My last entry saw us heading up to Bli Bli for a couple of days with our friends Bob and Ellen. We had a good time, enjoying each other’s company and I helped Ellen set up her new iPad that she bought while I was there.
Now we are still here at Tweed Heads but are getting ready to leave in a few days time. There has always seemed to be another reason for us to stay just that one more week!
That injury to my foot that I mentioned in my last entry was a concern for me with the pain getting worse and I ended up having a few sessions of physio on it. Thanks to Kyle and the exercises he has shown me, I am now slowly on the mend. I also had my yearly bowel check up which showed the bowel was ok but something else showed up in the spleen. This meant more hanging around for scans and awaiting results. Thankfully the issue turned out to be only a cyst and my doctor was not concerned about that. Now with these things behind me, we then looked forward to Cyclone Alfred that was heading towards the coast of SE Queensland/Northern NSW. Cyclones this far down the coast are a very unusual occurrence and this one was causing some concern. It took its time to make land and for days we sat out the strong wind and rains. Then, just before the cyclone was expected to reach land we left our van closed up and went to stay at Jo’s until the danger was over. We had six days with Jo and we were all very lucky. Apart from a couple of trees down and a yard full of rubbish, there was no other damage to Jo’s place. We didn’t loose power but were asked to ration and boil water. Our van was ok too where we left it on site. Not everyone was so lucky with the wind and rain causing so much damage. Trees were uprooted, buildings and properties were damaged and so much flooding. Thousands of people lost power and water and some are still waiting days later for it to be reconnected. Because of the flooding we are now waiting another week before we leave as we are going down the coast through flooded areas. We want to go see Emma. Graham and the kids as we haven’t seen them since we left them in Bali. We are giving the water levels a chance to recede before we leave.
Now because our house in Banora Point is having a property inspection we have decided to stay yet another two days so we can attend. We will go see our house and chat with our tenant who we already know look after our place well and then we will hit the road straight after.
We will be back up here again around mid April as it’s my brother Roger’s 70th birthday and he’s having a party so we’ll come back for that and our good friend Dorothy’s 98th a couple of days later so that’s worth celebrating as well.
While we’ve been here, when not attending appointments or battling cyclones we have done the usual things, golf for Chris, family catchups, school pick ups and had the girls for sleepovers. We also had a great day on a BBQ boat on the Tweed river with Dorothy and her two daughters, Jan and Dottie along with Dottie’s friend from the UK, another Jan. With Chris at the helm, beautiful weather and enough “bubbles“ to keep even the Bulcock girls happy, a good time was had by all. We all noted that had our booking been the next week we would have been well into the cyclone buildup.