A very belated Christmas holiday 2021!

Letter No. 262

Dear all,

December 2021.  Matt had surgery on 22 Dec to remove the wires from his right hand and our flight to Cairns was early the next morning. This tight schedule had been worrying Katie, but fortunately, everything turned out fine – Matt’s surgery was on time, so was the flight and then we drove an hour north to Port Douglas. It was great to discover that our little beach “shack” Airbnb was actually a beautiful modern beach house with fantastic facilities. It was on Four Mile Beach and just a five-minute drive from Port Douglas. We grabbed food and drinks and celebrated the start of our Christmas holiday with cocktails and a BBQ. The length of the beach is quite spectacular. Sadly, you can’t swim outside the netted areas due to the crocs and the stingers.

On Christmas Eve we drove to Mossman Gorge. There is a beautiful rainforest walk around and along the gorge which finishes at a swimming hole. It was a hot and humid day so after the walk we were ready for a swim and the water was very cool, crisp, clear and refreshing. Poor Matt had to keep his right hand high out of the water – it couldn’t get wet until his stitches were removed – but he managed a bit of careful one-handed swimming. Later that day, we went on a sunset sailing trip on the Shaolin, a traditional Chinese junk with red sails. The junk was very similar to the one we hired in Hong Kong the day after we were married for a day trip with all our overseas wedding guests. It was a beautiful calm evening, so there was more bobbing around than sailing, plus lots of sunset drinks and then dinner at the Yacht Club.

The next day was the very relaxed Christmas Day – a long leisurely brunch, presents and day on the beach, then on to the nearby Pullman Port Douglas for cocktails by the pool and a spectacular seafood smorgasbord dinner. After dinner, the quickest way home was to walk about 1km along the beach in the dark. About halfway, Jess decided this was a bad idea and that we were all going to get taken by crocs. Luckily, we made it back uneaten.

The next couple of days involved a stroll around the Port Douglas markets, a swim in the beach netted area, dinner at Hemingway’s Brewery on the dock and then a full day trip to the Daintree Rainforest at Cape Tribulation. We started with a croc-hunting boat trip along the Daintree River. We spotted about ten crocs from babies to about 3 metres long. There were no really huge ones like we’d seen a few years earlier in the Mary River in the Northern Territory and they don’t feed the crocs to make them jump out of the water. It seemed better to see the crocs in a more natural environment though.

We drove on to the Daintree Discovery Centre. It has a series of walks in the rainforest, suspended aerial tree walks, lookout towers high in the treetops and a centre with exhibits of the freshwater fish found in the rainforest streams. It was very good. There were reports of seeing cassowaries around the centre but we didn’t see one while we were there. Afterwards, we drove about 100m down the road and there was a huge, brightly-coloured cassowary, right next to the side of the road. We were very lucky. It is quite rare to see them in the wild. We stopped and watched it for about five minutes, wondering whether it might cross the road.

We drove on up to Cape Tribulation and had lunch at the Turtle Rock Café. While we were eating there was a tremendous downpour of rain. It didn’t last long, but I had to take off my shoes and wade through knee deep water to get back to the car! This was the end of the sealed road going north so we turned back. On the way back to Port Douglas we stopped at Noah Beach to walk to another lookout. When we were there, we were startled to see people swimming in the sea! Afterwards, back at the beach, we saw a tour guide tearing shreds off the German tourists who had somehow walked right past the huge sign saying “Danger Crocodiles – No Swimming” with a big picture of a ferocious crocodile with large teeth. On the way home, we stopped for ice cream and then had another lovely BBQ dinner at our beautiful beach shack. We were sad to leave as it had been the great relaxing Christmas holiday home.  

Our second destination was the Atherton Tablelands. This area is known for spectacular rainforest walks, waterfalls, caves and strangler figs. Sadly, we didn’t get to see many of them, as it started to rain just as we headed up to the tablelands and then rained almost non-stop while we were there. We did manage a quick rainforest hike at Barron Falls enroute, saw the historic Skyrail steam train, visited Kuranda Village (quaint little market town filled with craft shops and restaurants) and fluttered around the Butterfly Farm. The cool, wet evenings were spent at the Atherton pub or Indian restaurant listening to the rain tumble down. Other wet weather activities included a fabulous morning tea at the Skybury Coffee Plantation and a stop at the Mt Uncle Distillery to sample some of their unusual spirits like Christmas pudding gin. One afternoon Jessie and I went to the Crystal Caves. It was a spectacular display of rocks, crystals, minerals and fossils from all over the world that a local guy had collected over decades. It is worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Atherton on a rainy afternoon!

Heading onwards, a two-hour drive took us to our third destination Mission Beach, south of Cairns. Just as we arrived the sun came out again. We stayed in a lovely resort with a pool, great Italian restaurant and live music afternoons on the beach. We had a couple of slow days on the beach and at the pool, enjoying the FNQ lifestyle. On New Year’s Eve we hired a speedboat and boated around Dunk Island before pulling up for a morning on the beach. It was close to the Dunk Island Resort, which had been mostly destroyed in Cyclone Yasi in 2011 and is only now having minor restoration work. It was pretty interesting looking at the ruins. It was a spectacular day, and we swam and snorkelled off the beach. In the evening, we had a lovely Italian dinner in the resort before heading into Mission Beach village. We found a hip hopping bar (actually, the only hip bar in town) with a live band. Actually, all the restaurants and bars in Mission Beach seemed to have an aged singer or guitarist in the corner. There was a great party atmosphere and I think the entire town was there. We all danced until midnight.

On our last full day, we had a fabulous boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. The weather was glorious. It took about 1.5 hours for our boat to get to a small sand cay where we moored and went snorkelling. Matthew still couldn’t get his right hand wet, so we had to wrap it in a double layer of plastic bags, tape it up tightly and then he snorkelled using a child’s floatie we had bought specially to keep it out of the water. After a great buffet lunch, we moved to another site and I went diving. There were about 10 people diving and 20 snorkelling. All the other divers were beginners, so I had a different instructor and had a really great dive. I hadn’t been since Fiji four years ago, but it is just like riding a bike.

Next morning, we drove back to Cairns and dropped Matt off to meet up with his group of friends; he was spending another week in Port Douglas. He got his stitches out the next day and was then able to go swimming with both hands and even managed to go diving. His recovery has been amazing and he just needs a bit of ongoing physio now. Our flight to Brisbane wasn’t until the afternoon so Katie, Jess and I went to the Cairns Aquarium for a few hours. It was one of the best aquariums I have been to and a nice way to round off our trip to Far North Queensland.

January 2022.  Back home, we discovered that Covid had well and truly arrived in Brisbane. It seemed that everyone under 25 had it. Jessie went straight over to her boyfriend’s house and then called the next day to say that he wasn’t feeling very well. She and James didn’t think headaches, chills and feeling unwell were a sign of Covid, but we insisted that they get tested and surprise, surprise, he had Covid, and that meant that Jessie had it too. Katie initially told Jessie not to come home, but when she did we set up the house with two zones with Jessie downstairs and us upstairs and a huge barrier between them. We fed Jess on disposable plates which she put straight in the bin and even Molly was barred from going downstairs to see her. Jessie had a sniffle and a cough, but it wasn’t too bad. She isolated for seven days and was well and truly sick of her own company at the end of it!

Matthew started his new full-time job with KWM (King & Wood Mallesons) on 12^th January. It is the company where he has been working as a paralegal for the last few years. They had offered him the opportunity to circumvent the graduate program altogether and move straight into a Junior Solicitor role.  He started working on the Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide, which he said was very confronting at times.

We had a fairly quiet January otherwise. It is not PC to do anything too celebratory on Australia Day now so we had our friends the Biddles and Rasmussens over for a BBQ in lieu on 22^nd January instead. Katie and I just went out for a quiet lunch by ourselves on the Australia Day public holiday. We went to a lovely restaurant with river views in the city, but it bucketed down rain all day – a taste of the things to come!

Katie and Jess went to Sydney on 28^th January to see Katie’s Uni friend Olivia. It was a flying visit but they had a great time visiting Manly, The Rocks markets, Museum of Contemporary Art, Darling Harbour and doing lots of shopping. The highlight was seeing “Six – The Musical”, about the six wives of Henry VIII, at the Opera House. They all thought it was brilliant.

February.  On 9^th February we went to see the movie Death on the Nile. It was combined with a wine tasting at the Barracks Movie theatre. We went with a group of friends and Matthew came as well. He loves Agatha Christie movies.  The following weekend we went to Gin School. Katie had given me a voucher for Christmas. It was a very swish bar which had a back room set up like an art deco conservatory with 24 mini stills set up. We had a two-hour session, with four different gin cocktails, a cheese platter and instructions on how to make our own 500ml bottle of gin. You could pick your own “botanicals” to flavour your gin and colour it as well. Katie made a Pink Jasmine Gin flavoured with pear and mandarin, and I made Blue Chilli Dragon Gin. It was a really fun evening and we will go again.

It was a wet February but on 25^th a Rain Bomb settled over Brisbane and didn’t move for three days. It was the most intense rain I have ever seen. Torrential rain, literally non-stop for three solid days. We had 950mm of rain in those three days and it fell over a very large area of South East Queensland, mainly Brisbane and the outskirts, with all the rain ending up in dams and river catchments. It was insane! On Friday, the media said Brisbane wouldn’t flood; on Saturday morning they said there could be minor flooding; by Saturday night they were predicting major flooding but nothing like the 2011 floods. In the end, it went close. The flood height was 4.2m in Brisbane City (it had been 4.6m in 2011). Thousands of houses went under again, Citycats were sunk, and lots of pontoons, jetskis, luxury yachts and houseboats went sailing down the river and smashed into bridges. Areas of the city centre and the South bank cultural precinct flooded and lost power. The damage to the city ran into the billions again.

Meanwhile Jessie had been at university at an indoor conference all day Saturday and then went straight into the city after her event. Everything had happened so quickly that she hadn’t heard about the chance of flooding. We had been texting her to make sure she had parked her car on high ground, but she didn’t see the messages, and then went straight into the city after her event. On Sunday morning she went out to pick up her car from Uni in St Lucia, still oblivious. She was surprised to discover that public transport wasn’t running properly and there were no buses. She managed to get an Uber part of the way, but it stopped when there was floodwater over the road, about two kilometres from her car. She tried to walk there through the teeming rain, but eventually called us when she realised how bad things were.

I went to pick her up but it was a challenge to get there as so many roads were cut. I used the high roads and drove around a roadblock and managed to get to her and then on to Uni. We got within 100m of her car and had to wade through thigh-deep water. Astonishingly, the car park was still dry, but her car was the only one in it. We weren’t sure if she could get off the campus or not, but at least she could move the car to higher ground. I waded back through the floodwater to my car, while Jess was directed by a security guard to drive through the pedestrian areas of the campus to get to a high road, as all the other roads were cut. In the meantime, I copped a sound telling off by a different security guard for driving through the roadblock. He said I should have let the car flood because it was too dangerous. I managed to meet up with Jess and she followed me home, on a circuitous route around all the flooded streets. She said it was all very scary and she will look at our messages properly in future.

On Sunday morning I also helped a friend who lives right on the river, to clear all the furniture from his house’s ground floor up to his first-floor level or onto higher ground. Fortunately, in the end his house didn’t flood. It was sandbagged by some other friends on the Monday and the river came within 50mm of getting in the house. It ruined his grass tennis court, took his jetty and flooded his beautiful garden which he had spent two years building in Covid lockdowns, but they got off relatively lightly compared to so many others. Graceville, and other nearby suburbs like Rocklea, Oxley, Tennyson and Yeronga were all badly flooded. The next weekend we had a working party to put all the furniture back in place.

I went into work on the Monday. The traffic was light despite a convoluted route around flood roads; I think most people had decided to stay home. On Tuesday the traffic was insane! People were starting to get out and about, but so many main roads were flooded that it took 1.5 hours each way to the office, which I can do in 20 minutes on a good run. I worked from home for the rest of the week. One morning I went for a cycle. The flood damage was pretty horrific. There was a thick layer of smelly mud everywhere, piles of flotsam and rotting debris, blocked paths and roads. It was pretty hairy riding!

Cheers, from Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly