Letter: Making Bread

Letter 19 / 11 / 84

We are all getting over a virus, even Jo, and the freezer, generator, and washing machine are doing their various jobs saving us so much time and energy while we are so tired. I even put together a few of my 'rest' moments to do some sewing. If I try to sleep I usually get disturbed as soon as I drop off, which makes me feel lousy for hours, so I try to do something relaxing for an hour or so after lunch rather than let myself sleep. I put together some material scraps in rather hurried, rough-and-ready form and came up with a nice bright patchwork bedspread for our bed. I do enjoy using that treadle machine, I find it most relaxing.

The kibble wheat is lovely, but most of it just seems to melt away in the bread, only occasionally do we get a crunchy bit. Even though we now have a freezer I can't seem to keep my bread fresh - its only really nice for the first few hours. In the freezer (which is the absorption type and therefore very slow to actually freeze anything) it just goes dry very quickly. Is there something one can put into bread to stop it going stale so quickly? Would wheat germ keep it moist? - not that we have any.

Our garden plot

'Uncle' Kakam in the hilltop garden

The doldrums are trying to come, we keep getting really calm patches, the turtle season is well under way, and we can often see whales splashing about and spouting water out in front of our place out in the deeper water. We are longing for rain to grow a bit of greenery, fill our tank with non-scummy water, and try out Peter's new rock-wall on the drain!

We've taken possession of our piece of family garden land up on the hill. Its about half an hour's walk away, only the first bit is very steep. Its a fairly barren looking patch, with just scrubby lantana-type bushes - hard to tell what they are as its all been recently burnt. And there is one tree which will have some leaves later. The soil is red, but our section which has not been previously cleaned islander-style is covered with lovely brown humus - dry now, but will be beautiful when its wet. Peter got up there early the other morning and poked a few seeds in ... and now we wait for the rain and hope we don't get a big rain followed by a big dry so that the seeds don't germinate then just die. We live in hope.

Kids

We've got James going to kindy again after some weeks away sick. He even takes himself there on his bike. Its still a constant struggle to keep him on an even keel, he's so emotional and over-sensitive. Next year's school principal (as far as we know) has a six year old boy and a baby about six months old. That information may not be correct, but it would be nice for James to have a real boy to play with!

Alison, today, had half a dozen successes in her potty. I've been sitting her on there every hour - it seems to be taking a lot of my time, but I'm trying to think of it as an investment. Her chatter goes on and on, she's game to try repeating anything she hears.

She misses James when he's at kindy, but when he is away and Jo is asleep she rather enjoys being the only one for a while. Her hair is looking fairly respectable at last and I've been clipping it back or tying a little bunch rather than cutting a fringe - makes her look very cute! Her hair is quite blond, but not white like James.

Jo's hair is still brown (such that there is) and looks like staying that way. James's eyes have remained the same dark grey, but Alison's are a much lighter grey/blue. Jo's eyes are very dark, grey but tending towards brown. Her skin is slightly more sallow than the other two too. James and Alison both look very fair, but neither of them seems to burn easily.

Birthdays

We are celebrating James's birthday sometime next week, just so his little friends will still be here. Nerissa had her birthday this week and Danielle's birthday is a few weeks away so I think they are bringing hers forward after James's so she can also have all her little friends (James and Alison) for a little party.

Anthropologists

A big mob (about 6) of white chaps turned up on a plane today. Heard on the bamboo line that they are from England and have come to up-date the Haddon report - done by the Cambridge expedition around the turn of the century, a six volume work and about the only real study ever done about these parts. Don't know how long they plan to stay - or where they'll stay - but I guess we'll catch up with them in due course. Just now another plane arrived with two more white people (a man and a woman), don't know who they are.

Work

We still haven't managed to get the whole translation team together at one time. We had two meetings and only two out of four came ... reckon they'll all make it on Sunday maybe. Peter wants them to work in pairs for the initial part of a translation. We think we'll do the Parable of the Seed in story book form, and also dramatised for video. To get the women thinking in terms of literacy and realising that books do have something for them too, I'm working on a cookery / health book - haven't got very far yet, the women are so scared, or shy, or just busy.

Chooks and Ducks

Our two chickens are still laying, one each most days, but the two big ducks have gone broody - they don't do anything, hardly even eat, but sit on their nests and hiss at anyone who comes near ... and if we are not quick enough to collect the chickens' eggs they roll them out of the drum where the chickens lay and into their duck's nest and sit on them too.

The ten little ducks are doing well. One has a black spot on her forehead, one has two spots, and one has three. There seems to be only one drake, which we may keep this time. The three black ones are supposed to be magpie muscovies, but we are suspicious that they may not be muscovies at all - maybe that's why the big duck kept rejecting them. The black feathers they have grown now have a greeny sheen.

Uncle Kakam over the road has one black duck - strange looking bird, though - and he keeps it outside the run presumably because the others pick on it all the time.

Garden

We went up to the garden early this morning, managed to leave about 6:30am - not bad with that many kids to get ready! - and we planted a few more rows of corn. James managed to walk all the way up and back by himself - though a lot of the way down was on his bottom. Alison walked most of the flat bits by herself, and for the rest of the way Peter had to struggle with her on one arm, back-pack on his back, and mattock and cane knife in the other hand.

Letter: All Mod Cons

Letter 4 / 11 / 84

The time has come, the time is now! I think I might get a letter written ... allowing for an interruption about every two words. Things are improving, I'm gradually catching up on what has to be done.

We now have a little freezer, which frees me from making bread so often. It doesn't freeze brilliantly (takes at least twelve hours to freeze most things, even small) because its an 'absorption' one and runs on gas. But its still a great help, with storing fish too. Also, we have our little generator AND WASHING MACHINE! What a difference that makes! What used to take hours is done in half an hour, and I can even do it with a baby on my hip!

Doing the washing with the new machine

Visitors left

Our visitors have finally all gone - it was nice to have them here, but it is a relief to be just us again. We enjoyed having Rod and Hazel staying with us, but our house (even with the translation house in full use as well) couldn't really cope with four adults and six kids. Meal-times were a special kind of nightmare, with our picnic table that only seats four - seats are attached to the table and can't be moved - and an extra chair at each end of it - that makes six. Our attempts to put James, Linda and Alison at a separate table failed, and we ended up having two sittings (in which case the kids all hung around for the second sitting anyway ... ) or we all had kids on our knees while we ate.

Nevertheless it was a nice break - a change from our usual routine. We managed to all climb the hill, and I minded the littlies while the others all went right around the island, and we had a trip over to Dawar Island. Poor little Philip had a rough time with fevers, and Linda was under stress because she is very much an 'indoorsy' city girl - so Rod and Hazel got to discover some of the joys of 'mission life'. But they sent Kay to school here, and she loved it.

More visitors

The day they left we were supposed to have two more people coming, so we were most relieved when they delayed their visit for four days. Peter H came from Cairns (he's the 'extension officer' for TAFE college) bringing a lady who is to run a gardening course up here. They only stayed for four days, and it was a relaxing time because they didn't bring any kids and ours really took to them. Kathy rather shocked the locals (and us, for a moment there, as we may have been up here too long ...) with her extremely short shorts - I trust she will adjust her clothing before she returns for the main part of the course.

Jo

Jo continues to develop in her own sweet way. She's so placid and content. She doesn't generally cry when she wakes up, I often go in and find her playing happily. Sometimes at four or five in the morning I'll hear a little voice and find her on her back, wedged across the cot, all tangled up in her mosquito net, playing in the dark. She's full of smiles and little chuckles, especially for things like mobiles, and her 'crib exerciser'. She turns over with ease, and is getting fairly accurate with her hands.

Ali

Alison is as Alison as she ever was. Chatters all day - puts quite a few words together into little sentences now. And copies everything James says. She's getting gentler with Jo, though every now and then she'll suddenly claw at her face, or come running from a distance and jump on her! She has one or two dolls of her own now who get frequent baths and cuddles etc. She's quite the little girl, though she still acts as a magnet to dirt. Her hair is getting thicker, and I'm trying to get her used to having clips and things in it without pulling them straight out again. I have her in pants all day, but we are having no success at all with her training. If I could have just a few successes in the pot to reward we might get somewhere. She knows what she's doing, and rather enjoys the sensation of a puddle around her feet.

James

As for our James James ... he's a long skinny creature these days. He's been very sick - again. His asthma attacks get worse. Last night he had a really bad attack - rather distressing for all of us. Ventolin is a fairly standard treatment - he has it in liquid form. But he coughs and coughs and vomits, and its very difficult to get anything into him while his stomach is in spasms. I think you can get a Ventolin inhaler, which he may be old enough to learn to handle.

Anyway, his new bike arrived 2-3 weeks ago, and he hasn't been willing to ride it. Even with the trainer wheels he was sure he would fall off. We realised after a while that the real reason is because he's feeling so weak and tired he just doesn't have the strength to push it. But he's been getting better as he always does when we give him a course of Incremin tonic, and today he was suddenly willing to try. Once he got going he gained confidence and didn't want to stop. He got faster and faster and went further and further each time. Peter says he remembers his dad said his (dad's) chest troubles started to get better once he got a bike, and Peter had the same experience. I guess exercising with your hands out (and therefore chest expanded) would be good for these problems, and hopefully we'll see James improving fast. I think he'll be up early tomorrow morning wanting to ride. His speech is good these days, still a smattering of Creole language mixed in, but mostly English. He chatters non-stop, louder and louder ...

Ducks and Chooks

Of our three large ducks, two recovered from their broodiness and started laying, but the third took over all the yellow ducklings as her brood and turned nasty towards the three black and yellow ones, and us, and everything else. She was quite a nuisance, so in the end we just gave her away. Now one of the other two who were laying has stopped laying and is looking after the (not-so-little) ducklings ... it seems we can't win. At least the chickens are still laying, about 5 eggs every 3 days between them.

Garden

The citrus trees are still growing well. And we have corn and tomato and bean seedlings on their way. In the kitchen I have parsley and coriander and dill and tarragon growing in teacups on my windowsill! Its the parsley I'm most keen on. They are still very small, but I was very tempted to pick a little leaf to put on a dish today.

Letter: Baby number 3

Letter from Darwin 8 / 8 / 84

Just a quick letter - time is pretty short these days. I tried to write from hospital ... but all the little things become so big and important when you're lying in a hospital bed. Its the strangest thing: this time in hospital, and when I had Alison, and when I was recently in the antenatal ward, I found myself to be the only married woman in the ward. Babies are 'in', families, apparently, are 'out'.

Anyway, Jo Anna is a beautiful little girl. She has dark hair, and that typical 'Wickham' look - just like James and Alison really. But she is so placid - a real "sleepy Jo". When she does wake up, she grunts and rummages - takes ages before she cries. In hospital she had trouble with low blood sugar, then she went yellow (the other two never did) and she still has "sticky eyes", but otherwise she fared pretty well despite a difficult birth.

I guess Peter didn't have time to tell much on the phone. I suddenly felt very unwell on the Thursday (26th) with fever, headache, and pains all over, and I had a sneaking suspicion I could be in labour. I'd been warned not to go into labour. So we rang the hospital and they rustled up an anaesthetist who could do epidurals. We went in about 2pm Friday expecting just a check-up, only to find ourselves ushered hurriedly into labour ward. We passed a miserable 2 hours or so while they put the epidural in ... then waited (in the operating theatre) as my back went numb but my tummy stayed very sensitive! It was quite a relief when they finally insisted on a general anaesthetic. They let Peter be in the room to see Jo born - not that he had really wanted to, he simply wanted to sit with me (with his back to proceedings) during the planned birth by epidural. As it turned out, they had great difficulty getting Jo out - had to do a lot of pounding, pushing, and using forceps - but she was born face first and gave a good yell right from the start. And then after they turfed Peter out they had a hard time stopping me bleeding. Apparently the doctor very nearly had to do a hysterectomy ... I'm so glad I slept through it all!!

Despite all the drama, I got over it all much quicker than I did with Ali. I didn't even need a blood transfusion, and by lunch time Saturday I was walking around with surprisingly little pain. And this Saturday I came home, after 8 days.

Jo's been asleep a long time, I'll have to wake her up soon or she won't sleep tonight ... yes, I know it never works that way for babies. But if I don't feed her soon I'll burst.

The other two really love little Jo - but my time away caused some upset. James has developed a stutter. "I can't talk very well ..." he explains after struggling with a word for several minutes. And he blinks a lot. "My eyes won't work ..." he complains. Alison has been quite sick - fevers, diarrhea etc - poor Peter had to carry her around all day while I was away. But we are all improving now we are back together. Peter's parents are due here on Sunday to help for a while.

Letter: Meeting old friends

Letter from Darwin 10 / 7 /84

What a rushed morning I've had, and only a few minutes of peace left now before the kids come home from crèche - its such a precious three hours! I never know quite where to start with the things I want to get done.

Thanks so much for the lovely birthday presents - and the kids are delighted with the cloth picture too which arrived safely with Mary's present. The liquid soap and the lotion are really lovely, and James spent many hours of fun using the two boxes they came in as boats ... and then Alison got them for a bit of brrrm brrrm on the floor ... until they finally fell apart under her careful little fingers.

We nearly sent you a computer portrait of us - have you seen those? They print a computer portrait of a photo onto a tea-towel or t-shirt or whatever. Looks very nice, and they do it on the spot. So we had one done with all four of us on it ... but when we got home we realised that the reason it didn't really look like us was not because of the slightly blobby effect from the computer picture, but because it was all back-to-front - a mirror image. Unfortunately, people are not symmetrical, and it really looked like someone nice (especially the kids) but not US. So we went and got our money back.

I've just had a couple of days on the inside, courtesy of the government. Hospital, I mean ...

.......... [interruptions] ..........

Thursday afternoon

This morning I was so fed up of being pregnant that I thoroughly cleaned the house - gave Peter a bit of a shock, but all it did for me was give me a back ache.

Anyway, the doctors were talking about putting me in hospital for four weeks - and we had made it quite clear that we were not keen! In the end they came down to just two days for tests. So I went in and they pricked my finger four times a day - I pointed out that I'm quite good at pricking my own finger, I don't need to lie in a hospital bed for that.

And then friends here whose son is a diabetic lent me their 'glucometer' ($200 machine that gives you a digital readout of your blood sugar instead of just looking at colours and guessing) so they let me come home. The doctor insisted I see the eye specialist - but eye damage from diabetes only occurs in bad cases after about ten years, a waste of time (and government money), and a nuisance because I had to walk around for a day with my pupils all dilated. And I went in and had an ultrasound - for no particular reason. Its all been a bit of a nuisance and a lot of fuss about nothing. Apart from my present backache from washing floors, I feel fine.

Did I tell you about Alison getting really sick? We went through a really bad patch for a while. I waited for two weeks for my turn to start at the hospital clinic - then got the days all mixed up and missed the day ... Alison got sick ... and I lost my purse (or it was stolen, I really don't know) with about $120 in it.

Alison got sick so quickly, all of a sudden she was just a limp doll lying there with her eyes half closed. The doctor found she had a middle ear infection so treated her for that. But she kept vomiting at first, and then just constant diarrhea ... she got so thin. After about a week she finally 'turned the corner' and started improving - and now she has put on a kilo more than when she first got sick. The first couple of days when she was feeling better she was constantly banging on the fridge saying "door! door!" and she was eating cheese, meat, celery ...

All the field teams are coming in with a rush now. James is so excited with meeting old friends and making new ones he can hardly contain himself. There's quite a little gang of 3-4year olds, and they all get on very well together. The 'TQs' (temporary quarters) where we are living this time are four units joined together, with a shared back verandah ... bit of a madhouse! We are in one end one (with 2 1/2 kids), then there's two single ladies (one with two dogs), then the Eckerts with their two (Christy is 3, and Katy is a month older than Ali), and at the other end the Swartzes with their three (aged 7 years, 4 years and 6 months) and their dog Tigger - who has just as much 'bounce' as his namesake in Winnie-the-Pooh.

Yesterday the three dads got their heads together and brought an old cubby-house from the other side of the campus - the kids who originally owned it are teenagers now. They put it under the trees in front of all four units where it is in sight but almost out of sound. The kids love it - James and Ali had their lunch out there today. James gets on well with Christy, she's a rather over-sensitive sort like him, so they do a lot of talking and play-acting together (something the island kids don't seem to do) and they like to compare babies (Alison and Katy) - "this is my baby and that's your one" etc.

But James isn't really well. I guess the problem is just emotional. Waiting for our new baby, having all these new friends, and a head full of memories of Murray Island that he doesn't really know what to do with. He goes from moments of great glee to sudden gloom and tears for no apparent reason. He won't eat properly, he tires easily but often doesn't sleep well ... looks rather pale and thin too. At crèche the other day he had his first bad asthma attack - up till now its just been night time coughs, but he came home at lunch time really gasping and choking, and flushed and hot. After a while we worked out that one of the ladies had been cleaning out one of the cupboards and the dust would have got to him. We'll have to get him a little "puffer" if he's going to start having attacks like that.

Gotta go, visitors for tea.

Letter: Darwin Door

Letter from Darwin 19 / 6 / 84

Its the most amazing thing - Alison has been banging on the back door (inside) since about 7:30 this morning saying "Door! Door!" ... but when I opened the door she just ran in and out crying. Until finally I opened the door and said, "OK, time to go to crèche!" and she ran out happily saying "play!" After being so unsettled in Cairns, both kids are really happy here, and Alison lets people pick her up too.

James's "little" friend, Nathan, has continued to grow like a weed - at least they can talk to each other now - and is a good six inches taller than James (although he is 8 days younger) so James has inherited Nathan's tiny 2-wheeler (with trainer wheels) bike - Nathan now has a bigger one. Alison has been lent a little plastic horse on wheels, a nice stable one - some of those things can be rather deadly! - so she's very pleased too.

We've actually been getting a few things done with the kids off at crèche all morning, and also being able to amuse themselves for short periods of time when they are back at home.

Work

Peter is getting stuck into our "phonology statement", and I'm trying to catch up with some of the letters we didn't get done in Cairns.

Hair

I am still enjoying my new frizzy hair cut. The hairdresser gave Peter a demo of how to cut my hair - later when the perm grows out. She even gave us a little lesson in how to do the kids' hair. With mine she started off by doing a 'one snip cut' - brushed it all straight up above my head and then cut it off, that way is comes out in graded lengths.

The kids are quite agreeable to my new hair ... for the first few days I kept finding James having a good long stare, then he'd say, "I like your fuzzy hair, Mummy." Alison just kept looking with a funny little Mona Lisa smile ... at least she doesn't grab hold and say "Dong!" like she used to. (Funny how she related my plaits to the church bell-rope!)

Baby no. 3

The baby is officially due August 6th ... if I don't burst before then. It is such a lively baby - they say that means it must be healthy, don't they? Awfully uncomfortable though. My first visit to the hospital clinic is tomorrow - I have a head full of questions I want to ask if I get a chance, but usually these clinics are so busy they just sort of rush you through - that's why it was so late in the day before they realised I was going to have problems with Alison. At least they have my records here.

James and Ali

Talking of Alison, we really have no idea of how she is going to react to the new baby. She and James are very close, though, they really look out for each other. If they have been separated for an hour or two they make up for it with a big cuddle and lots of kisses - they just like kissing and cuddling! And when they play together we still hear the screams and cries that are normal with kids playing, but we also hear an awful lot of apparently meaningless giggles.

Our car

We have been lent a car for a few days - a Toyota lite-ace van, bright yellow thing. Peter is not keen on spending tomorrow afternoon hanging around the hospital with two kids to mind while I queue at the clinic, so I had better learn to drive the thing. I much prefer the little Coronas etc that we can hire out of the car pool here, though its nice not to have to return it by a stated time. At least it should be easier to fit behind the wheel of the van.

Teething troubles

Well, the morning has gone. They rang me from crèche to say that Alison was crying, so I went over there and put her down for a sleep in one of the cots there. She's a bit 'sooky' right now with teething, so I'm surprised she goes to crèche at all. Her teeth have come through in all the wrong order. She had 'fangs' first before the middle ones, now she looks like she has eight teeth but actually there's a gap between the front ones and quite a few back ones have come through already. Teething has really given her a rough time with fever, runny nose etc ... and soon its time for her to have her measles injection.

Washing kids' clothes

So I must (again) get the washing into the machine - aren't automatic machines wonderful! With this cool weather (down to 17 degrees last night, and cool, dry and windy all day) the kids go through so many clothes - I fill the washing line every day. We've made good use of the local Pope shop and Savvy Army too. Alison has quite a pile of nice little dresses now, and I can afford to keep changing her when she gets dirty.

Letter: Carpentaria House, Cairns

Letter from Cairns 5 / 6 / 84

A couple more days in Cairns - and the pace continues as hectic as ever.

After two weeks in the caravan we were really worn to a frazzle, the kids were sick, and it looked like the rain was here to stay. It was pretty grim!

We went to the Anglican Church - St John's - and there we were found by a couple we had met in the little Anglican church we went to in Darwin - we would never have recognised them, but they remembered us. So we were invited out to lunch, introduced to others, and invited out by them too! Well, somebody suddenly remembered "Carpentaria House", which belongs to the diocese of Carpentaria (which includes Murray Island) and is available to people passing through, missionaries etc.

Its actually two houses - it used to be a doctor's house and surgery. So we've had the surgery part to ourselves these last two weeks. There's a slightly eccentric caretaker lady who lives in the big house and likes to burst in at all odd times, but her heart's in the right place and we've just about got used to her.

The wonder of doors

It took Alison a whole week to stop getting lost inside the house. She trailed around hanging onto my skirt, and screamed if I went out of sight or if anyone closed a door. Doors are a totally new experience to her - we have none inside the house on Murray Island where she has spent her whole short life thus far. So ... I don't know how she'll take our next move ...

New 'do'

Pity I don't have a photo of me to include - I went and had my hair "frizzed". Never having been permed before, and after years of being pulled into plaits and buns, it didn't come out in a tight frizz like I wanted - like the Island women! - but I do have a nice curly mop. Its a great improvement, makes me feel a lot better. And its one of those "wash-and-wear" easy-care perms.

Big bub - or 2?

The baby continues to grow at quite an alarming rate. With 9 weeks to go I look like I'm a week or two overdue! At least I haven't put on weight all over this time, its all out in front. I feel quite well - and look healthy - most of the time, just patches when I feel thoroughly rotten. The baby is very alive and lively. I'm looking forward to an ultra-sound as soon as I get to Darwin to be reassured that its not twins.

New fangled gear

We have our new video camera, it all arrived yesterday, and we sat up late last night trying to work out how it all works. It's incredibly complicated. We did a little practice film, but couldn't seem to play it back through our monitor (a 5" screen TV). We went back to the shop today and discovered there was a secret panel (more knobs!) we hadn't found on the TV.

This has all been written under great duress - with Alison "helping". James is watching Play School on our tiny TV. Must think about cooking tea before Peter gets home.

Letter: from Cairns

Letter 15 / 5 / 84

What a luxury. I'd almost forgotten that such things as peace and quiet existed. Young Alison H is home from Uni in Brisbane, and delighted to look after our two for a few hours. James thinks she's wonderful, and our Alison seems to accept it as long as James is there ... so I have been having a (much needed) little rest while Peter tries to get a "rust job" done on the car.

But let me tell you about our trip ...

Best-laid plans ...

We rang Ron Kuch about the Wednesday before we were due to come, and he told us to be at the airstrip about 1.30pm, and we could bring 50kg luggage. The trip would take only 3 1/2 hours by Aztec. On the Friday there were two funerals on the island, the bodies were flown in from Cairns by (we were told by people around us) "Outback Air". We saved ourselves a few jobs to do on Saturday morning - I got up early and put sheets etc in the laundry sink, they would be dry by lunch time, and we turned the fridge off and waited for the ice to melt a bit. We just sat down to a leisurely breakfast when there was a knock at the door - it was the Kuch pilot!

"Coming?" he asked. He had brought the bodies the day before, slept overnight in the village, but didn't bother to walk down or send someone to tell us about it.

"OK, 10 minutes ..." he said, - otherwise we would end up having to wait a couple of hours or more when we got to Lockhart River because the chap who does the re-fuelling of the planes was planning a fishing trip ...

Rushed exit

Well, we rushed. There are a lot of things you have to do before you go away for several months! You can't really just walk away ... I dragged the washing out of the sink and hung it (still soapy) on the line in bunches, rather than let it just rot in the sink. We put towels around the fridge on the floor, and slammed all the house windows closed, threw our freshly-made toast into my carry basket, locked the door ... and went. No time for any "good-bye"s.

At the airstrip they backed the tractor under the wing of the Cessna and he refuelled using a couple of jerry cans - standing on the tractor trailer to reach. One of the six seats in the plane was missing - they had to make space to carry coffins - so we had a little floor-space for Alison to play on. (And I was glad of it, she was restless and needed room to move.)

Slow flight

They had brought the Cessna instead of the Aztec because coffins fit better - but it meant the trip was now 5 hours long because it's a slower plane. Alison had a tummy-full of something that was making her uncomfortable (or maybe her ears were hurting too), and wriggled the whole time - after two dirty nappies she seemed quite a bit relieved. We were glad to have traveled early - but just wished we had known in advance! It would have been worse waiting on the airstrip for a late plane ...

Cold in Cairns

Our friends in Cairns were rather over-loaded with guests and family at this time, so they moved their caravan out to a caravan park to relieve the congestion - so here we are. It was pretty nightmarish the first couple of days (and nights), but a little better now that the kids are less excited and know the way around its a lot better. Its "so cold" (down to 21 degrees) at night, we all put on winter pajamas and we have made the kids a little nest in the bottom bunk - one at each end - with sleeping bags tucked all around to keep them away from the cold walls. They both developed colds after just one night here.

Our friends wondered what we would "do" for 5 weeks in Cairns ... this is the first time I have even paused. I've been feeling a bit crook - just achy and sort of sick - for a couple of days, so I'm very glad of this little rest. There's heaps of shopping to catch up on after our year away on the island - we only brought two overnight bags with us to get us through the long weekend when we first arrived.

Yesterday we went for our Queensland drivers licenses - we still had our South Australia (Bible College address) ones. We went down to Townsville for a day to visit friends there and to see the Marous - our islander "parents". She has been very ill, and is so thin now.

We found St Vincent de Paul's yesterday and picked up a stack of kids' clothes, especially little dresses for Alison, at 20c - 80c each!

Losing James

Last week we were shopping in a Big W complex, and were just paying for our groceries at the supermarket checkouts, when we realised James had "gone"!

Whenever we get out of the car, as his feet touch the ground, they just seem to gain a will of their own.

This particular shopping centre is marked by a huge concrete marlin (fish!) with its nose pointed skyward, so fearing the worst (he's hopeless in car parks) thought he may have gone back out to look at it. No sign of him.

We put an announcement over the supermarket p.a. but he wasn't there either. Every now and then we heard a kid crying and descended on it from opposite directions - wrong kid.

After about 20 minutes (a long time under these conditions!) Peter made his way to the Big W department store, and there was James, up on the service desk, looking VERY solemn! He'd found his way to the wrong checkouts!

Our Ali and our James

We had some photos done the other day - we'll have to get some copies made. There are some gorgeous pictures of the kids ... I find it difficult to describe Alison - she's a real little grub, loves playing in the dirt (likes to put her tummy in it) - but she has a beautiful smile! Big tummy, sway back, wobbly tumbling kind of walk - typical one-year-old, I guess. She looks sweet in a dress - otherwise people think she's a boy with her little round face and straggly hair. She still has tantrums, but I have a feeling we are winning these days. She puts on a "coy" act with "new" people, but it doesn't last long - she's too inquisitive for that. She goes more readily to a man, and is getting used to white faces.

James needs and enjoys contact with people other than us. He was thrilled to have "big Alison" babysitting. We went to an Anglican church on Sunday and he trotted off happily to Sunday School to the delight of the girls who had charge of him there. "He's so cute! He has such a cute little accent!" they kept saying.

Alison discovered the stairs to the gallery at church, so for me the whole service was a battle of wills. And once again, her constant wriggling finally resulted in a dirty nappy and some relief.

We were invited out to lunch after the church service - that was a nice change being in someone's sumptuous home rather than our tiny caravan. Alison was delighted with the carpet, totally new experience for her ... and fell asleep happily on their water bed!