Location: rainforest north west of Mosman, in tropical far north Queensland.
Weather conditions: warm and dry. A bit of tropical rain at night, but what could be nicer.
Lazy act of self indulgence: being woken up at 6.45 every morning by shouty son, putting him in front of ABC Kids on TV and going back to bed.
Assignment: lots of swimming, eating and sleeping. And standing on rocks. And running up and down the grass rather pointlessly.
Participants: two small wet children, one happy husband, one very happy me.
Local natives: Beware of screeching tropical birds in the night. And green tree frogs hopping from pond to deck. And feral pigs, although the gunshots we heard early most mornings I suspect may have put paid to those piggies. And watch out for koalas and bright parrots. Oh, and the large black spiders which crawled into our luggage whilst we were there. Luckily most of the local crocodiles seem to be quickly caught and sent to the nearby croc farm. I have had this question a lot though 'Can crocodiles eat people? Why? Will they eat me? Why not?'.
(little bird at our house)
(A koala doing what koalas do best: snoozing)
(this is the only breeding pair of jabirus in the world. They spent 2 years courting and another 2 looking for the right place to nest. Just like human beings.)
Sustenance: I only have one rule about holidays, and that is, I do not want to cook breakfast lunch and dinner. Much as I love cooking, that is just too much standing around in the kitchen for me. For this holiday, we had lunch every day in Port Douglas (mostly here and here).
Crazy self discipline idea: do you go on holidays full of good intentions like exercising in inappropriate locations, or not drinking alcohol, or going fat free? I do. And that usually lasts about 3 days. As I have spent most of the last 6 months feeling hungover from the lovely chemo side effects, drinking has not been high on the agenda. How nice it was on this holiday to enjoy wine. Oh, and should I mention we had dessert every single day for lunch? With no guilt, no regrets and no second thoughts. Otherwise what is the point?
(pistachio kulfi with silver leaf and watermelon salad)
(dragonfruit ice cream (how amazing is the colour) and creme caramel. Very 1970's!)
(at our fourth meal at this restaurant they supplied the children's honeycomb ice cream in an ice and rose petal bowl instead of a 'normal' bowl. )
Outcome: for some reason it seems as if the children always take some great step on holidays. Is that just because I am paying more attention, or because they relax into it? The guilty mother in me would say this is because I am around the whole time, not working and not distracted with life. But I think it is more that they have time to work on things with lots of pushy parental encouragement. This time round, our son became independent in the water (with a foam noodle of course) and our daughter finally got the hang of diving (as opposed to belly flopping).
Now it's back to the real world.
