Urangan King Tides

We were looking for a safe harbour for Whimsey while we headed south to Sydney for Christmas and New Year. This is our view taken at the lowest and highest tides of the year.

Bundeburg in November

Catching up on news. We headed to Bundeburg in November to meet up with some of the Bayswater crowd. Blue Heron (in the photo), Enigma and Whisper were all there - it was lovely to catch up with old friends. We also got to see roos in the wild for the first time.

Mission Beach Cassowary

We left Whimsey in Bowen and travelled on the bus to Mission Beach to visit Mike and Tara - formerly on Catalpa - in their own patch of rainforest Eden. It was a packed weekend with Cassowary families wandering up the drive, leeches in the garden and snakes in the wall!! Great to catch up with Mike, Tara and Tia all doing very well and thriving on land.

Airlie Beach

We've been here in Airlie for about 6 weeks on and off - out to the Whitsundays and then back to provision and check out the rum bar. Someone has to do it!!

Had a lovely week when Erin's family came up to visit - and brought Erin's neice who was visiting Auz from England. A week in Airlie goes very quickly.

Promise to update more often and to load some photos soon.

Sunset on Sean's 40s

Here we are in Surfers Paradise enjoying a Guiness on Seans 50th birthday.

The shirt was a gift from Erin's mum - made by her!

Out of Sydney

We are finally on the move from Sydney. It has been too much fun, with a niece and nephew to catch up with, and the rest of the family of course :) Stella is a bundle of laughs, very active and talkative too all of a sudden. She and Auntie Eee have made lots of great memories together. Vincent is ready to go, crawling in the last week with a big grin on his face no doubt. Bith and Neill are doing a fab job on the parenting front.

While we were here we also saw Erin's cousins Sue and Tim. Sue, Pete and PJ came out on the boat, young Pete pronounced it all 'cool'. We caught up with Tim and Chris at Christmas but Tim headed home to be with Uncle Ron (now well on the road to recovery from heart surgery) so we didn't manage a boat trip.

We've also caught up with lots of friends, old and new while we were here. The Kings Cross crowd has half moved over so we've spent some proper time with Sharon, Mickey, Les and Rick. We have also met the new generation - Molly and Paddy who are peas from the pod. We had a lovely weekend with Sue and Grant in the Hunter Valley getting some expert guidance to wine - hope to see you guys before we leave Auz.

Most of all it has been great to be close enough to Erin's mum and dad to pop round for tea or to have them over. Hard to leave.

But - we can't call ourselves cruisers if all we do is motor from Glebe to Middle Harbour so tomorrow we are heading out of Sydney and up to Broken Bay. We have been waiting for a window to NZ but have decided to start to head north (it's getting chilly here). If a window opens we will head back to Opua and probably up to Fiji again from there. If not we will probably head to Queensland and spend the winter in the Whitsundays.

Photos to follow.