Magnetic island exploring!

Just off of the coast of Townsville about 8 kilometers (5 miles) is an amazing island paradise. 

View from the Boardwalk restaurant in Nelly Bay

Magnetic Island is only a 20 minute ferry ride away. It experiences on average over 320 days of Sunshine per year, has a large 27 km² (10.4 sq mi) national park and bird sanctuary. 

Excellent walking tracks can be taken between the populated bays and to a number of tourist destinations such as the World War II forts. With 26 beautiful bays to explore & two thirds of this Tropical Paradise a national Park It's a  real treat for a day trip or a weekend getaway. 

Geoffery Bay

The name of the island came about because of the apparent "magnetic" effect it had on the ship's compass of Captain Cook as he passed the island when sailing up the east coast of Australia in 1770.^[2] People have since explored the general area of Magnetic Island with various instruments to discover what might have caused the effect that Cook reported, but nothing has been discovered. Townsville locals refer to Magnetic Island as "Maggie". 

[wikipedia]

Had to drop the pack and flip flops (thongs) for a little toes in the sand action!

It offers some challenging biking so I decided to take my pink beauty over for a little day trip adventure! I rode from Nelly bay, where the ferry lands, to Arcadia and stopped at Geoffery Bay in-between. It started to look a bit like rain was coming so I took a detour to a small secluded bay called Alma Bay.

Surrounded by beauty, even when it's overcast.

I wasn't satisfied with just walking on the beach and wading in the water so I decided to climb some of the boulders for a more elevated view.

 

 Next time I come out to Alma I will climb to the end point, the tide was coming in so it wasn't really a good idea to do it then.

Several little islands dot the area, one can be seen here in the distance.

 Looking back onto the beach, looks like a great picnic site!

Sandy toes and a Christmas pedicure watching the waves crash up onto the rocks.

I'm a happy girl, quite at peace here... I love Australia <3

I had to get going as the weather seemed to moving in pretty quickly, so I made a quick escape 4 kilometers (2.48 miles) back to the ferry landing. Just in time too, it started raining as I left!

Magnetic Island has so many things to do, I'll be spending alot of time here and as a part of the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef Marine Park it will be a diving dream come true!!!

  

The little differences...

Life in North Queensland is definitely unique. From the architecture of the house I live in to the lifestyle and fashion of the people here. Everyday is an adventure into a different culture than that I've come to know in South Texas.

In the wet season it's a bit hard to do laundry because most people don't have dryers. This came across to me as a bit odd but really, it's nice not to use so much energy and cloths and sheets dried in the fresh air smell nice and last longer. This has taken some getting used to. You have to time your laundry with the weather and even though I have a line under a cover it can still get annoying waiting for it to dry in windy wet weather. 

Speaking of cloths, I was out exploring local restaurants and saw this pair of girls and thought they'd be a good example of the Aussie style of dress:

Other little differences are found in speech and food. For instance, I was at a restaurant and ordered greens thinking "oh boy! My comfort food favourite!" and got this:

Not greens as I know them... I like steamed veggies and all but... I was excited about turnip greens or mustard greens or any of the variety of the Southern dish. Ah well! Life is still good. :)

Salsa = party

It seems my salsa and guacamole make people go crazy. Elise went out and bought a bunch of beer, three bottles of champagne, three bottles of wine, two bottles of vodka, brats, sausages, and various other Dutch food. She also bought a bunch of string lights and decorations along with a big pink trashcan that was to be filled with ice and pulled out by the pool. Clearly a big party was in the works, after all, it's Friday night!

As soon as we got back from work we started decorating, hanging lights, buying ice, getting last minute ingredients for salsa and inviting whoever we could get ahold of. I wanted to make my salsa a bit more spicy this time to make it more of a dip and less of something you pile mass quantities of on a chip.

This is it with just the primary ingredients:

Looks like Mexico!!!

I knew it was going to be a fun party so I gussied up aswel. My salsa was a huge hit all around and my guacamole came out a bit late for everyone to enjoy but it was really good (patting myself on the back).

In the end we had about 20 people show up including Elise's parents which were really fun to talk to. I showed everyone how to dress a beer and much fun was had by all! Best of all, when Elise and the boys wanted to go to the club, I stayed home, my elbow and bum still bear the marks from last week! 

I think the next time I make something for people I will make green enchiladas... now to find tomatillos...

Puppy Love

So today was a good day at work. Sadly we had 9 dogs surrendered by their owners for various reasons that never make any sense to me. We had four cats/kittens come in too. It's the depressing part of the job but I do some things to make my day a bit better. Today I went up to 21 days where they keep strays for holding and behavior assessments and washed the 15 puppies and two kittens that were up there. They come in all covered in ticks and poo and pee and no animal feels comfortable that way, the heat doesn't help either. So I figured I would give them (and myself) a little moral boost. It was good fun! The first one always screams like it's being murdered but after a bit they realize that the water is a good thing. The way the puppies bounce around with joy afterwards always makes me smile and not soon after, with tummies full and fur clean, they settle down and nap. I only had 6 puppies left and these had been found in a storm drain. They were listed as Kelpie mixes. The Kelpie is an Australian sheep dog successful at mustering and droving with little or no command guidance. They are medium sized dogs and come in a variety of colours.  However these guys also got a fair bit of Dingo in them. If you didn't know already Dingoes are Australia's wild dog. They often interbreed with the domestic dogs but they are fine animals.

All was good and well and bathing the puppies was fun, I had one more to go and darnit if it wasn't the cutest one!!! I'm in trouble kids, if I had a place of my own or was renting a pet-friendly place, this pup would come home with me.

                        She's got a lovely temperament and will be a beautiful and loyal dog.

                                        She also happens to be nauseatingly cute!

                                      I really like her markings and the colour of her coat.

                                                    With her litter mates.

Sweet puppies..... the thing is, you can't go and get attatched to all of the animals, you'll get your heart broken, however, if I could find a way.... she'd be mine. She'll be in the back for another 19 days so let's see how she goes, it will be interesting to see her change as she grows.

Another little project of mine is this guy:

He was surrendered because his owner died... but something isn't right...

He's got a broken wing and he is pretty scared of people, I think he was a man's bird because he responds positively to Bob's (Ambulance driver) voice. I am not really pleased with the way he's being kept so this bird got assigned to me after much noise was made (you know how I get when I'm passionate about something). I'll keep you posted...

To end my day the manager came and found me and asked me to send my resume (CV) to Brisbane (where the Queensland RSPCA headquarters is) because she has a special project for me and thinks I've got what it takes. What is this project you ask? I have no idea, she said she would talk to Brissy and let me know. Muy interesante!

Work treasure!!!

Today at work I found this little guy!

 It's a Rhinoceros beetle!!

 They are among the largest of beetles, reaching 60 millimeters in length, however they are completely harmless to humans because they cannot bite or sting.

Their common name refers to the characteristic horns born only by the males of most species in the group. They have a horn on the thorax and another horn pointing forward from the center thorax. They use their horn to fight other males during mating season and it even functions as a built on digging tool.

I love Australia. :)

Experiemental cooking...

So the farmers markets that take place on Sunday morning have inspired me to cook! That and the fact that eating out here costs twice as much as it does in San Antonio.

I picked up some squash (pumpkin) blossoms at the market and decided to stuff them with lamb mince and goat cheese then steam them. I am suprised to say it turned out really well!!!!

 

Maybe I'm not cursed in the kitchen. Later that night I made fettuccine with mixed seafood in a creme and tomato sauce with chilies, mushrooms and bell peppers (capsicum). I had compliments all around!

Car shopping!!!

Today Robbie and I set off to do some much needed car shopping! Right now I have to take the bus to work and walk 2 K to get there. The bus system here needs much improvement and it takes me two and a half hours to get to the spot where I walk 2 k into work. This needs to change ASAP! Being that I will be doing research in the forest preserves I will need a good 4x4 and given that I don't have a Aussie manual license I will need an automatic. This narrows down my options quite a bit especially since my budget is 4-8G.

On Wednesdays they advertise privately sold vehicles in the paper so I took a few to consider.

After much calling and browsing it became clear that my only option was a 900$ Mitsubishi Pajero. I wasn't exactly thrilled by this option but if I could get a car to hold me over until I found something better then that would still be better than nothing! The guy said he couldn't meet us until 1:30 so we drove around looking at car lots and cruising for roadside deals, everyhing was a bust. I did a bunch of online car shopping and all the good deals and trucks/suvs (utes) are either in Brisbane or Melbourne. These are both waaaaay too far to go pick up, it would take four days to pick up something in Brisbane!

In the meantime we went and did some shopping for work boots which I needed and some camping gear. We let time slip a bit and ended up at the guy's house at 1:50 only to be told that the car had just sold. Bummer... the search goes on...