Leaving Cairns it was the biggest morning tea raising money for cancer research – lots of great food – & this lovely lady called ‘Nanny Berni’ wanted to come with us & look after the kids – bless her!

I have had the best week with my cousins. There are Aaron 14, Ethan 12, Laura 12, Marcus 7, Elinor 5, Perry 4 and Angus 3.

We have played tons of pool table and we have also played in the pool. We all came to Palm cove, we come to Palm cove for family holidays every year. Pa and Grandma pay for everything – they are so generous i think they do it because they love seeing all there grandchildren having fun together and they also love spending time with them all. I loved lunch where we had wedges and chips. I LOVED the wedges with sour cream and chilli sauce.

 
From left to right – Aunty Carolyn, Aunty Pam, Uncle Rick & mummy (in age Order) by the pool making sure we are safe

We went to Cairns tropical zoo it was fun, we got to feed the kangaroos and pat them. Cairns tropical zoo is the 11th zoo I have been to in my life, my 12th zoo is Singapore zoo we are going there on the 30th. I love the birds and koalas. I especially love the Reticulated python it was 8m LONG and took nine people to carry. I bought a egg that had a fake baby croc, I left it in water for three days and it hatched into a baby croc. On Friday night we watched Collingwood play Sydney, while we were watching I had two drinks they were soda lime and bitters and lemonade. Yum!
Me and Pam watched the last 10 minutes of Hawthorn play Gold Coast. We played pool table everyday and played in the pool everyday. For the dinners we had pizzas, Greek food, we went to the surf club, had fish ‘n’ chips and also we went to.


P.S I had to ask something in Greek Dad said ” nobody is going to have dessert unless Toby orders in Greek”. So I did.

On the 22 of may it was my birthday -Toby & I Turned ten. We went to a water park.

We also went to a pool that generates
waves – we had a great time jumping
the waves and floating over the waves.
At the water park we went down big slides – one was red, one was blue and a yellow one. The red slide was pitch black. For lunch we had Mexican & for dinner we had sushi.

By Yasmina

Blog          20/5/13

We went to Kakadu and we saw lots of rock art.

Then we went up the rock to watch the sunset. Lots of other people were there – it was gorgeous.

That night we didn’t bring our fly as we are staying in Darwin and left it there so we all got soaked in the meddle of the night – we had to sleep in the car it was SO HOT. In the morning we got ten liters of water out of the tent then we went back to Darwin.

By Yasi

12/5/13

We are now at Humpty Doo, NT

When we arrived, our cousins Lachie and Josh were at school, Jenny and Paul were at work. Wendy (visiting from Victoria) came out to greet us, when we went inside we found our cousins Ruby and Emma and their dad Mike. Five minutes later our cousin Josh came in and within 5 minutes he was off to Woolworths for work. We decided to go and play in Paul and Jen’s pool. We played for about an hour until Lachie came in to play Marcopolo, then we played ship and submarines and we played octopus – it was fun. Dinner was awesome it was potatoes, salads and sausages….

By Tobes

The first of the Lasts…….

 Wow – this is quite surreal as I sit here tonight – fans going to try to keep the mozzies at bay – apparently they don’t like moving air – though I am pretty sure that Darwin mozzies have adapted to even that – and thinking about tomorrow…….

Tomorrow – or actually today really cause it is after midnight – my big kids Tobes and Yas turn 10 – and I think how quickly those years have passed and how quite possibly they have spent more than half the time they live with us before wanting to move out, study, adventure etc already. That is quite scary really as there is so much to show them and teach them and share with them. They have chosen to have a water fun day in Darwin at the free water slide park (very impressive – maybe Darwin does this as they cant swim in the sea due to crocs?) and then the wave pool in the afternoon.

Oh and yeah – we have sold our car – I had visions of us being stuck in the Pilbara or the Kimberley with a car that was breaking down and losing many of its working bits – though – NO – thanks to our trusted mechanic Grant –it got us to Darwin – over 10,000km and then we get to sell it to someone – who apparently is quite excited about it – despite – the no air-con, no side opening door, no back windows working, dints in the roof due to us clambering on to load our gear up on the roof, and now even the radio, CD and car charger losing its gusto! Sandy did an amazing job answering questions etc and selling the car on gum tree while I was in Melbourne for 4 days recently to do some teaching.

I think I might shed a bit of a tear when we give up the car tomorrow – not only did Sandy sell the car but she negotiated for it to be picked up from in Darwin while we are at the wave pool – to minimize having to have taxis etc. It is quite difficult to get lifts anywhere for our family due to the numbers and we haven’t had to use any taxis yet – they add up – especially when it has to be a maxi-taxi to fit us all in. So we pass on the car tomorrow afternoon and then stay in town tomorrow night at a backpackers to enable us to get to our 6.30am flight the next morning to Cairns.

We are all so looking forward to going to Palm Cove (near Cairns) with all the King (Sandy’s family) clan – of course we love spending time with them – though the kids just adore their cousins and when all twelve are together they just play and play all day and we get to relax a bit more than usual. However – once those 6 days are up – then it is off – really off – off to Asia – to traverse our way across the biggest continent on earth – and that feels a pretty exciting and scary all at once. It’ll be such a different stage for us – without a car – in a countries none of us have been to – amongst languages none of us know (though Kiki thinks she has mastered all the colours in Mandarin!).

This brings me to the title of this blog – the first of the lasts…….

For the least couple of weeks we have been saying – Oh – this is the last day we’ll be in Western Australia, this is the last day we’ll be in the tent (oh by the way – if you are tempted by buying a 10 person tent from Aldi and actually want to use it more than 10 times – don’t bother – we have had to throw ours away and now a bit embarrassed that we were accomplice to the huge throw away society we have become – such a terrible waste of resources – best to buy good quality if you want it to last – the tent had to be repaired so many times and by the end the poles were just so broken we had to laugh). The last night staying with cousins Jen and Paul, tomorrow will be our last day to drive our beautiful Tarago, the last time Yas and Tobes will be single digit age, the last time we will have an address to get letters for a long time, the last time we will be allowed to drive at 130km/hr, the last time we will be bitten by these crazy mozzies – its exciting and sad to have ‘lasts’. Also – in many ways terribly exciting to go through yet another downsize of our stuff – so much needs to go to the op shop tomorrow…….and yet – we are still due for at least one more downsize before we fly off to China (via Singapore).

Last week I flew home to Victoria for four days of teaching and to visit my clinic – Sandy stayed up here in Darwin and visited Kakadu amongst selling the car. It was quite strange to get to a place where shoes were a must and you needed 3 layers of clothes to feel comfortable – and that you had no need to fear mozzies! It was so much to see many of the wonderful students I have enjoyed teaching over the last few months and to catch up with friends. I managed to fit in a musical, a movie, a birthday dinner for my wonderful friend Robyn, and a boys’ night out organized by Pete – that left me with a sore head! As surreal as it was to fly home to Melbourne briefly – as soon as I flew back into Darwin I instantly reveled in the heat and felt I was home – I guess cause I was so excited about seeing my family again. My gosh – look at the time – definitely need to go to bed – exciting birthday times await in the morning.

Good night – Christos

HELLO – please note that this blog is a few weeks old though Kiki has been working hard on it over the last couple of weeks and really wanted to send it as one. (Baba Miliking)

Cable beach caravan park

We went to the pool then we had dinner the next day we went to the dinosaur  footprints. We went rock scrambling at the dinosaur footprints. We went to the park and then we went to the pool. Dad threw us into the water. We went to a outdoor cinema we saw adventures  in zambesia, I liked it.

El Questro

We went to Emma Gorge. We met a group of Aboriginal kids there who dived really well and some of them didn’t have shoes on – their feet were really tough.

At the end pool there were tiny little drops of water raining down. There was a small waterfall that ended behind a rock and it was warm water.

We jumped off a rock on the way back and the Aboriginal kids jumped off a really high rock. Then we went to the campsite and went into the river. Emilio and I saw horse prints.

The next day – we went to Zebedee Springs – it had cascading waterfalls and tadpoles that would nibble your legs.

At Amalia Gorge we jumped off a rock into deep water. Mum, Toby and I went right to the end of the big waterfall pool. It had a waterfall and I had a shower under it.

We also saw a few cane toads – they’re not very good!

On the 6^th of May was my birthday. I got a white and blue watch, a pink super ball (it is very bouncy), a purple top and greeny-blue shorts.

As a special treat for my birthday we got to go horse riding – Yasi , Toby and I were trotting which was fun. We went up and down on the horses when they were trotting. Phil and Kate were the horse people and my best friend Charlotte’s dad – Matt – knew Kate because she is from Mansfield.

Phil is from America and taught us how to crack a whip. My horse’s name was Encara. Toby’s was Moonshine, Yasi’s was Rusty (They told us that Rusty likes to drink beer and eat Cherry ripe), Emilio’s horse was Lass and Zoi’s horse was called Bundy – it used to be a racehorse but it got sacked cause it couldn’t go fast enough.

On the way to Lake Argyle we stopped in Kununurra. Dad and I went shopping to get lunch and a birthday cake – I chose the birthday cake and got to choose choc croissants and caramel biscuits. Very yummy! For lunch we had wraps – there were two different flavours – garlic and plain – I really liked the garlic ones. There was a yummy hummus and olive dip – it had some yummy Basil in it.

In the afternoon of my birthday we got to Lake Argyle Caravan Park past Kununurra. Lake Argyle sort of sounds like Lady Gaga. We went in the infinity pool that looked like it had no edge.

The scenery looked like rocky hills forming around a lake. We played a horse game in the pool – I even got to ride on Zoi’s back because the water helped Zoi carry me.

We went to the restraunt for dinner as a special birthday dinner. I had spaghetti Bolognese. For dessert we had ice-cream that came with the kids meal and my birthday cake. I had such a great day.

By Kiki

Hello, Guess where I am today?

I’m in a hot stinky car with five kids and two adults on the way to Broome. It’s 32 C. It is school time (8am -12noon) on the 3^rd of May.  We are 2 and ½ hours from Broome.

I have been thinking a lot about Monkey Mia. I would love to become a ranger or a volunteer at Monkey Mia because I loved the dolphins. They are really brilliant. Each morning we went down to the beach to wait for the dolphins to swim to the shallows to feed them. It was awesome.

By Tobes