FRIDAY 26 JULY     FORREST BEACH

I was up by 8am. John slept later.

The day was windy, and cool. Not really tropical at all.

There was an interesting light on the sea, through cloud, and I took some photos. It occurred to me that watching the changing moods of the view across to the Orpheus and Palm Island groups could be quite intriguing…….the different moods of Forrest Beach.

I walked to the newsagent, taking Couey with me. It was probably a bit under a km each way. Ordered the Saturday papers to be kept for me. Couey was not happy about being tethered to a pole while I went in the shop – will have to do some work on that.

After John got going and breakfasted, we drove into Ingham and went to the Information Centre, where I picked up some material about the area. The Centre was at the Tyto Wetlands, which were quite extensive. Last time here, we did the walks around the lagoon and bird-spotted. I’d have liked, today, to walk the paths closer to the Centre, but that was not possible with dog, and she’d have howled blue murder if we’d tried to walk off without her.

At the fresh seafood outlet, across the road from the Centre, bought prawns, threadfin salmon – my favourite – and some frozen whiting, for John.

He dropped me off at the supermarket to go do some food shopping, whilst he went off to buy some hair clippers. These would live permanently in Bus – just one less thing he would have to try to remember to pack for future trips.

We had to get petrol for Terios, then had to wait for ages to get back out onto the highway. A long cane train had trundled over the highway crossing and caused a really long back up of traffic. Seasonal hazard of these parts.

At the Victoria Mill, some liquid was being sprayed onto an adjacent paddock area. I supposed it was waste water from cane processing, in some form.

Spent the afternoon round camp.

I peeled all the prawns I’d bought, before putting them away – reduced the bulk, for storage.

I cut John’s hair with his new clippers. There is no art to that. It is more akin to hedge clipping than hair dressing!

It was too windy to sit outside for long.

I put up the solar screens on the front and side windows at the front of Bus – in the hope that it might get warm enough for us to need sun protection!

John took Couey for a walk on the beach – her first. He reported back that she seemed to like the sand, but stayed well away from the water. I was pleased to hear that – really didn’t want to have to deal with wet and sandy dog!

John drove to the take away to get  tea: chips, potato cakes, fish for him. I cooked some threadfin salmon for me and had some chips. He found the fish batter pleasantly crisp, but also very fatty. His fish – mackerel – was not great. He decided to have home cooked fish, too, next week, and maybe only buy chips. With age, we have both lost our tolerance for greasy foods.

There was AFL football on TV at night.