So as a married couple it was time to stop having so much fun and get back to the real world and find some jobs to fill up the travelling account once more. Up in the Whitsunday's the jobs seemed quiet scarce and it was either having to wait around until mid July for some more farm work up north near Townsville or wait till we drive through the centre of Australia and find jobs in Melbourne. We were at odds and couldn't decide what to do, we didn't want to have to wait about in Airlie Beach for weeks on end waiting to see if there might be some work and we didn't want to drive down through the centre to Melbourne in case we ran out of money. We were stuck in travelling limbo. On the off chance, we popped into a hostel to inquire about the job centre that had been closed ever since we had got to Airlie Beach and the owner told us of some jobs that she had put on her notice board just that day. So we took the details, applied and within a day we had been offered the jobs. This meant we didn't have to wait about any more and they wanted us to start immediately. So just hours after the phone call telling us we had the jobs, we parked Bert up in a secure car park for workers of the islands and boarded the boat that would take us there.

We are working on Lindeman Island for the company Club Med and it ain’t too bad at all. I am working in the kitchen, not training to be the next master chef unfortunately but scrubbing the pots that they use instead. Ashleigh is working in house keeping cleaning the rooms for the guests. The money isn't amazing but it isn't the worst either. The holiday resort is the only thing on Lindeman Island and the rest of the island is classed as national park and a nature reserve. It is one of the Whitsunday Islands and is some way out from the mainland. So it is going to be some time before we set foot on the mainland again. It has a few beaches and over 20 miles of walking tracks. Birds are running all over the place and they make a right racket too. We are working different shifts roughly doing 40 hours per week with two days off so we are getting to spend some time with each other which is nice. When you are not working, we are able to do the same activities as the guests such as sailing, archery, play tennis, golf amongst many other things but the weather has been awful here so far preventing us from doing them. I suppose that we cant complain as we have had 9 months of sunshine, so a few weeks of grey skies and rain are to be expected every now and then. It is the Australian winter too so beggars cant be choosers but they can wish for the clouds to b***** off!

The workers are a mixed bunch of over 20 different nationalities. The main chunk of them are French. There's a lot of backpackers working here too and people come and go every day and the staff members are always changing. It seems that on average, people come here work for a month and then leave. The best thing with being on the island is that you don't spend any money as your food and accommodation comes straight out of your wages. For a fortnight, $85 comes out of your pay for accommodation and $170 comes out for food and the food is great. After months of eating instant noodles and tuna pasta it is like we have died and gone to culinary heaven. The choice is really good and a different dish is served every day. I've never seen Ashleigh's plate have just one meal on it yet “I just like to have a little bit of everything” she is forever telling me, so we will probably leave this island a stone heavier with all the good grub we are putting away. The accommodation is not to bead either, we have stayed in a lot worse that’s for sure. We stay in a little resort of our own away from the main resort and it is like living in an episode of Hi-de-Hi. It has a good vibe about the place and 95% of the people are really friendly with only a few French people who are rather rude and arrogant spoiling it. I'm not saying everybody from France is rude and arrogant as we have made good friends with two French lads, Philippe and Julian who are spot on, really friendly and out going but others just seem to be in a huff that they cant eat smelly cheese....well that's what they are probably so moody for anyway.

Moving on from the cheese eating surrender monkeys, we have a good little group of friends on the island and it makes the time here a lot easier. One in particular is a lad called Mat from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire and we cant even look at him without laughing. He is like a cross between Peter Kay and Karl Pilkington. He cracks us up all the time. He must have been living under a rock for the first 20 years of his life as he has only eaten and done certain things for the first time in his life over the past few weeks. He has eaten jam, watermelon, mint choc chip ice cream, penguin biscuits (they call them Tim Tam's over here), prawns and others for the first time in his life. He described watermelon as tasting “...a bit watery!” prawns as “...a bit fishy!” and mint choc chip ice cream “...a bit like Polo's” I don’t know why we find him so funny it's just the way he says things. Also he cant bite into apples he has to cut it up into small pieces, funny guy. He has had me and Ash crying with laughter on more occasions that I can remember. I wont go into detail about the banana incident but it was probably the funniest thing I have ever seen, comedy timing at it's best. We want to shrink him and put him in our pocket and take him everywhere with us as our personal jester. With me working in the kitchen I have to work on the evening service leaving Ash to entertain the group. They all sit in the staff canteen as Ash hosts movie club. Using our hard drive, she plugs it into the TV and an on site cinema is created. It is slowly growing with more and more people coming in each night to watch a different movie. I don't know what the workers of the island will do with their evenings off once we leave the island. I'm sure Ash secretly loves hosting it though, 7.30pm prompt for each evenings viewing. She just needs a pop corn machine and a lady to bring out ice creams in between the interval and she will be in business.

Another favourite of the island has to be our little wild life mate, aptly named by Ashleigh, Sugar Ray Leonard. He is a cockatoo that comes to see us if we leave our bedroom door open. He just struts in, flashes his bright yellow head feathers at us and looks at us as if to say “Where's the sugar?” He goes crazy for the little paper packets we get to make cuppa's with. He will take them out of your hand and he will even take it from you if you are holding them between your teeth. He is a right cheeky little character and once he has his treat he walks out the room as cool as you like, perches himself on the railing outside our door and tucks into his sugary treasure. It's fascinating to watch as he holds the packet with his foot, strips it open with his break and dabs his tongue in. You should see him open the single serve portions of peanut butter, another favourite of Sugar Ray's. It takes him a matter of a second and he is in. He is probably the best fed bird on the island. Ashleigh said “I hope he's not diabetic!” after we indulged him with a few packets of sugar one day. He followed me home from work today, I saw him in a tree outside of the kitchen I work in and I'm sure he was watching me. As soon as the door was open to our room I stepped in and I heard him land behind me. The little sod, I'm sure he knows I'm a sucker for animals. As it goes I have no sugar left to make a cuppa for myself as Sugar Ray has took it all.

Well Ashleigh spent her first birthday away from home on the 2nd of July and her first birthday as Mrs Cole. She turned 27 and she would like to thank everybody for the birthday wishes she received. With us being on a small island with only one small shop selling the basics for island life, it made it rather hard on the buying present front for her birthday so I had to get a little creative. Obviously the gifts she got were just daft little things and she will receive her main presents once we get back on the mainland so before I tell you what she got, I'm not a tight arse! As I said there is only one small shop that is open for two hours a day that sells laundry detergent, fizzy pop, crisps and sweets. So the lucky lady received a packet of M&M's, a packet of juicy fruit chewing gum, a packet of double chocolate dipped Tim Tam's and a single serve box of wheet-bix. Don't worry that wasn't all she got, the lucky lady also received a deck of Ben10 Uno cards that I found in the canteen, a brand spanking new book from the book exchange and a chess board that I stole from the canteen. Needs must and that, plus I haven't seen anybody even use it all the time we have been here so I don't feel guilty about it. They were all lovingly rapped in a fresh issue of Gossip magazine. I was trying to get 27 gifts for her 27th birthday but do you know how hard it is to find 27 presents on an island? And if you think the presents are rubbish, believe me they are the best of a bad bunch. I even contemplated rapping up a banana. But it was mainly just to make sure that she had a few gifts to make her laugh on her birthday. My master stroke had to be the birthday balloons that I made. These consisted of blown up disposable kitchen gloves tied together with bench cloth with the letters spelling out happy birthday written on them. They look like cows udders and we chuckle at them every time we look at them as they just look ridiculous. We are keeping them up until all the air has escaped from the gloves and gone floppy before we even contemplate taking them down. To make it a bit more interesting on the present front I had hidden them around the room and set up a treasure hunt for Ashleigh with a series of clues. It was great watching her run around the room like a bee in a bottle looking for the next gift and clue. It made my day. She told me she didn't want a birthday cake days before so I didn't try to organise one and she has been winding me up and making me feel bad about it ever since. I will buy her a cake on the mainland for her to make it up to her.

The night before Ashleigh's birthday we decided to take a break from being on the wagon. We hadn't had a drink since the wedding day and we both had the next day off work for her birthday, so we thought it would be rude not to celebrate a little. As fate would have it, it happened to fall on the night of the much talked about and anticipated DISCO that takes place twice a week on Wednesday's and Friday's. That's right I said disco and yes it does make you feel like you are 12 years old again with all the workers coming up to you and asking “Are you going to the disco tonight?” like you are back in school. We had been avoiding the disco since we have been here as people described it as “Well it's some times rubbish and sometimes it's alright, but it's never good!” but we thought “Why not, just this once” and I have to admit we had a pretty good time even if our hangovers lasted for two days afterwards, it was worth it.

So we are still unsure how long we will be on the island for, maybe six weeks, maybe two months. We will just have to see how things go and how we feel. On the plus side time flies by here and we have been here two weeks already and it only feels like a couple of days. One thing is for sure, we cant wait to hit the road of adventure again once we are back on the mainland. Until then...

Love Peter and Ashleigh x