Weather with attitude

Moving from Melbourne to Brisbane evokes more comments about weather than any other subject. Everyone in Melbourne seems to be convinced that Brisbane weather is disgustingly hot and humid. Everyone in Brisbane seems to be convinced that Melbourne's weather is appallingly cold and wet. Rumours of both - I must report - are greatly exaggerated. One friend who has experienced plenty of both explained it to me that there are a couple of months of hot stuff in summer in Brisbane and a couple of months of cold stuff in Melbourne in winter, but other than that both climates are quite livable.

Presumably January is one of those hot months in Brisbane, and having experienced it first hand for the first time - I was beginning to think I had it licked. It really hadn't been that bad. The temperature wandered up to the 28-32 range every day, and dropped to around 20 every night. We have slept with a sheet and the fan running almost every night, and the windows on our house are almost constantly open. We are both fortunate and unfortunate with our house. The fortunate bit is that it catches the breeze - as it is on a bit of a hill, and has good windows on both the north and south ends - and through comes a cooling wind. Which is just as well, because the bad news is that our air conditioning unit has not worked since we moved in, and still today is broken.

The a/c unit is our major (tempting to say only) problem with the house. Shelley and I between us have made perhaps two dozen calls to the agent asking when it was going to be fixed. We finally got an electrician to the house to fix the wiring, which had been destroyed by an animal of some sort (let's assume a dog... anything else is just too nasty to picture from the previous tenants). But then we find that electricals aside - the unit does not work. Again we wait and wait. Finally, we secure an appointment from an air conditioning man for Saturday. We could hardly wait.

When Saturday dawned, it turned out to be the worst day we had experienced since moving up. It was so hot and humid that moving caused you to sweat. I had got up early and done some tidying up in the yard with my new edge trimmer, then collapsed inside for a couple of hours, drinking copious amounts water in an attempt to recover. Shelley was doing some vacuuming - the sweat literally dripping off her. By lunch time we were grumpy and irrational and struggling. Of course - the delays were inteminably, but eventually the A/C man showed up around 3:30, and after about an hour of playing - declared the unit totally dead and needing to be replaced. When that would happen depended on the owner. My anger at this situation boiled over - the house had sat empty for weeks before we had rented it and they could have easily noticed the A/C wasn't working and replaced it - but instead it had to wait for us - and then for the 29th day or our rental agreement, before it was even declared that the unit needed replacing.

There was nothing to do but battle on. Tucked away we had a little wading pool given to the kids by Josh some years earlier. We pulled it out and set it up, and indeed it changed their mood considerably. Shelley and I had another shower, another change of clothes, and battled on. Sunday morning, we left 45 minutes early for church and drove around to look at the area - after all - the car was air conditioned! Then we decided to head up to Toowoomba to see Shell's parents for Sunday afternoon. Toowoomba sits atop the Great Dividing Range and invariably has less humidity than Brisbane, even if it is just as hot.

Mind you - as we were leaving, things changed. The humidity suddenly "broke", and stormy rain lashed out. If I hadn't been dressed ready to go to my in-laws, I could have been tempted to go out and stand in the rain for 10 minutes to get some relief. At that moment I remembered the words of so many residents of Darwin and the far north as they talked about the build up and the breaking of the wet season. My first experience of a mini-build-up had been a bit hard, and I had struggled. But we'd made it through, even without air conditioning, and maybe next time I would be more ready for it.

The curious thing, I realised later, is that from Melbourne, you might have missed the significance of this weather event. The temperature was only one or two degrees higher than usual, and there were few other signs on the reports. At last the expression "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" started to make sense. A colleague told how they flew one day from Adelaide to Townsville. In Adelaide it was 39 degrees and dry - in Townsville it was 33 degrees but close to 100% humidity. In Adelaide it was warm, but in Townsville, he nearly died.

But one bad day does not a summer ruin. Other than this - I have been enjoying the stable, warm conditions. And I am sure I will enjoy it come winter time! But for that day - it was weather with attitude, no doubt!

Outback Where?

With all the recent focus on the family's move to Queensland - longer term readers might be wondering what has happened about my ORIGINAL purpose of this blog - to talk outback issues.

Sorry - I have been off topic, and I will get back there from time to time, but right at the moment I am definitely in a different world. Just how different is brought home almost every moment when I am out and about. One of the notable features of life since moving to Brisbane has been the almost constant view of...forest. When we finally get into our new home - we will have forest views off the balcony. For the moment we don't - our views are limited to the backs of other houses, but that's only temporary. The drive to work - 35 km across the suburbs includes a section through the Greenbank Military Reserve - thick with forest. A little further on, as you cross the Brisbane River there is again forest all around. Not much later, the road passes through the Brisbane Forest Park - which is well named. When I finally arrive at work, I find I am responsible for a fairly large section of land with some lovely trees out the front, and out the back is a bush reserve. In reality, I don't think I have ever been more confronted by forest on a daily basis, and while these are for the most part not extensive areas of land, they are certainly beautifully untouched. In the cases of our little bush reserve at work and the forest around the River, they are quite luxuriant; bordering on sub-tropical. The other day, I explored an alternative route home across the back of Mount Cootha - a little further but less traffic. It was not any faster, mind you, because I had swapped freeway for a hilly track... but you should have seen the forest that route took me through! Amazing.

So - while I have swapped one suburban experience for another, there is no doubt that this is quite different to Melbourne in respect of the vegetation you see. Literally every tree I saw on the drive from work to the office in Melbourne was selected and cultivated - and very few represented species from the natural bush that once covered the area. Particularly around home, even when there were some sections of natural bush preserved, it was typically tea-tree, coastal banksias and other scrubby species. Not what you would call forest! My own yard in Melbourne had a disproportionate number of trees for its size - but virtually none of them were native to Victoria. Here, I seem to be near constantly surrounded by extensive patches of natural, impressive green forest.

All of which means - the outback is far away. Of course, if you drive off to the west, you start to find yourself in some pretty remote country before a whole long time, but it is really hard to make the mental leap from here. When I stop and think about it, I miss it. Mostly I have been too busy to stop and think, but right now, I do.

Of course, the outback will wait for me - it always does. One of the things I love is that when you go back to the outback, its still there. Just like before. Pretty much like it was 200 years ago, or 2,000 years ago. So - I'll get there. But I suspect I have a few things to do first. There is a fair section of Queensland that can justifiably be called outback. One thing that has surprised me a bit is how few Baptist Churches there are in that section of the state. Like the vast majority of the people, the churches cling in great numbers to the coastal strip. So - maybe there will not be quite as much outback involved with this job as I might have thought there would be. Still - there will be opportunities...

Weekend Retreat

New state - new sights to see. I have a love of "knowing my way around" and I've got a lot to learn in Queensland. Add to that - we have deliberately decided not to get so involved with all the church responsibilities we had in Melbourne, so we do have more free time on weekends. Consequently, we have adopted a policy that we will do a family outing together each Saturday, and explore the areas around Brisbane together.

Our first outing was to somewhere I had been before, although briefly, and only with Josh and Ness. I therefore knew enough to know Shelley would love it. We headed up to O'Reilley's in Lamingon National Park atop the magnificent Green Mountains. Barely 90 minutes drive from home, and that including a very leisurely climb into the mountains, there is a veritable oasis of wonder. Sitting just north of the NSW/Qld border and atop a plateau in the Macpherson Range (the watershed of which is the border line), O'Reilley's Guest House is surrounded by dense and complex rain forest. A wonderful place for a picnic or cafe meal, not to mention to stay if you had more time, it is surrounded by a network of sensational walking tracks taking you deep into the rainforest proper.

Getting there is at least half the fun. The road leaves the little village of Canungra, winds along a pretty valley between steep sided hills, then crosses the river and starts to climb in earnest. After six or seven kilometres, you reach the top of the ridge, and are presented wtih dramatic views of the valley you have just left as well as the next one across. The road then follows this ridge to the south, ever increasing in height, and the views in either direction continue to broaden. Finally, the steepest part of the climb is over and you arrive on the plateau - which is in itself sloped with the highest part on the southern edge. Almost immediately, the woodlands give way to rainforest, and the road disappears into a tunnel of dense foliage - for much of the route, only enough has been cleared for a single lane of traffic, and even this weaves between the biggest of the trees. For much of the rest of the trip to O'Reilley's the rainforest gets denser and deeper and despite the bright sunny day it is like driving into the dusk. Headlights on, you pick your way ahead, generally at little more than the signposted 40 km/h limit. Oncoming cars are tricky, but after a while you find yourself happy to pull into one of the passing bays provided and let them go as it gives you a few more moments to appreciate the forest that surrounds you.

By the time we arrived at O'Reilley's, to our disbelief, it had become cool - almost cold. Our warm summer outfits were suddenly quite inadequate. The air was moist with condensation - we were literally in the cloud, although it was only light. The balcony at the cafe at O'Reilley's gives a bit of a view of the valley far below, but for the most part this is not a lookout so much as a rainforst experience. We headed off along the boardwalk through the forst to see more - and a few minutes later found ourselves at the famous tree top walk. There are a few of these in Australia now, but this is the original one and perhaps the most remarkable. It is also free, although you are asked to make a donation and most were happy to reach into their pockets by the end of the walk. The semi-circle walk is strung between trees up to 30 metres above the floor of the forst and it swings and bumps about in the breeze and as you walk. At the highest point, you find yourself mid-way up an immense rainforest tree - and in case you really want to experience the true drama of the tree tops, a ladder rises steeply in a cage to a tiny platform another 10 metres up, and then yet another takes you to a perch that can best be described as awe-inspiring, virtually sitting in the crown of one of the largest trees in the forest.

The family loved it - I loved it! There are lots of other walks in the area, and there is also a second point at which you can connect with the national park at Binna Burra Lodge. We might head for that one next time we come this way. This could become our new "blue mountains" - the bush retreat we take our visitors to and show off the best of our new state.

A great day out, and a great introduction to the new policy of Family Days on Saturdays.

A Tribute to Italian Culture

Indeed - we appear to have moved into a suburb that is a tribute to Italian culture. Oh really you say? So Springfield Lakes is dotted with Tuscan villas? Pehraps dominated by a cathedral to rival Florence? No wait - the hint is in the name - with all the lakes around the place you can navigate from place to place on a Venetian gondola? Er... not really.

No, what I am referring to is that that a road map of the suburb really resembles an aerial view of a bowl of spaghetti. The twist and tangle of streets is really quite amazing. This is probably best illustrated by describing how to find our house - turn left at the entry roundabout, then right at the lake roundabout and right at the supermarket roundabout. Up the hill, swing left then turn right and follow the road to the right around the park. Go around to the left then turn right at the hilltop roundabout. then right at the second entrance of our street. That description makes light of the various traffic furniture that complicates the route. Of course, you don't need to go that way - you can go straight on at the supermarket, past the school then turn right, and then left. That gets you back onto the hilltop road, so swing right, back to the left, and then turn right at the hilltop roundabout and right into our street. Or any number of other ways - the options are open at that point.

What there are not options about is how to get out of the suburb back into "normal Brisbane". There is only one way in and one way out of the actual suburb, which is to drive past the Delfin office nestled beside the lake at the north west tip of the suburb. There is a second entrance to the suburb under construction, although I use the term with a wistful smile. To be realistic, I have seen little effort being put into developing this road, and it looks exactly like it did when we first drove into the area last November. This road would help us a lot - it would dramatically shorten and simplify the route to Orion Shopping Centre - in theory less than a kilometre from our place but in practice several times more than that away. It would also enable us to describe a route into the our house that involves only 4 turns instead of the current 6 or 7 (depends how you count). If we happen to see the road built before we move out, I would be very surprised.

Suffice to say, Springfield Lakes is sufficiently spaghetti-like that so far none of our visitors have managed to make it in without getting lost. That is despite the fact that they always bring a map and think they know what they are doing before they get there. One of our visitors spent 30 minutes trying to find the place!

Once I realised how bad it was, I became quite concerned about how our furniture truck was going to make it into the district. It was a very large semi-trailer able to hold 120 cubit metres of goods. In fact they did extremely well! They drove in the day before in another vehicle, getting lost in the process, and planned their assault carefully. On the day, they arrived early, took a circuitous route through the suburb to avoid needing to turn right at any of the tight roundabouts - closed down the road to other traffic for a few minutes while they negotiated on particularly tight corner, and then when they reached our street, they drove past the corner and reversed the big semi around the corner in a surprisingly elegant 9-point turn, and then down the hill to our place so they could get out again afterwards. It made surprisingly good theatre!

But this does have a serious side. Significant concern is now being raised about whether the fire brigade and ambulance would be able to find their way into a particular location in a hurry in the case of an emergency. GPS helps, but there are certain points where vehicles larger than the average car struggle to get around, and these are not shown as problems on most maps or GPS units. The tabloids scream - "will someone die thanks to these streets?" While a little dramatic - we are left to wonder how serious the problem is and hope we never find out.

Oh, ok. Seeing I am blogging and it is meant to be a personal diary containing confessions and the like - I guess I should add - despite all of the above, I kind of like the idea of knowing my way around such a complex suburb, and personally it is kind of fun! And I've always liked spaghetti anyway! And it is also kind of fun hearing the stories come out about how various visitors have toured half of south-east Queensland trying to find us...

A Spiritual Home

I hate the term "Church Shopping" and hate the practice of it as well. I am much more comfortable with the wise words of a former pastor of ours - "if you find the perfect church, whatever you do don't join it and mess it up!" (Er... at the time I think he was applying this statement to anyone, but maybe not - might have just been personal advice to me...)

We went to a church on the Sunday we visited Queensland in October, and there were some things we liked and some we didn't. Anyway, yesterday was our first free Sunday since we moved up here, and so we went back again to that same church to see if the good things were still good and the less good things had been addressed. Overall, I reckon it went pretty well, and I certainly would hope to continue attending.

The biggest issue we faced in October was that we were nearly ignored for the entire time we were there - virtually no-one bothered to talk with us or find out who we were. At one point about 20 minutes after the service, as we finished the cup of coffee that we had made for ourselves at the servery window, we wondered if we were actually going to leave without anyone speaking to us at all. Then, one lady came up and introduced herself - and as we got into the conversation, she did decide to get a couple of others, including the pastor, to meet us. To be fair, there was an excuse. It was a day on which 5 people were being baptised, and all five had brought along their special groups of friends and relatives. The place was veritably crawling with strangers, and most people had simply assumed we were associated with one or the other of the baptismal candidates, and therefore we were not normal visitors.

So - what would happen when we went back? Well, on the positive side, three people introduced themselves and said hello before got to our seats. One of these was the church secretary, although she didn't say so. We found ourselves sitting down and the service began, and when the pastor jumped up, he made a general welcome to visitors, but didn't even particularly look our way, and certainly he didn't say anything specifically about us. Which really highlights my point about church shopping. Here we were checking the church out to see if it was suitable for us, and so we hardly wanted any fuss made about our being there in case we decided we didn't like it. That would be really awkward, especially seeing I am the Secretary of the Union of churches and therefore a visitor of some "significance" (I continue to feel a bit funny about this sort of label, but...), and was going to be working with the pastor on one of the committees at work over the coming years. But then again, if we did like it, then how to we signal that and make it clear that it is now ok for poeple to welcome you to their church family? So - while these confusing thoughts were swirling through my head, we sat there kind of hoping that nothing special would be said or done.

But then the pastor says “I’ve like the welcome some very special people along today...” and I think oh no. You see - he did meet us back in October, and he also would have received the general email from my boss saying I had started in my job durign the week, so he could easily have known that we were now in town to stay. So I kind of grit my teeth, and then he says “...Graeme and Joanne...” and I heave a huge sigh of relief “...Semple, former beloved pastor here!” And I think – you must be kidding! Because I know Graeme quite well - he is now pastoring a church in Victoria and I had quite a bit to do with that church and him in my former job. Perhaps a coincidence on names? Well, Graeme is welcomed up the front, and sure enough it is him, and he is about 5 metres from the pastor, sees me sitting there, stops, waves, then turns to the pastor and says “we’re not the only Victorians you have joining you today!” And its Oh No all over again. Anyway, to the pastor's credit, he acknowledged that he knew who I was and that I had just begun working at the QB, so he handled the moment smoothly and kept the focus on Graeme as it should have been.

But I did feel a bit spied upon... how come you can travel almost 2,000 km, rock up in a church totally unannounced, and they have a special guest on that day who happens to be someone with whom you have worked quite closely? Is this part of how God works? To my mind - yes. That's a part of how He works. It is often a lot more subtle than that, but on this occasion, it wasn't all that subtle. God uses all sorts of circumstances to control outcomes and we had been praying about finding the right church. So - I am happy about saying that this is a part of the revelation to us of where we are going and what we are to do.

Still - the church shopping thing remained awkward. A lady came up to Shelley after the service and said hello, and after introducing herself and confirmed we had just moved up from Melbourne, asked whether this was the church we had decided to attend. Shelley gave a half-hearted answer (she didn't want to commit to things without us discussing it a little more) and suddenly the poor lady didn't know where to turn or what to say. I'm not sure if I would be either.

In fact, thanks to the Graeme comment, the time after the service was pretty full-on. Several people were keen to introduce themselves. One couple with 4 young kids invited us home to their place for lunch. We accepted (despite having several other things to do during the day), and found ourselves well and truly engaged with them. In all the bustle of things, we didn't get a chance to talk with the pastor again, but overall our impression was muhc better than the first time we attended.

Shelley and I have still not talked about the outcome of all this - perhaps we will tonight! But I feel like we might have found a spiritual home.

Settling

Ok, now I have been a Queenslander for all of around 9 days, I can tell you there is nothing as settling as going off to work. Seriously, I think you could relocate to the moon, but if you still had to commute to the office and sit in front of a computer screen, you'd feel like nothing had changed. I have just completed my first week at work and frankly I feel like an old hand. It's been busy, it's been confusing, it's been challenging - at times. But come the end of my first week, it feels pretty comfortable.

Commuting turns out to be one of the more interesting things. According to Google Earth, the straight line from home to the office is 29.52 km. Of course the road is not quite straight, so the total door to door distance is 35 km. Despite this being almost double my old commute in Melbourne - so far my travel to and from has been a fairly consistent 35 minutes - which is pretty similar to my former travel times (except when I worked back until 10:00pm). Of course things might get worse when school traffic starts coming back into it, but hopefully it won't affect me immensely because I am leaving home ahead of 6:30 in the morning. The more intreguing thing is the route to work. For most of the distance, I sit on the one road even though it changes names a couple of times. However, with various sections of road works, and some parts being upgraded to motorway standard while other parts are backroute quality, the speed limit changes 16 times in this section. Then, you turn left and enter the second shorter section of the trip which is entirely at the same speed limit, but contains a mass of twists, turns, dips, corners, roundabouts and traffic furniture. Honestly it is hard to assess which section is the most complicated. Anyway, one thing it does mean is that the trip is never boring!

The other big challenge for the week was the arrival of our furniture. This happened Tuesday morning, and of course we are still a long way from unpacked. As mentioned, our little house is struggling to fit all the furniture we had in the old place, and bear in mind we had quite a few items stored in the shed out the back there as well. So now - we have half a garage of stored stuff, although one of my weekend projects will be to try to make enough space in that half to fit the trailer - presently sitting on our front lawn. The family room at the back of the house was the most significant logistic issue. At first glance it was quite a large area, but it is the only shared space in the house and therefore needs to perform the functions of the kitchen, dining room, family room and lounge room. We kind of achieved it by sividing the room into nice little sections, but on all four we have had to compromise. At one stage I was sure we were going to have to compromise a lot more, but suddenly it all came together, and we have a nice little informal area around the TV, a more formal sitting area, a quite spacious dining area and the kitchen is actually going pretty well. The boys are still sharing a bedroom because we needed the fourth room for general storage, mostly of all the boxes of books and street directories and everything that we won't unpack until we get to our real house. All in all, it worked out ok.

So - we have a house, we have a vehicle, I have an office, and life has that kind of busy routine about it. Of course there are a few major issues still to address. We will head along to church on Sunday and begin the process of settling into a new spiritual community, and the other really big issue is that we still have to build a house. That will not be without its issues, I have to say.

But - we are settling.

Arrival

In a remarkable week, we have managed to find ourselves in a new house in a new city in a new state. It's approaching 10:00 in the evening. Every window in the house is open and a gentle breeze is keeping the place pleasantly cool. We have no house furniture, but we happen to have a pretty good collection of camping furniture which meant we were able to enjoy a very pleasant meal this evening sitting in our dining area and will retire happily to our bedrooms tonight. We're at our new home.

It's been a fascinating and at times complicated journey, but so far basically everything has gone really well. That started last Monday, with an almost trouble free collection of our furniture. The crew that arrived were fantastic, and they managed to complete the loading process while keeping everyone happy - including the ever-inquisitive Ben who has a habit of lining most visitors to our home up against the wall with a barrage of questions of ever increasing complexity unless we somehow intervene. The only reason I say "almost trouble free" is that they did drop one little surprise on me. They announced that the bed and other large items of furniture needed to be dismantled by me before they could load them into the truck. My problem was that I had already carefully packed all my tools into boxes, and then hidden those boxes among a collection of around 200 others that looked exactly the same on the outside... never mind. We found the tools (with the exception of some allon keys) and managed to get on with the dismantling, and didn't hold up the process at all.

In the end we didn't leave on the same day as our furniture, but stayed one more night in our former home. This was good, because my eldest son Josh is going to be living in the house for the next few months until settlement is finalised, and therefore we could help him get his furniture set up in the gaps just created by our stuff leaving. We could also do a little cleaning - which looked very successful to me but apparently was not good enough to satisfy Shelley. It was a day of goodbyes to those who mean the most to us - my son, his fiancee and my parents. No doubt this is the hardest aspect of the move. We always knew it would be, but when it came to it, that fact didn't make it any easier. Miss you guys!

So it was on the road the next morning and driving north. We are extremely familiar with the Newell Highway, having done trips to and from Queensland at at the rate of two per year for the last 20 years (or thereabouts). So, it is kind of interesting that we chose this trip to try a different route. Since the opening of the Albury Bypass, it seems there is now a hypothetically better route to Queensland, going up the Hume and Olympic Way to Wagga, then cutting through Temora to West Wyalong and joining the Newell at this point. I was a skeptic, to be honest, but now I have driven it I am quite impressed. For a start, the total distance is almost identical, but you get more freeway and overall more higher speed limits than the old route. Also, you bypass Albury completely and Wagga almost completely, whereas you inevitably had to drive through a fair slice of Shepparton and got slowed up a lot on the border crossing. So - its thumbs up for the new route, although I did mess up. I expected to buy petrol in Wagga, but the highway skims the edge of town and there was actually no petrol stations on the main road at all. I decided to drive on to the next town - Junee, but discovered this was actually 8 km off the road we were taking, and the little village of Old Junee that was on our road didn't have petrol either. It was too far to go on to Temora, so we bit the bullet and did the 8 km detour to get the fuel. Other than that - no problem. Further north we did our usual detour from Dubbo to Coonabarabran, and nearing the end of this we decided enough was enough and we would call a stop to the day at Coona. We arrived for lunch at Shelley's parent's place at Toowoomba by around 12:50 the next day, thanks to the Daylight Savings adjustment.

Our arrival in Queensland was actually really relaxed. We had a day and a half of nothing, then a day without the kids to drive down to Brisbane, pick up the keys to our new house and my new work car, and then another day and a half of nothing. Considering our mad program for the last four months - this seemed like utter luxury. Then, after lunch today, we packed up our remaining stuff into the boot of the new car, and headed down to Springfield Lakes to our new house. The kids have been absolutely wrapped with the house! This is impressive, because we were actually quite taken aback when we first saw it, because it is tiny. Not literally tiny, of course, but it has to be the smallest 4 bedroom house I have ever seen. I have spent a fair bit of time over the past few days adjusting and readjusting the furniture on a little diagram to work out what we can fit in where. This evening, the joke of what we were doing has been proven - we are sitting around our camp table, camp chairs, and are about to go to bed on camp stretchers, and we have heaps of space and two completely empty rooms! More than once, the thought crossed my mind that we ought to cancel the truck and live like this for the next 9 months! Oh ok, we would like a fridge, and we would like a more comfortable bed, and it might get a bit boring without a TV... but we ought to avoid the temptation to unpack too many things.

Ah well. We've arrived. It's all worked well. Nearly time for bed. Tomorrow, I go to the new work for the first time. I wonder how that will go! And then Tuesday, the hassle of the truck arriving and we have to put everything somewhere - even if we don't unpack it. But let's face it. We're well on the way.