VanDijkTrack

Already soon after the holiday we visited a monster truck show. It was a fund raiser (one of many) from several schools together. One of the trucks already had visited the school of Nicole and Jorick. After that the kids were really exited to go and we bought some tickets. The whole show contained monster trucks crashing a row of cars (we kept ours at the car park), a jump show by a local motor club and a stuntman driving through fire. It was fun to see it, once.

On the 25th of April it was Joricks 5th birthday. He already got us out of bed very early so the presents were unpacked soon after sunrise. He also got several presents from overseas. Thanks for that ! Your are still on their mind ! Often they think and talk about you friends and family in the Netherlands and are looking forward to meet you again (like their parents do).

A week later Jorick had his birthday party with some friends from school and his former pre-schools. Already half a year he was telling us that he wanted a treasure hunt on a pirate party, so that’s what we did. In our garden we made a treasure hunt with several games and finally they found … YESS! It was a challenging walk making them tired, not quiet 🙂  We also had some games in the shed as you can see on the picture.  (as always, for privacy reasons not many pictures are shown with others and some cannot be enlarged)

The next day Jorick had a lot of presents to play with and we took a day to relax in/around our house. The trampoline is sometimes a good way to spend some energy. Also the frog pond is still fascinating. Especially Nicole can spend hours watching and catching.

And a shower coming over is not any problem. You just sit together under the umbrella to keep watching all garden activity.

The next day we went to Tamborine National Park, around 80 km south of Brisbane in the Gold Coast Hinterland. It’s a rainforest close to Lamington Park (where we will go camping next week). There are many walking tracks to choose from. We did the Witches Chase Track and the Witches Falls circuit. The big Red Cedar trees can become 60 meters high and many hundreds of years old. Often they are surrounded by Strangler Figs are very impressive.

On the mountain there’s the village Tamborine Mountain with a lot of (touristic) activity. Shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. Here also you can find many places to picnic with barbecues.  In effect we met several people walking in the Park as well. After our quiet experiences further north two weeks ago it was a bit different. Nevertheless the nature is beautiful.

Below you’ll find a commercial touristic movie about Tamborine Mountain and a movie of the local road, both giving an impression of the area. 

Cheers,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick.

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