2024 in Review

A few major things happened this year. Firstly, I finally retired! In early April I pulled the plug, something which I found very difficult to do, but have had no regrets since.

In March we went to some National Parks in South-East Queensland that we had always wanted to visit, but missed out on a couple as the weather deteriorated. We really enjoyed Spicer's Gap, Main Range National Park, Glastonbury Creek Campground, D'Aguilar National Park Amamoor State Forest, Brooyar State Forest, Ravensbourne NP, Mapleton Falls, & Paradise Dam.  In June we went with friends to Monal Goldfield and the Boyne Valley, staying at Ubobo.

At the end of June we headed to Canada. The first month there delightfully spent with the family at a Chalet between 2 lakes at Montcalm. Everyone enjoyed being able to swim, fish and paddle, and the place abounded with wildlife. Marc came over for the first 10 days as well, which was fabulous. A couple of side trips to Mont Tremblant National Park were very enjoyable. We went camping for a few days, to check out the camping gear, at Domaine de Cedres.

The family headed back to Montreal for a few days, and we went to Ottawa, before meeting up again for a road trip to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where we camped in National Parks. 

We re-joined the Off-Road Club and went on a couple of trips to the Boyne Valley. 

Full write-ups of all these trips will come later, (Darryl says don't hold your breath, but I'm getting there!).

The year is being topped off beautifully by a visit from our Canadian family, who arrive in Rockhampton on the last day of the year.

Below is a couple of activities undertaken during the year, iNaturalist and Kiva, (micro-lending to disadvantaged people).

https://www.inaturalist.org/stats/2024/ozikris

Chris' iNaturalist

https://www.kiva.org/team/genealogists

Blogiversary! 20 Years!

 

It's 20 years today since I made my first blog post on this blog. It was for the CQ 4x4 Christmas Party Chris & Darryl's Trips: 4X4 Club Xmas Party in 2004.

Up until this post there have been 600, and we have enjoyed some amazing events, parties, and travels. 

We have travelled to overseas to New Zealand (North and South Islands 3 trips), Canada (3 trips including the Rocky Mountains, the Badlands, Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver, as well as Montreal, Quebec City & Toronto, USA Seattle, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and a cruise to Alaska, China and Japan, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Greece & Spain, Singapore & Thailand. We have also cruised from Tokyo to Sydney with stops at Vietnam, Bali, Hobart, and places mentioned previously.

In Queensland we have travelled all over South-east Queensland, North Queensland (several trips), Channel Country, Western Queensland & Central Queensland, including: Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns, Innisfail, Toowoomba, Winton, Cania Gorge, Isla Gorge,  Byfield, Charters Towers, Mt Bartle Frere (highest mountain in Queensland), Walsh's Pyramid, Atherton Tablelands, Normanton, Bourketown, Ingham, Paluma, Eurimbla, Blackdown (at least twice Darryl at least 6 times), Goodedulla, Lawn Hill, Riversleigh, Pocupine Gorge,  Lamington and D'Aguilar, National Parks, Keppel Island, Boyne Valley several times to Bulburin, Dawes, and Kroombit National Parks, Glassford, Mount Jacob mine, Mt Morgan, Benaraby, Mt Etna, Bunya Mountains, Girraween, Elliott Heads, Gin Gin, Mount Perry, Hervey Bay, Innott Hot Springs, the Sunshine Coast, & up to the tip of Cape York

New South Wales to Sydney, National Parks including the Blue Mountains, Waterfall Way, the Warrumbungles, Orange, Adelong, Carcoar, Cootamundra, Hill End, and Mt Kosciusko.

Victoria to Melbourne, the Gold-mining areas in Victoria of Beechworth, Bendigo and Ballarat, the Great Ocean Road, Mt Macdeon, the Grampians, Walhalla and drove from Dargo to the Alpine National Park.

The Northern Territory (2 trips) to Darwin, Alice Springs, Ayres Rock, Kings Canyon, Katherine & Kakadu, Nitmiluk and Litchfield National Parks, Gosses Bluff Impact Crater, Wolf Creek Crater, Mataranka.

Northern Western Australia with Kununurra, the Kimberley, Derby, Bungle Bungles, and most of the Gibb River Road.

Tasmania including Hobart, Bruny Island, Salamanca Markets, Sydney to Hobart Yacht race finish, Cradle Mountain, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Port Arthur, Mole Creek, most of the large dams, the west coast, and drove up Jacob's ladder.

This map shows just a little of where we've been in Australia & New Zealand.

I have documented family & friends' events with births, deaths & birthdays, concerts (Status Quo & Deep Purple), engagements, reunions, work and Christmas Parties, social events, bushwalks, floods (Rockhampton 2008) and cyclones (Marcia which hit Rockhampton in 2015).

I have about 40 draft post that I'm working on, and there's plenty more travels coming. I'm also working on fixing up the photos in some posts that have disappeared. So, there's more to come. 

The 20 graphic was created by AI - Microsoft Co-pilot, the map is from my Google timeline.

Thailand 17 Nov

A gorgeous sea eagle

At least three groups were out netting. The floats with the flags indicated one end of the net and they checked and shifted them often. The fish may have been abundant once but there were few out there on this day.

This shows one fish in the net and often the fishermen pulled in the nets without any catch.

Darryl heading off snorkeling

Darryl enjoyed snorkeling around the rocks where there were a couple of varieties of colorful fish and the occasional sea urchin and crab.

We decided to try out the Restaurant at the complex we were staying in.

The satay sticks were delicious...they disappeared quickly

 

Thailand 16 Nov

Darryl, Skyla & Max we for a walk to the beach, while Shane and River came for a chat with me. We looked after Skyla while Max did his reading, then watched River later. 

An interesting shrine on our walk

We babysat the Kids at night so Shane and Jess could go on a date for their wedding anniversary. 

Jess' photo

Homecooked dinner again tonight - Yellow Chicken Curry

Thailand 15 Nov

Darryl went shopping while I looked after the kids. 

That box came in handy again!

He washed the scooter and they came and collected it. I cooked Curried Sausages for dinner. The curry paste was VERY strong, so it was really hot.

Thailand 14 Nov

A beautiful Thai Kingfisher

Darryl hired a scooter and we went shopping. 

Our Scooter...a good hint here is they wanted to keep hold of Darryl's licence during the hire. Luckily, he had an International Licence from RACQ, and was fine to leave that with them, while holding onto his real licence. We would have preferred a motorbike but this had more power then we expected. 

After dropping the shopping home, we headed off to Lanta Old Town. 

Little road-side stalls are everywhere and they usually sell petrol by the litre in glass bottles.

The Chao Lay people who were nomadic seafaring tribes related to the Moken people first arrive at Koh Lanta about 500 years ago. About 300 years ago, Muslim Malay migrants, arrived on the island from the opposite Thailand coast. Chinese merchants arrived on the island more than 100 years ago during the revolution when communist ruler President Mao Tse Tung took power. Chinese merchants soon started thriving trading posts with their relatives in other Asian ports, swapping their local region’s specialties for other region’s top products and Koh Lanta became a safe-haven port for traders from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Koh Lanta History + Culture (kolanta.net) Now, it is a tourist town.

The main street

The jetty

The Chinese past remains today.

Scooters are definitely popular here...it was hard to get a park

That rain was coming our way

Tsunami Warning sign

Houses built on stilts over the water

We tried to go to a lookout, (it was on the map, but didn't seem to be there in reality), then tried to go to Tiger Cave, but opted out, when the road became a muddy track in the middle of no-where. 

We saw rubber harvesting closeup. 

Next attempt was to Jak Canal Waterfall, but had started raining lightly, and we spoke to someone who had come out who said the guide told him it was too dark, muddy and the animals were coming out, so decided against it. Despite this we still saw lots of interesting sights.

This main road was very close to the beach in places, (definitely NOT the place to be in a Tsunami!)

The main gates to a Muslim Cemetery

These are the Cemetery markers

Safety standards are lax compared to Australia.

Dinner was at the Rabbit Restaurant again.

Darryl enjoying his milkshake

I had a Chang beer

The rain made it hard to walk home through the mud (the road wasn't much better)