Visitors, photos, camping, 4WD'ing etc

Hi to all that reads this blog, I've been a real slacker for a while and haven't updated it or uploaded any photos. Anyway, today Sam nagged me a bit and I have a spare moment so here goes. Firstly photos, if you have a look on our Flickr website you'll see some photos I've taken. If you haven't been to Flickr before the address is http://www.flickr.com/photos/bloomster/.

The latest photos are some I took on our first camping trip which was to Teewah Beach which is between Noosa and Rainbow beach. We went with Andy and Jayne, Steve and Judy, Simon and Ange and Dean and Sarah. Dean and Sarah are like modern day crocodile dundee's (in the nicest sense) and they really made our weekend. They made a great campfire (to keep us warm and to cook our food) as well as putting up a tarp in record time when we had a bit of rain. They are real aussies unlike the rest of us who are just pretenders! Otherwise we had great fun putting up our new tents that we'd been out the previous Tuesday and bought. Quite funny really because 3 of us had the same tents, of course the aussies took the piss out of us pommies :-) We also went camping again last weekend, only Andy, Jayne, Simon and Ange and us 2 this time and we went to Landcruiser Mountain 4WD park - http://www.landcruisermountainpark.com.au/. This is about a couple of hours from where we live and most of the way it's a dirt road. Bloody cars were filthy before we got there! At the moment Simon and Ange don't have a 4WD but hopefully they'll get one soon. They got to the park in their Honda CRV but from there on they rode in Andy's Hilux. When we got there (and after we'd setup camp) we went for a quick look around the park, the idea was to go on a easy track - didn't quite turn out like that though! We ended up going up the side of a mountain with massive ruts and lots of wheelspin, going down was even worse and Andy still has the scars on the Hilux to prove it :-) I took the easier route down but it was still bloody hard. Later in the evening Andy, Simon and I went out looking for firewood, the track we went up (again a mountain) was littered with massive rocks and big drop offs, the noises from Andy's car whilst scraping and banging along were alarming - Andy seemed happy enough though :-) Anyway then we went back to camp and setup a fire and cooked all our food over it. I wished we'd done stuff like this in the UK but I suppose Australia is much more geared up for it especially the weather. We had another drive round on the Sunday morning which was good (more mountains and tricky uphill and downhill tracks - some near vertical). I'm amazed on what our cars can do especially as both of them are stock (apart from my all terrain tyres). So that was our trip to Landcruiser park. We are now planning our next outing which is Fraser Island (largest sand island in the world), we are going on the 17th and 18th May and we are all looking forward to it. Heres some photos of our 1st camping trip.

Dean, Sarah, Judy, Steve, Ange, Simon, Jayne, Sam and Andy

Our food cooking over the fire

And some pictures from Landcruiser Park

Andy getting the fire going

Our campsite - notice the flash cooking area with the tarp over the top

There's a load more photos on Flickr and if you want you can see more on Andy and Jayne's website - http://picasaweb.google.com/devilishdeans

We've also been up to loads of other stuff. Of course we had several visitors over to see us including my mum of course, Sam's dad and his partner Trudi and more recently Sam's auntie Sylvia and her uncle Mick. We were really pleased to see them all and it was very sad to see them go. I'm hoping mum will come and see us again, maybe in a year or 2 and of course we'd love to see the others as well. It's been a while since they've gone now and to be honest I can't really remember the details of what we did when they were here! the weather was really crappy over Xmas though so we couldn't do too much. The weather was much nicer when Sylv and Mick were here and we went out a fair bit, they also hired a car and went out sight seeing.

Otherwise life carries on in the 'lucky country' and we can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else. We just think the rest of you are mad for not living here :-) What with fishing, camping, going to the beach, 4WD'ing, enjoying the lovely weather we are having (25 - 28 during the day) we are having a great time. We are also fitting in a bit of work of course, but only just enough to get by!

If I think of anything else I should have added I'll do it as and when the thoughts come into my head. Best wishes to you all, we'd love to hear from you (sam@isolveit.com.au and kevin@isolveit.com.au) or you can get me on MSN (kevin@fornham.net) and Skype (kevinbloomfield)

That's it for now, my tea is nearly cooked and I have a load of stuff to do in the morning for work.

Bye from sunny Queensland - Kev, Sam and David xxx