vanDijkTrack

Temperature in Brisbane is rising so this was a good reason to go the Cove Lagoon in Redcliff (north east of Brisbane). It’s a controlled safe area close to sea/ocean.

Especially Nicole is still fascinated by the Wallum Sedge frogs in the frog pont. She likes to catch them and became quite good in it.

Jorick enjoyes school more each day. The teacher asked him to watch over her dog Kenny during the weekend. He also had to put all the experiences with Kenny in her diary with additional pictures. So he took Kenny with him to a Birthday on Saturday and a Dutch Playground Party on Sunday. The Pictures tell it all. On Grandparents day at school Jan and Anita played the role of grandparent and we also found a lovely older lady as a “stand-in”. The children love her.

Continuously (for us) new animals show up. 

Since we have the Brush Turkey building his mound close to our house and female turkeys put their eggs in it, the Lace monitor continuously shows up. He is watching for his chance to eat the eggs (we think). Several times we saw the male Turkey defend his mould and picking the head of the Lace Monitor when he came to close.

At night the Possums become active and can make a lot of noise. Also the Cane Toads, considered to be a pest, show up and we already have killed many of them. They are non-native and don’t have natural enemies, so they are very reproductive and eat a lot. In effect other frog species don’t survive. Also snakes, birds, crocodiles and other animals trying to eat a Cane Toads get killed by their venom (excreted by their parotic glands). During daytime we can enjoy watching kookaburras eating termites.

Cheers,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick

World-class bog ... cycling in the Netherlands. (Brisbane Times 26 October 2008)

It took a while, but as you can see the website is updated by migrating it to another platform. Although still under construction, all earlier reports are available with the links at the right.
- Pictures can be enlarged with a click, also starting a slide show.
- Click on the blog title (vanDijkTrack) to return to home page

Dykes on bikes: The Brisbane Times just published a nice article about the Netherlands through Aussie eyes. (Click Picture for article)

Today we have been on a 4WD (4-wheel-drive) tour through the bush close to seven miles plane.

After driving to the starting point of the track we passed Jelle’s Well (Early 1890’s pioneers bullock and horse team watering point). A perfect location for an early lunch and the children could have a play together.

After noticing that the access to the track as planned was impossible we ended up with another track. This track showed to be a real challenge for Dutchies from a flat country. Many times it was a real puzzle how to come across the difficult locations. Steep and deep holes, part of the road completely gone and/or just rocks/stones.  The fact that our tires were not optimally made for this type of terrain and our car having a stepping bar under the doors made the challenge even bigger.

We were happy that we were with a group of more experienced 4wd drivers. We could learn a lot and they helped us to solve the puzzles on how to pass the different barriers. Of course we didn’t want to damage our car so we were careful.

Although we moved cm by cm, several times a wheel got loose from the ground. A strange experience. The more experienced guys with older and more dedicated cars gave some wild demonstrations of driving up (or not) and down on very steep tracks. Nicole and Jorick loved it.

When we started to go home we were lucky to see two Lace Monitor mating in front of us on the middle of the road.  The were so excited that they didn’t notice us immediatly. Then they quickly disappeared.

Finally we went home and had to clean our car the week after.

Cheers,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick