ENGAGED

Today at the very most northern point of Australia, Neil asked Dordie if she would make him the happiest man in the world by agreeing to marry him, she said YES!!!

We are both extraspecially excited and thank you all for your lovely texts, emails and phonecalls.

We will be back in range (in Cairns) on 7th November, look forward to chatting to you all then.

DAY 55 - LAST NIGHT IN CAIRNS

We have had a good quiet time in Cairns recharging the batteries ready for our assault on Cape York Penisula.

As Derek is our biggest comment poster on the Blog we better respond and say visit the web site if you want to see photos where we are staying.

http://www.watersedgeapartments.com.au/

Cape York Penisula is the northern most point of Australia and is approximately 1,000km by dirt road from Cairns. As we are at the end of the dry season, we are hopeful the rains won't some for another 2 weeks until we are back in Cairns.

We are planning to head straight to the tip and then meander back south taking in the communities of Weipa, Lockhardt River and several National Parks.

We will be periodically within range with our CDMA mobile phone (+61 (0)427 765 982) if you need to contact us. We will be posting blogs along the way and we should be back in Cairns on Melbourne Cup day in November.

After Cairns we head south west towards Mt Isa, but that will be finalised in a couple of weeks.

DAY 49 - HUGE JUAN IN CAIRNS

Cairns is agreeing with us as we enjoy the fabulous far North Queensland.

We have had the company of Eugene Barry for the weekend which was a treat to have some company from Brisbane.

Neil has had an eye infection for a few days which as slowed things down a bit, but he is on the mend. If you look closely at the photos, you can see Neil's red eyes.

DAY 45 - MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY

While out for a couple of quiet drinks at an Irish Pub in downtown Cairns, Matthew McConaughey walked into the bar to add to the twenty drinks he already had.

We had a bit of a chat and he was polite and friendly and the spittle dripping off his unkept beard indicated that it was a big night. He told us he was here with Kate (Hudson) filming a movie about a treasure hunt off the reef.

Unfortunately he didn't want his photo taken as it appears that his current movie role requires him to look like a ferel, so no souvenir pictures unfortunately.

DAY 44 – BACK TO CAIRNS

We have to say it was good to get back to Cairns. Jiminy the Pajero was in desperate need of a wash and our clothes were even worse.

In Cairns we are planning to catch up on a few administrative things and have a break before we head to the top of Australia at Cape York.

Another thing that needs to sorted is the fishing rivalry between us which saw Dord walk away with the honours of ‘Biggest Fish’ after the Karumba leg of the trip. A day of reef fishing off cairns is planned for Neil to catch up....let's just see who is the better "fisherperson"!

DAY 42 - COOKTOWN

On Monday, we decided to do a road trip up to Cooktown along the coast road. While it is only 110km away, it took 3 hours to complete. The Bloomfield Track is a must do for the off road enthusiast as it is 30km of the most amazing rainforest track you can do as you climb over a couple of mountains and ford gorgeous little creeks.

Our trek was made interesting as we encountered a convoy of vehicle heading the other way who were participating a charity car rally. While most were four wheel drives (aka SUVs), they were all towing trailers and were quite unprepared for how steep some of the hills were and if you find jackknifed trailers on steep hills and a distraught wife berating her hapless husband, this was for you.

Cooktown is a gorgeous little community on the mouth of the Endeavour River. It is named after Captain Cook who spent 2 months there in 1770 after running onto the Great Barrier Reef while exploring the east coast of Australia. Now it is a fishing village housing everything from barely floating fishing trawlers up to state of the art 60 foot game fishing boats.

DAY 41 – CAPE TRIBULATION

After the Tablelands, we headed up to Cape Tribulation which is approximately 130km north of Cairns in the Wet Tropics where the rainforest runs down to the beach.

On the way, we pulled into Port Douglas to get a coffee and have a look around for Matthew McConaughy and Kate Hudson who are in town to film a move. Alas we didn’t see them, but we did see a big black limo none the less.

In Cape Tribulation we stayed at the ‘Beach House Resort’, which was a nice little bungalow in the rainforest only 50 meters from the beach. The beach was fantastic except you couldn’t swim there. If the stingers didn’t get you, the crocodiles would.

DAY 40 – BACK TO THE COAST

After two weeks in a dusty cow paddock putting dirt in bags was enough for the intrepid pair and once the last drill hole was nearing completion, all that was visible was dust left by a Pajero pointing east.

Dordie had her first taste of the pointy end of mineral exploration in the Australian Outback and while it was an education in how you find new ore bodies to potentially mine, she is happy to leave it to the geologists from now on.

Friday night was spent in the little hamlet of Mt Garnet which is just to the west of the Atherton Tablelands. The highlight of the evening was having a normal bed and clean shower water that wasn’t hauled up from a dam muddied by cattle. The steaks they do at the Mt Garnet Pub are exceptional and it is worth visiting Mt Garnet for the steaks alone.

After a good nights sleep, we headed back to the Atherton Tablelands to continue our tour of Australia. We visited another Mango farm that sold mango wine for tourists, we added another bottle of fruit wine to our collection.

We ended up in Kuranda again and decided to stay the night. It was quite amusing to see Kuranda is a day time only tourist town, and it was literally dead on a Saturday night.

DAY 38 - THE DRILLER HAS A SORE HEAD

We have only another day or two to go with the drilling around Croydon, then we are heading off to the Cape Tribultion in the Daintree National Park for the weekend. We are 'fanging' to get out of here as one week has turned into two and things have been a bit slow on the rig.

Dramas this week with an incident on the drilling rig with the Driller getting a nasty head knock and we ended up getting the flying doctor in. Fortunately the driller is fine, but he had a nasty headache and we spent the afternoon arranging for the ambulance to evacuate him out to meet the plane.

We spotted some emu's having a stroll this morning and were lucky enough to get some really close snaps.

A heartfelt congratulations to Damien and Bree on their engagement, we are very happy for you both! That ring is massive!

DAY 35 - LEAVING THE GOOD LIFE IN KARUMBA TO HEAD BACK TO WORK

Hello everyone!

After some delays in the drilling at Croydon, we managed to have a long weekend in Karumba and fitted a bit in while there.

Well everything is well in the universe here in Queensland with the Brisbane Broncos winning the grand final and sales of XXXX beer up here in the gulf went well as well.

We made the road trip to the Burke & Wills campsite 119 which was their most northerly. Those unfamiliar with Australian history, Burke and Wills were the first European explorers to travel Australia from south to north through the middle in the 19th century and perished on the way in the desert.

While in Normanton, we did the touristy thing and took photos of ourselves at the Big Barramundi and the Big Croc “Krys”. We have still yet to get the photo out the front of the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour!

The sunsets in Karumba (while enjoying a cold beer) were definitely a highlight for us.

All the holidayers we talked to told us to check out the “Barramundi Discovery Centre” which was a pretty amazing place….we saw the prize fish (some up to 1.2m long) up close and even feed them. Shame we couldn’t take just one for dinner tonight!

We are now making the long drive back to the drilling camp, where we will be out of touch for another week. Hope this posting finds you all well.

DORD & NEIL J