simon, annette, jess, nick & tim made the long trip north from birregurra in victoria to visit us for a few days. it is nearly 10 years since they last visited – tim wasnt even born then!
they flew in from cairns last tuesday night, the flight was delayed thanks to qantas being bastards. after they had boarded and were about to taxi out to take off qantas decided to put all the passengers from the direct darwin flight onto the gove flight to save themselves a flight. so the flight was deleayed nearly 2 hours and it was very late when they finally got back to our house. no wonder qantas’ reputation has fallen so far.
so wednesday was a bit of a recovery day, simon and annette we put up in our friend’s annie’s house as she was away, it was only the second time in about 15 years that they have slept on their own without the kids so i think it was appreciated!
we ended up just having lunch at the walkabout resort and had a swim in the pool.
thursday was to be fishing day, i borrowed a mate’s tinny so we had 2 boats to take the whole tribe and we set off from yirrkala and headed out on another perfect day!
after lunch on the beach we got serious about the fishing and we caught a couple of nice mackeral, and simo hooked on to a stonking giant trevally, it was his biggest fish out of 3 trips here and has raised the bar – it will have to be a monster next time to keep up the record!
friday was again a bit of a quiet day after a huge day on the water, there was quite a bit of red skin and so we had a relaxed start to the day and then took a picnic lunch down to the town pool and lazed around, the early evening saw us down at rugby to watch kai win his game and then on to the surf club for burgers and beers with john and tomo and the kids joining us.
saturday we packed up the troopys and headed out to the art’s center for a squiz and then on to the giddys river for a swim and lunch.
after we came home jess and i made dinner and cooked a pavlova as well as making passionfruit ice cream, i reckon even the kiwis would have been proud of that pav!
sunday we headed off at the crack of dawn to bawaka for the day, after a very tough drive through the early morning fog and then the deep, powdery, dry season sand we arrived at the beach and as we drove along i got a bucket of bait with the cast net. this turned out to be fortuitous as while we were having lunch at bawaka, nike the croc swam in for a feed and as all i had was the bait thats what he got for lunch! I dont think he was overly impressed.
the hire troopy got bogged in the heavy sand on the way home so the old faithful had to pull it out, another time the winch has been worth its weight in gold!
all in all a fantastic visit, if a little too short, kai was very sad saying good bye to his cousins at the airport, but we have lots of memories and photos!
a final panaroma from paradise!
