To Bundy

Monday Sept 3

After a short night - me - I was reading the football results on my IPad at 3 a.m., Arsenal lost to Spurs - excellent (Mike brings out the worst in us), we made a leisurely start to our journey. After the boys left for school, ( they came to give us a goodbye kiss and hug), I showered first, had breakfast and we packed the car. We negotiated the short cut successfully before programming Martina to take us to Dahl’s Road Bundaberg.

An uneventful couple of hours punctuated by a stop to buy a Beefy’s pie for lunch and then to eat it in a side road off the Bruce Highway. The latter starts off as a 6 lane motorway but becomes a two way single track with ther odd passing areas. Mainly gum tree lined road with long gaps between small towns. Our lunch stop was quiet and secluded, not many birds but one goody, a Pacific Baza.

To our astonishment, Martina took us past the roads signposted for Bundaberg and on to Gin Gin, a detour of about a 100K. ( I believe that Pam ignored an instruction) What could we do? She even directed us on to the Gin Gin Bundaberg road which had over 1k of gravel! Madness. Then I couldn’t contact Tina until we were nearly into Bundy, three texts were spurned and the home phone wouldn’t work. You can only rely on a phone signal near large habitations, in a country this size that’s understandable.

I eventually manage to contact her before she started to worry and - to her final credit - Martina took us straight to the door. Dahl’s road is as near to Bundaberg as Ridlington is to Wroxham. Tina’s garden looked lovely, lots of flower including a huge bed of scarlet Amaryllis - plate sized flowers.

After settling and unpacking, we had a tour of the ‘garden’, more like a small park with so many fruit trees - citrus and mango - and indigenous flowering trees too. Tina is very knowledgeable so we were able to pick her brains about mulching etc.

Over a cup of coffee we discussed Tina’s Perth trip to se her daughter and four grandchildren - she came back a week ago. They had to move west for dad’s job a couple of yeas ago and have bnow bought a house there, to Nonna’s disappointment really, although she’s philosophical about it. Tina has a nuisance cough, a relic of her visit there.

A phone call was made to Trevor Quested president of the local bird club, in response to my query as to whether Bush Hens were around. The end result is that he and his wife Annie offered to meet us for birding on Wednesday, dependent on his health check to-morrow - he has an overload of iron in his bloodstream.

Nearly time for dinner, we’re sat at the dining table and Tina is cooking the other side of the divider. Smells good.....

It tasted good too. Chicken and pineapple with noodles. I've got the recipe.