After I finished work for the day, Tony received a call from the labour hire company asking if he could work at the place he worked last night.

All the food from the fridge in the camp kitchen was stolen again this week. I was feeling very pleased with myself because we had our food in Andy’s fridge, that feeling was short lived, I remembered that we had icecreams in the fridge because Andy’s freezer doesn’t keep them cold enough. Oh well, at least it was only icecreams this time, not everything like before.

I was sitting outside the tent today doing some work on the mosaic when a van pulled up and the lady asked me was I Gypsy. Monnica and Gary had come to Coral Coast hoping to book a site but they were all booked out. Our site is just past reception so everyone who enters the park drives past our tent.

I rang Tony, who was out at the video shop, and told him that we had visitors. He came back and we had a cuppa with them and then headed down to Gary and Anne’s to introduce them there. You have friends everywhere when you’re a member of Ulysses. It was really nice to meet Gary and Monnica and they don’t live too far from our home, they live at Bemboka near Bega, so it’s highly likely that we’ll catch up with them again.

In the evening we went out for a game of ten pin bowling with Gary and Anne, Jim and Allan weren’t able to make it, maybe another time. We had great fun. The young guys two lanes over had had a bit much to drink and the bowling balls were flying instead of rolling. We cheated a bit and had the bumpers down.

Frank and Irene have friends who live in Stanley, which is near Wangaratta, and said that when they’re down that way visiting them they’ll also visit us, that’ll be nice.

I had a riding lesson today, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last lesson because I was working full time, I was a little rusty. I’ve got another lesson tomorrow.

We camped at a caravan park at Wongaling Beach which is between South & North Mission Beach.

Tony and I went for a ride to check out the area. There was a really interesting beach that was all rock (not sure if you call it a beach if it doesn’t have sand). We climbed about the rocks and saw coral, living and dead, shells with creatures still living in them and a type of sea slug.

We were surprised by Mission Beach, many people who have stayed at our caravan park have said that they were going to Mission Beach so we were expecting it to be like Airlie Beach or Port Douglas, it’s not. It’s probably more like Cape Tribulation, an eco tourism type place to holiday. There are cassowaries in the region or you can go white water rafting, sky diving or on a boat out to Dunk Island.

We all went to the near by pub for our evening meal. Ron had checked it out earlier in the day and found out that there was an all you can eat buffet in the lounge for $18 a head or a smaller range of meals in the bar. We went to the bar and ordered meals, the choice was very good, the price was cheap, 2 meals for $17 and the food was plentiful and delicious.

After tea we went back to the caravan park and sat around and talked for a couple of hours before going to bed.

On the way home we stopped at McDonalds in Ingham for something to eat and drink.

After getting home and unpacking Anne came by to see if Tony and I wanted to go in the pool for a swim, I thought it was too cold for Queenslanders to swim, it is winter after all. We went for a swim, the pool was quite popular today, it was a little cool, but not too bad.

I made a pot of minestrone and we took it to Gary and Anne’s for tea, along with a mud cake for Gary’s birthday.

Work in the afternoon.

We talked with Wendy & Andy some more, they were hoping that they would get a job of relocating a camper from Cairns to Alice Springs.

I finished another mosaic today, a Ulysses butterfly for Anne. Anne has kindly loaned us her bike until we get our own back, she has an 1100 Virago.

In the afternoon we talked with a couple, Johnny and Cheryl, who are originally from Melbourne and are relocating to Mount Isa. They’ve lived on the Gold Coast recently but prior to that they were from the Greensborough area in Melbourne. It’s a small world; they worked for Australia Post with Sammi and Mak from Whittlesea Ulysses.

Gary caught up with us at the camp kitchen at tea time to ask which Ulysses group we rode with at home. He’d had a phone call from Keith Gilbert, the president of Whittlesea group, who is in Townsville and looking to meet up with other Ulysses members. We know Keith as we’ve spent a lot of time with Whittlesea.

This evening we had a phone call from Colin & Desley, who’d stayed beside us in Townsville.

I gave Anne her Ulysses butterfly mosaic which she loved. I wasn’t going to do another mosaic but I’ve got a lot of tiles left and another piece of cement sheet so I started one today.

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