AHOY DUYFKEN

When we went into the city on Wednesday this lovely little vessel sailed up the river.

It's a replica of the Duyfken, a small Dutch ship which, in 1606 sailed from the Indonesian island of Banda in search of gold and trade opportunities on the fabled island of Nova Guinea.

Under the command of Willem Janszoon, Duyfken and her crew ventured south-east.

They sailed beyond Os Papuas (Papua New Guinea)and explored and chartered part of the coast of Nova Guinea.

They did not find gold - but they did find the northern coast of a huge continent: - Australia.

 Captain Janszoon was the first European to map and record Australia in history so Duyfken's voyage marks the beginning of Australia's recorded history.

 

I think the replica is used in the tourist industry .

The ship is tiny.

I wouldn't like to sail the seas in a tiny thing like that!

Cheers

PEELING

Yuk, I'm peeling!

I don't know if you noticed in the photos, but on the first day at the beach I got sunburnt.

I know I should know better after all these years.

I should have remembered that you get worse sunburn on cloudy days.

But it was so interesting sitting there on top of the sand dunes watching the Surf Carnival that I forgot!

The races were exciting...

 

and so by the time we went back to the unit I looked like a

TOMATO!

 So now I'm itchy....

and my back and my legs are peeling

UGH!

By the way don't you love the finish line?

Cheers.

PS. Looked up peeling and found this.

Why do you peel after a sunburn?

Peeling after sunburn is your body’s way of getting rid of damaged cells. This is necessary because cells damaged by the sun are at risk of "losing control" and becoming cancer. Due to this danger, all damaged cells are instructed to commit suicide by repair mechanisms within these cells. This mass suicide of cells results in whole layers of damaged skin peeling off, to be replaced by other cells underneath those layers.
 
I told you it was yuk !

FURTHER ADVENTURES AT THE BEACH

Every morning we set off down the beach to watch the action at the Surf Carnival.

There was plenty of eye candy - even for old folks as the first day was the Masters section

Hunky old guys !!!

Well, I have to admit the younger ones were a bit more hunky !

OK I'd better get back on track !

The weather was fairly overcast but very warm and the sea was ROUGH.

so the surfboat races were very exciting.

They have crew of four rowers and a Sweep - the man who stands up at the back and tries to steer them

out of trouble with a large oar that is used as a rudder.

The rowers have an interesting way of stopping themselves slipping off the wet seats in the boat !

!

! !

You can see that there was a lot to hold our interest in the boat races!

.

.

Back to the boat races.

So the starter fires a gun and off they go - through the surf, over churning waves till they get to calmer water and then round a couple of bouys and back through the surf again to the beach.

Sounds simple ?

But fraught with danger.

Those waves are coming through in sets of two or three or four at a time, pounding on the boats and it's a battle to keep the boats straight into the waves.

If they get the tinest bit sideways, they are in lots of trouble.

and they try to keep some distance from eachother

There are lots of spills.

Upended boats crashing around in the surf.

Heavy oars tossed around, spearing in all directions and five heads bobbing around in the waves, trying to gather oars, check to see everyone is OK then righting upturned boats and back to the race!

There is a ten minute time limit on each race and to finish you must have at least three men and oars still in the boat!

Luckily there were no serious injuries that we saw but by the third day the bruises were evident on lots of those ultra fit bodies.

and the boats had injuries too!

$25 000 down the drain !

I have put this little video we took ( only one minute ) on Youtube so you could see how exciting surfboat races are.

Cheers

BACK HOME AGAIN

Home again!
I have had a quick trip around Blogland to try to catch up with you all and see what you have been up to while I was away. I'll pop back tomorrow to leave some comments and have a chat.                                                                                                         
We've had a lovely holiday and I have lots to tell you about our short stay at the beach.

Oceana is a lovely place to stay. This is the view from our front balcony looking down on the pool area.

Straight ahead is the beach.

We were on the 6th floor.

After breakfast the first morning we headed for the beach.

As you can see there has recently been quite a bit of erosion of the sand from the very high tides but the lovely white sand still stretches away forever in both directions.

We changed our plans for a swim in the surf when we encountered these all along the beach.

Bluebottles !

Here's a better photo of one.

They have an air-filled sac up to 8 centimetres in length, usually with a single, long, blue main fishing tentacle hanging underneath.

That long blue tentacle can really hurt if it wraps around your leg as you swim! 

(Stings - treat with warm water or cold packs if heat doesn't help )

There were lots of them so no surf for us that day.

But as luck would have it further along the beach we happened upon the Queensland Surf Titles.

We found a good spot to watch the action and really enjoyed the spectacle.

 Then it was back to the pool

for a bit of this.

(No! They're not MY hairy legs !!)

More about the Surf Titles tomorrow .

Cheers

OFF ON HOLS !

My cousin and her husband arrive tomorrow for a short visit and we're off to the beach.
Not just any beach
Broadbeach at the Gold Coast
No Surfers' Paradise for us - too touristy and full of Night Clubs these days.

We are going to stay here

for   4 nights!

I've been looking forward to it for ages - since we stayed there at this time last year.

The unit is absolutely gorgeous...

big bedrooms,

glorious views of the coast,

3 pools - hot and bubbly, medium and cold.

 Cross a small service road and you are on one of the world's greatest beaches with white sand and

blue, blue water that  s t r e t c h e s  for miles.

And Lifesavers to watch over us while we swim.

Last year while we were there we went to the top of a new building called Q1.

The 5th tallest residential building in the world

From the top the view of the Gold Coast was incredible.

Beautiful beaches stretching in both directions.

Those tall buildings don't look so tall from up here.

As night began to fall the lights made it all so pretty

 

So I'm off for a few days.

When I come back I'll have some more lovely sunny,  beachy photos for you.

Cheers

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD!

Have a look at this lot!

Yes, I've been doing the grocery shopping.

Can you believe the amount of time we spend on food   .....

buying it,.......

preparing it,..... cooking it, .... storing it ,

EATING it !

and it costs more and more every day.

When we were overseas a couple of years ago in the UK and USA and Canada we noticed how much cheaper food is in those places.

It must have something to do with volume of sales and also competition.

Our population is just too small  to create enough profit without high prices. Not enough volume of sales.

Plus we really only have two major supermarket chains and they control the prices.

Then there's meat .

Aussies love their meat.

$8.80 for 5 lamb chops !

I wonder how that compares with the UK.

That's about 5.25 GBP and $8USA  although I don't think they eat a lot of lamb in the USA

It will be interesting to compare prices when we shop for food at the local supermarket while we are staying in our French gites.

Cheers.