Dunk Island View Cafe...

Megan is bored of caravans and is about to open up her first ever chippy. Apparently this little venture will make us buckets of money because people love chips. Simple right? We're fast learning that the hospitality industry isn't rocket science, but it does equal sore feet a lot of the time!

Playing with ourselves

We took a day off last weekend but we just ended up doing a reccy on our competitors, bakeries, and Murdering Point Winery (more on that later). In between all that we did get a chance to remind ourselves that we can do fun stuff without the business falling apart. Here are a few snaps from Etty Bay and Innisfail, where we had the best fish and chips ever (outside Scotland) down by the river.

Caravan ON!

When we got up this morning it was 15 degrees centigrade, which compared to yesterday felt like the freezing point for nitrogen. Back home people would've said how warm it was, and Geordies and Glaswegians would've started running around with no tops on.

Then the sun came out and people started arriving from all over the place. Grey nomads from Sydney, an Irish couple cruising around in their daughter's campervan hoping one of the local skydivers would plummet spectacularly to their death, a dozen British twenty somethings who had a little trouble paying, a girl from London who works for Rough Guides, an English couple who were completely lost trying to find their hotel and decided to stay with us instead...

This last couple decided to do some laundry, which included a pair of black bikini bottoms with cute metal tassels on the side. Anyway, I had to take them out of the dryer because they were making a lot of noise and upsetting some grey nomads. She will be thrilled when she finds out I had to sift through her underwear collection.

Here is a photo of the park starting to look a bit fuller.

Parallel blogging

When we set up the caravan park website we created another blog on there to keep campers abreast of all the exciting things happening in the Mission Beach area. You can check it out by clicking here.

Still no tan

After almost three weeks in the tropics neither of us has a tan yet. Probably because we're so busy in the office at the moment learning how to run everything before the snow birds arrive. This photo of me taken at the Tully Golden Gumboot Festival (a festival to celebrate the monumental amounts of rainfall the town of Tully receives each year*) shows how white I still am. To achieve Megan's skin colour increase the brightness of your monitor by around 50%.

* Tully receives over five metres of rainfall each year which is about the same as the wettest part of Scotland. One year they recorded 7.9m so they built a huge golden gumboot (welly boot) of that height in the road leading into town to show off to all their rival towns how awesomely wet their town is.

Video japery

I'm already taking the views here for granted. I'm way more into things like our brochure and arguing with Google at 1am to change their fragging Google Maps to what I want.

This spider was massive and scary. But not really. The thing about spiders is they're only really scary when they sneak up on you and jump on your shoulder for a wee chat in your ear. If you see one at the other side of the room then they're fine.

Chasing the cane toad. Like chasing the dragon for under 5s.

The brochure FINALLY goes live

I've been working on this for days now. We'll be finalising the artwork and sending it to the printers along with a cheque for $500 any day now. Then it's off to Cairns and Townsville to bombard the camper vanners with our amazing semi-direct marketing strategy. Click on the link below to see it... After all 10MB of it has downloaded...

Dunk Island View Caravan Park - 2013 Brochure

And here are some local sights we have enjoyed lately...

Happy camper

Every dog is this happy when they visit the caravan park.

Owner: "Sorry boy... We're not going to Disneyland this year."

Dog: "Whimper."

Owner: "We're going to Dunk Island View Caravan Park instead!!"

Dog: "WOOF!!" <wags tail>

Park life

Temporary art exhibition by the swimming pool. These are going to be markers for the bottom end of the caravan park because currently there are no concrete slabs showing people where to put their campers and caravans. Note to non-caravanners: you do not park on the concrete slabs, you park next to them.

This is the cement mixer pouring in a load of concrete for the floor of the new laundry.

And here is Matty smoothing the stuff out. Later he would make fun of my white markers, try to sell me a herbal energy drink for $3.50 and show me how to crack open a coconut with a trowel.

A day in the life of a...

So we've almost survived our first week! Thought you guys might be interested in what a standard day for us is like...

• 7.00am - out of bed & Dick Smith Bush Foods (muesli) for breakfast
• 7.30am - open reception, turn on aircon, do the accounts for the day before, prepare registration forms for the guests arriving that day.
• 8.30am - walk around/inspect park (check only paid guests are staying, nothing broken overnight, no messes or rubbish lying around).Stop by local tourist info office to introduce self, stop by local tiler (Gerry & The Tile Makers) to enquire after non-slip coating for slippery laundry tiles.
• Call washing machine man about washing machine #3 swallowing guests money.
• Let Michelle the cleaner know which cabins to clean that day.
• Bruce spends an hour trying to work out how to use the new steam cleaner (still can't work it out even after finding the instructions).
• Ice cream man drops by to check if fridge needs restocking.
• Go to Innisfail (town one hour away) to pick up new saucepan sets x8 for the cabins (from Kmart) and doggy welcome treats for guest's pooches (from Sam's Warehouse... which should really be renamed Sam's Small And Poorly Stocked Cottage).
• Greet guests as they arrive. We've had some interesting guests so far, including one old bloke who tried to get a pensioner discount (despite him still earning $120k in the mines). He bought some bait and is heading off fishing at high tide tonight (11pm). Said he missed the ocean as he lives 800km inland.
• Lunch - ham and coleslaw sandwich, red paw paw with lime juice.
  

After lunch...

• Design publicity fliers, create safety exit signs for the communal areas.
• Design customer feedback form.
• Review new off-the-shelf online booking systems, then design one ourself and get it up online.
• Get the cover of the ute fixed.
• Order clean laundry for the cabins.
• Stove enamel spray to touch up the cabin stoves.
• Interview potential restaurant operator.
• Call the council about food licences.
• Bruce removes dead rat from pool shed before it starts to smell in the heat.
• 6.00pm - head to local Woolworths to pick up dinner groceries (avoid hitting wallabies in ute on the way, they're most active at dusk).
• 7.30pm - close reception area.

London calling

I mentioned that one of things I will miss most about London is Parliament Hill lido. Well, my friend Olivier was kind enough to head there recently and send me this picture of him and his friend Loic. Love the look guys. The comedy "I'm pretending to be a strong man by showing off my muscles" look is awesome, but seriously under-utilised. I'm envious, but not of the water temperature. Although the water here will kill you, at least it's warm, so you can die cosy.

If it's not raining, it's amazing

I think we may have mentioned the constant rain we've been getting up here. Not just ordinary rain though. Monster rain. Rain with raindrops the size of golf balls. Rain that requires you to carry an umbrella made of Kevlar. Rain that will bruise you. Rain that will strike a baby wallaby dead on impact. I took this photo of one end of the caravan park after a five minute shower of killer rain.

But it doesn't always rain. I know, I've checked records on the internet. And later this afternoon things cleared up and we managed to take a couple snaps of the view towards Dunk Island from across the street. Literally, across the street. Like, if you walk across the street then when your feet touch the kerb on the other side, this is the view.

Less than 50 metres away there's a kiddy playpark with the "Great Cassowary Game" developed by the local school children. The same ones that photograph pythons swallowing wallabies whole.

This is our favourite square to land on...

Pregnant women NEED chocolate. Fact.

On the day we arrived in Cairns we had to make a trip to the doctor's office so Megan could register with the local obstetrician. We're currently 16 weeks and counting. Anyway, her eyes lit up like the sun when she saw this poster in the waiting room.

And here is the girl herself an hour later deciding it would be a good idea for us to get sun hats after discovering a statistic that the world's highest incidence of skin cancer is in Queensland, Australia.

And here's another gratuitous headgear shot of us from the planetarium in Chicago last year. Classic.

Learning new skills

After a gruesome 48 hours I have finally finished setting up the new website for the caravan park. I did it online using weebly.com, which gives it quite a neat finish, but the artwork is still pretty good for a former desk jockey. Anyway, here is the link: http://www.dunkislandviewcaravanpark.com

Virtual tour of the caravan park

Steven Spielberg will be quaking in his boots when he sees this amateur footage.

NEWSFLASH: Four metre python eats wallaby

This is what passes for front page news here in Mission Beach. A four metre long Amethystine Python (which can get up to eight metres in length) caught, killed and swallowed a wallaby in about 50 minutes flat. It all happened in the school playground which is right next to our caravan park and the teachers let the kids out so they could take pictures with their iPhones. Apparently the local pythons are known for eating the odd cat and chicken as well.

Meanwhile... I was updating the park map and working on other marketing materials. And we have a about seven French campers staying with us at the moment so it seems all those French lessons courtesy of Alexia and Vanessa were not such a waste of time after all. "Ou est le barbecue?" "C'est ici, à côté de la piscine et le squelette de wallaby."

The forecast is for rain

It has not stopped raining since we arrived. And things don't look like they're going to get much better...

Melbourne ultimatum

Our last day in Melbourne and we headed up to William Rickett's sanctuary near Ferntree Gully. Lunch consisted of heavenly scones at Brother Jon's served by the man himself, who turned out to be a decrepit 100-year old blind man from Bathgate in Scotland. Next we visited Sky High at Mount Dandenong and had our photograph taken in front of the Wishing Tree, in which I have strategically placed myself so the magical doughnut feature of the tree is obscured.

Then we said our last goodbyes to the cold weather here in Melbourne before our flight up to Cairns at 6am tomorrow morning. I'm actually writing this at 3.45am as we're about to head to the airport. There's potentially a taxi strike with a blockade of the airport entrance but it should be fine... Anyway, we'll leave our posts on Melbourne with a view of the bay from Sandringham beach.

Melbourne - Day 3

We spent day 3 exploring Melbourne and took these pictures of the key sights. Like the trams, Flinders Street train station and the arcades. Since I was last here about nine years ago a lot of the arcades and alleyways have been transformed into lovely cafe hubs doing all day breakfasts, homemade coffee and smoothies. Baked eggs with chorizo and corn fritters are the best.

Where can you find a beer made by Trappist monks for $45? Beer Deluxe on Federation Square that's where! They actually have a Belgian one which they "sell" for $60 but I was too busy taking Bruce home before an ambulance was needed to photograph that one. This morning he smells like a brewery and claims he was doing important market research...

And here's the view from my parent's home on the coast in Sandringham, Melbourne. I especially like that I've captured how amazing the view is by excluding the palm trees and including the front garden wall in the photo. Ansel Adams eat your heart out.

Melbourne - Day 2

Around 10am this morning, after another bowl of Bush Foods, we cycled down to Brighton Sea Baths so Bruce could go for a swim. Megan's parents (Anne and John, who will receive a proper introduction in due course) lent us their bikes. The water was only 14°C but the weather was sunny and they have barriers to prevent the sharks from getting in and eating people. It looks like this except today the only person in the water was Bruce in a wetsuit (wearing boxers underneath because he forgot his swimmers).

This afternoon Megan's brother Guy and his wife Liz and their two children Tom and Olive, as well as her grandparents Wendy and Jim, all came round for pizza, champagne and birthday cake. So tomorrow morning we're going back to the sea baths for more fun and to make sure we're lean and mean when we reach Mission Beach on Monday. Swimmers in backpack: check.

Melbourne - Day 1

Here is a list of all the exciting things we did on our first day in Melbourne:

• Ate breakfast consisting of of Dick Smith's Bush Foods Breakfast (Bruce and Megan). http://www.dicksmithfoods.com.au/product-range/bush-foods-breakfast
• Applied for a Tax File Number online (Bruce).
• Sent some info to the brainiacs at UPS so they can tell Australian customs to release our belongings.
• Registered for Medicare (Bruce). The first non-family person we had to interact with after arriving in Australia was the lady in the Medicare office and she actually had a thick Glaswegian accent. "You travel 12,000 miles and you still can't get away from them." I bet that's what she was thinking.
• Bought a pair of black canvas Dunlop Volleys from Big W for a bargain $28 (Bruce). http://www.volley.com.au/
• Opened bank accounts at the Bendigo branch in Sandringham (Bruce and Megan).
• Bought sim cards from the Telstra shop for our mobile phones (Bruce and Megan).
• Ate dinner and promptly fell asleep for 12 hours (Bruce).
• Ate dinner and promptly fell asleep for 3 hours, woke up with a numb arm, googled the symptoms and self-diagnosed herself with MS, worried about this for an hour until her arm felt better, then fell asleep for 8 hours (Megan).

Landing

We arrived in Melbourne on the 1st of May and we took this picture through the window as our plane came in to land. I could say something about the symbolism of all this (life, new dawns, etc...) but that would be WAY too corny. And, it would set a scary precedent for the blog - i.e. it would scare off all our readers. All five of them.