VanDijkTrack

At the moment it is winter time. During the day it’s around 20 degrees and at night it’s below 10 degrees Celsius. Further from the coast line it can be freezing during the night. This is limiting our explorer instinct. That’s why we kept ourselves busy with just the normal things. This also gave us some time to update our story “Australia through Dutch eyes” (see button “Dutch eyes above)”. Also Nicole has started to update her page (still working on it) and Jan has improved the download time of the website which was terrible as you will have noticed.

We stayed a bit more at home and enjoyed our natural living environment with wildlife often spending time outside. When we saw a nice green butterfly Nicole caught it and put it in her bug catcher. Jan told her that the butterfly would die when she would keep it there. Then suddenly he heard Nicole angry yell to the kookaburra in the garden. Guess what happened. Nicole had let the butterfly go and during her flight to freedom the kookaburra came from a tree and caught it for his meal. Nicole was very upset. 🙂

Frogs keep themselves hidden at the moment. Only so now and then one is showing up, like this one in Jorick’s truck outside. The cold weather is a relief when it comes to insects. These creatures are not very active now, although some big spiders still show up, especially in the house after leaving a door open.

The tennis lessons of Nicole and Jorick continued. Several times the lessons were cancelled because of heavy rain.  Brisbane must be happy with our move to their city. Since we arrived here it has been raining a lot following a long period of drought . When we arrived there were strong water usage restrictions with water reserves around 20%. Now the reserves are approaching 100%.

Other activities are swimming lessons, reading, cooking, playing, computer games, playground, family games and of course going to school and after school care where they love to go to do creative art and to play with other kids.

On the 26th of June the school holidays have started for Jorick and Nicole. Jan also finished his study semester with two exams of the 27th and both Anita and Jan will take time off from work leaving opportunities for joint activities.  We’ll keep you updated.

In The Netherlands we wish you all very good summer holidays !

Cheers,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick.

Not long after the start of the new school season, Jorick already was lucky having an excursion with his school class. They went to Trevena Glen Farm and some parents joined. Jorick insisted that his Dad also should join, so he did, which was fun. The kids could feed calfs, pigs, goats, hold chickens, ride a pony, sit on a bull and milk a cow. It was a real educational interaction with animals and they loved it.

The next weekend we went bush camping and walking in Lamington National Park being one of the beautiful rainforest parks close to Brisbane (around 110 km, 2hrs drive). We selected the Green Mountain region, close to the well known O’Reilly’s region with O’Reilly’s resort to put up our tent.  A more than 30 km one-lane road with small and steep parts is leading to this destination. It was a beautiful road in a natural environment. After reaching our destination we could set up our tent, look around and have a barbeque in the evening.

During the night it became fairly cold on the mountain around 10 degrees Celsius. Other people camping here were walking in ski clothing, which was a bit weird. As usual the darkness already started early with complete darkness after 6 pm. That’s something we cannot get used to after being used to the long summer evenings of an (North-)European summer. So we went early to bed and awoke with the sounds of many birds, brush turkeys and also saw some very small wallabies (Red Necked Pademelons).  We started the day with the Botanical Gardens and the Tree Top Walk, which is an elevated path/bridge high through the trees. This gives unusual nice views of the forest.

After that we walked the Morans Falls Track of 4.6 km, 800 m down hill. It leads to the Morans Falls. First we could watch the Falls from the other side of the valley. Then we went to the top of it.

It was a nice walk in a beautiful area.

Especially around O’Reilly’s it was busy with much tourism since this is a popular destination.  The walking track was much better, although not as quiet as many other tracks in other areas.

At home we still enjoy the bush environment and all flowers in the more cultivated garden. For us it is unusual to have flowers around the house during the whole year. Also the trees always have leafs and also are loosing them continually. This makes us less aware of changing seasons.

Thanks for your interest.

Kind regards,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick