Days 153 to 159 - Wednesday 31st August to Tuesday 6th September
Enjoying ourselves at Southport - Week 5.



Day 153 - Wednesday 31st August. - Dealing with Telstra.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 12.7° at 6am and it reached 21.0° at 3pm.
  • Wind: Light wind at camp.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets, but at 6am I needed to pull on my sleepingbag.
The morning was still beautiful, so I rode out to the seaway, it was very pleasant just sitting at the spit watching the dredge clearing the entrance.
We had lunch at camp and then went to Aussie Fair to TELSTRA. I asked to speak to the Store manager, he gave us a new powercord and I also bought a patch lead to connect the new modem to our external aerial. Two out of two, we are on a roll. Now for the Million dollar question, Can you show me how to view my data usage, because after our 3Gb is used, we are charged 15 cents per Mb, so knowing how much data is used, IS BLOODY CRITICAL. Would you believe, that the store manager didn't know and I had to make a BLOODY appointment to see the Tech manager tomorrow. You think that we are really PISSED off, then we are. The saga continues. Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode.

Back at camp, we confirmed that our neighbours are still coming to the club for dinner, they are. Marg and I got to the club about 4pm and played the pokies, I put in $5 and left with $7 a $2 win, Marg won the $54 mini jackpot and she left a winner, about time. Our neighbours (Ken and Rosie, and Tony and Ros) arrived and we had a great dinner and conversation and were back at camp by 7:15pm. We have a great night.

The forecast is still for some showers and sunny patches for the next couple of days.

The dredge was at the entrance again.

The Dredge in action.

The Dredge in action - check the water.

Day 154 - Thursday 1st September. - STILL Dealing with Telstra.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 13.6° at 5am and it reached 23.1° at 10:56am.
  • Wind: Light wind at camp.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets, but at 5am I needed to pull on my sleepingbag.
The morning was beautiful again, BUT I had an appointment at Telstra for 10am,so no riding. I met David the Techo and he solved my problem. The rest of the staff couldn't and the techo doesn't work there full-time, so you have to make an appointment. I am now a very happy camper. I can see how much data, I have used.

Lunchtime, we drove over to Centro for lunch at Michel's, a couple of pies and a coke. Yumma as usual. Clouds are forming over the Hinterland and it looks threatening. So my thought of a ride this arvo has been postponed until tomorrow morning. Marg had a nanna nap, while I buggered about camp, it was also empty the shitter day. While at the dump point, I spoke to another shitter emptier (male), we both commented how we have never met a female emptying the shitter. Strange that. Later in the afternoon, we went over to Keith and Nicoles' fiver and we helped answer their questions about Melbourne, as they are doing Tassie in December.

The forecast is for a light afternoon shower, maybe.

Day 155 - Friday 2nd September. - Gold Coast Show holiday.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 14.1° at 6am and it reached 21.8° at 12:30pm.
  • Wind: Windy with gusts upto 51kph. SE.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets.
The morning was beautiful again. We buggered about camp until Keith and Nicole left, so we could say Goodbye, they are slowly heading south. Hopefully, we will be catching up in mid December in Melbourne, while they are waiting to catch the Tassie Boat.
I then rode up towards Runaway Bay, I haven't been that way this year. Believe it or not, nothing seemed to have changed, except that the 3 storey apartments are now finished and occupied and look rather nice. The usual sight of seeing pelicans sitting on the street lights are becoming more common, today George and his brother George were waiting for me, so I had to stop and take photos. I waited for a good 10 minutes for one of them to fly off, but the buggers were quite happy just standing on the light.

Early afternoon, I dropped Marg off at our club, so she could play the pokies and picked her up about 2.5 hours later. I think she won.

Today is a public holiday on the Gold Coast and consequently, this afternoon feels like a Sunday, a lot of shops are closed and the roads are very light.

The forecast is for a light afternoon shower, maybe.

Some of the homes that I see on my rides.

This is now becoming a common sight.

Just landed.

Day 156 - Saturday 3rd September. - Walked to Aussie Fair.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 14.4° at 6:15am and it reached 22.3° at 11:53am.
  • Wind: Windy with gusts upto 48kph. SE.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets.
The morning was beautiful again. We buggered about camp until Tony and Ros left, so we could say Goodbye, they are heading home to Toowoomba. The weather was overcast for most of the day and we got a bit of rain around 5pm.
Late morning Marg and I got the 'nanna trolley' out of the car and we walked up to Aussie Fair, it was a very nice walk along the Broadwater Parklands. The parklands are looking very good, the children's water park is now operational and quite busy, there is more sprinklers being laid near the BIG girl and her puppy model. At Aussie Fair, we did some food shopping at Woollies and put it in the 'nanna trolley', about 5 plastic bags in total and the 'nanna trolley' handled that amout with ease. We had a coffee at the food court and then walked back to camp. It was lovely, it was also the maiden voyage of the 'nanna trolley' it worked excellently. I spent most of the afternoon doing a hard drive cleanup. Spent the night watching TV.

The forecast is for a light afternoon shower, we got one today, as I said awhile ago, the bloody forecasters up here as very accurate.

Day 157 - Sunday 4th September - Father's Day.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 13.4° at 6:15am and it reached 22.7° at 12:45pm.
  • Wind: Windy with gusts upto 44kph. Southerly.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets, but at 6am I needed to pull on my sleepingbag.
The morning was beautiful again. It's Father's Day. So we didn't do much this morning, as Luke was coming around about 9am, to look at our modem and install Windows Media Center on Marg's PC. We have MyNetFone running through a router and than via a USB cable to my 'Blue Toaster' modem, we now want to connect the MynetFone to our new Telstra WiFi Elite modem via WiFi, so Luke was needed to do what was required to make it happen. This involved buying a new Netgear Universal WiFi Range Extender, 4-Port WiFi adapter ($99) and that replaced the old Netcomm N3G005W route and the 'Blue Toaster' can now be retired. The new Telstra WiFi Elite(MF-60) now has increased speed by a factor of 10 (Blue Toaster was 0.5Mbps and now the Elite is 5.0Mbps), the phone call now flows, where before with the slow connection speed resulted in 'broken speech'. The cost of our Internet is now $69 for 12Gb and $10 for the sim card, where before we spent $89 for 12Gb on the 'Blue Toaster'. We will see how the new Elite modem works at home and if suitable we will terminate our existing iinet internet.

Jay came over at lunchtime, so we walked over the Gold Coast hwy and had Maccas for lunch.

Luk came back about mid afternoon to install the new Netgear extender, we had driven over to Officeworks to buy the Netgear and we also wanted to an Iphone, so we can use some of the apps but didn't want to spend that much money, as we already have a phone each, so we bought a Ipod Touch which will run most of the apps, and it only costs $199, so we bought it. Marg is very happy with her new toy. Now don't forget it is FATHER's Day and Marg gets a Ipod Touch, I got nothing because I told everyone that after spending 'an arm and leg' on me last year, (they bought me Harry Hema Navigator last year), that this year they are NOT to spend anything on me. And they didn't.

It was a great Father's Day, especially seeing our lovely boys. It was just great.

The forecast is for a light afternoon shower for the next couple of days.

Day 158 - Monday 5th September - catchup with Johnno.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 14.8° at 12:30am and it reached 20.9° at 1pm.
  • Wind: Windy with gusts upto 33kph. SE.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets, but at 6am I needed to pull on my sleepingbag.
The morning was beautiful again. We buggered about camp, but by midmorning, I turned into Cycleman and rode off to the seaway again. The seas were rough ish and the wind wasblowing in my face from camp to Southport marina and on the way from the seaway back to the marina and when I crossed the bridge to head for home, it was a nice tail breeze.

After lunch, I dropped Marg at Jupiter's casino and I went over to Johnno's my friend who lives on the Gold coast and we talked 'shit' for a few hours. It was great catching with Johnno, I have known him for over 20 years. Marg rang about 4:30pm from the casino, she had finished in front for the day, so all in all, it was a great day.

The forecast is for a light afternoon shower for the next couple of days. It didn't come so we were happy.

Day 159 - Tuesday 6th September - Bingo Day.

  • Weather: A mild night with no rain, it was 13.4° at 2:30am and it reached 22.9° at 12:05pm.
  • Wind: Windy with gusts upto 30kph. SE.
Another mild night, I am using 2 blankets, but at 6am I needed to pull on my sleepingbag.
The mornings are usually beautiful, nice and sunny with a slight breeze. We arrived at our club at 9:30am, with eyes down at 10am, so we had plenty of time to get ourselves organised. It cost us $52 and we won $25 so we lost $27, but have a great time. After bingo, we drove back to camp and then got the 'nanna trolley' and Marg and I walked up to Aussie Fair to do some shopping at Woollies. Marg is having a ball with her new ipod touch and the Woollies app, she made our shopping list and then at Woollies, the ipod touch told us what aisles our shopping is located. Walking to and from Aussie Fair in the sunshine was very nice.

Lukey and Jodi invited us to Salza's Robina for dinner, so we drove to their place about 5;15pm and Luke drove the four of us to Robina for dinner, we all had nachos, they were YUMMA. back at camp for a quiet night watching 'Rafters'.

The forecast is still for a light afternoon shower for the next couple of days, but it didn't arrive, so we were happy.

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Still at Broadwater Tourist Park.