VanDijkTrack

A while ago the lawn was extended by replacing several bushes and a path of stones with lawn turf. The lawn is growing well now so this gives the children more space to play. Especially in the beginning the Brush Turkey liked it as well and tried to take all the grass out for his mould. We had to chase him many times. Already in the first weeks we changed a pond into a sandpit.

In the 1st week of November Jan went to the Broadband World Conference in Sydney. It was fun to learn more about the local Telco&Internet environment and to catch up with a several people. The last day Jan went with another delegate (who made the pictures with his iphone) to the harbor and there we saw the “ms Volendam”, a “The Holland America Line” cruise ship. Although he considered to travel with the ship to NL, he finally took the plane to Brisbane at the end of the day.

The following weekend we bought some mountain bikes at the supermarket for cycling in the neighborhood or in the city with several tracks.  Jorick and Nicole left their bikes in The Netherlands so they were very happy with the new ones.

At Sunday we visited some friends with a pool. Nicole and  Jorick really enjoyed that. At home we have to do it with an inflatable one. When we went home there started a big tropical storm / cyclone and it was astonishing how much water can come down (110mm in 1 hour and around 200 mm over night). It was the worst storm in decennia and many houses were damaged even complete roofs were blown away, roads blocked by trees. At the shopping center a man blown into a drain by water floods and didn’t survive. Coming home we didn’t have any electricity and we were happy having a generator in the shed. The frogs were even climbing the windows.

And now looking forward to Sinterklaas …

Kind regards,

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