with them again. Cosmo, our ginger man was particularly smoochy and followed our every move. Pudda was her usual low maintainence self.

I re-entered the teaching world and managed to get work as a casual relief teacher at a large catholic school down the road from where we were living. It certainly was not dull. I turned into my mother as the children called me Mrs Watson, it is always best to be married when teaching at a catholic school! I was the PE teacher and the music teacher on more than one occasion. Anyone who has ever heard me try to sing will realise how funny this actually is! The children were mostly gorgeous but there were a few interesting cases. A child in a year 3/4 class thought it would be fun to start a game of tiggy in the classroom about five minutes after my arrival into his classroom. I think my response was…”You are kiding me, surely??” A prep teacher got me to count for 45 very long minutes with 5 year olds. A boy managed to get his leg stuck in some playground bars while I was on duty and there were many bloodied knees to attend to and fights to break up. It was hard work being a CRT but the best part was I got to go home at 4pm with a big smile on my face and without a care in the world. I don't think I ever want to teach full time again!

There were many catch ups with family and friends.

Nick started writing his book and sold a lot of things on Ebay. He earned more money than I did!

Thanks to everybody who made our seven weeks back in Melbourne so great! See you again soon!!!!!

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