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<\/p>\nTalking of snakes, we saw our third of the trip the other evening.\u00a0 The first live one.\u00a0 Until we ran over it that was.\u00a0 Sadly, I didn’t see it in the dark in time to avoid it.\u00a0 But at five or six feet long crossing the road right in front of us, I’m not sure how I could have missed it!\u00a0 It’s now an ex-python.\u00a0 Sorry about that!\u00a0 Were we talking about snakes, by the way?<\/p>\n
Today it’s Saturday – Brexit Day!\u00a0 And I haven’t mentioned that word before – and probably won’t again.\u00a0 It might not even happen.\u00a0 Heavens, what a mess! – and why would we want an extension?\u00a0 If our wonderful parliamentarians can’t negotiate and agree a worthwhile deal in two years – what’s another decade going to do?\u00a0 The EU are NEVER going to give a good deal.\u00a0 We are being used as an example.\u00a0 The perishing, unaccountable, jumped-up Brussels-ites and Strasbourg-ites don’t want their fiefdom broken up.\u00a0 They value their gravy-train too highly to let us spoil it for them!<\/p>\n
Anyway, as I said it’s Saturday and it’s a really windy one at that.\u00a0 The usual early morning weekend parade of hundreds of small to medium boats going fishing has been replaced by a VERY few hardy souls prepared to run the gauntlet of the heavy swell running past the mouth of the river.\u00a0 There have been a couple of canoeists and one mad stand-up paddleboarder out for an exciting morning of surfing\u00a0 with the waves.\u00a0 A couple of jet-skiers were out jumping over the waves in the opposite direction.\u00a0 The Coastguard sent out two of it’s fleet (they only have two boats in the Mooloolah River) for what looked like might be a bit of a practice session – but they lasted just long enough to get out far enough to turn safely and make it back to calmer waters!<\/p>\n
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Then there were a couple of commercial fishing boats returning from deep water missions.\u00a0 Finally, there is the class of really hardy (almost fool-hardy) yachtsmen.\u00a0 Some with no sails up and others with heavily reefed sails.<\/p>\n
They have one thing in common though.\u00a0 And that is the TOTAL lack of life-jackets or harnesses being worn.\u00a0 That was until about an hour ago when one yacht left the river with EVERYBODY wearing life-jackets and harnesses.\u00a0 It transpires that this was a sail training boat.\u00a0 So they do TEACH them good habits.\u00a0 It’s just that once fully trained, the local sailors think they don’t need any safety paraphanalia!<\/p>\n
At the height of the storm there was one enthusiastic geezer in a small open cockpit aeroplane flying loops, barrel-rolls and stall turns right in front of us.\u00a0 Trying to compete with the local ospreys!\u00a0 I guess he might have been legal.\u00a0 But at one point he came out of a loop flying what appeared to be straight at us.\u00a0 OK we are at less than 200 feet above sea level and he was probably a bit higher – but I bet he wasn’t above the top of our block.\u00a0 He’d have made a hell of a mess of the pent-house if he’d failed to pull up in time.\u00a0 We were both retreating rapidly away from the balcony!<\/p>\n
Having had a few days with significant rainfall (>83mm), a lot of playing fields are very soggy and lots of Saturday soccer matches have been cancelled.\u00a0 \u00a0Not Jack’s though.\u00a0 His school’s soccer pitches are extremely well drained.\u00a0 So Jack (with a rather dodgy cough) was turned out in very windy, freezing cold (about 25 \u00b0C!) weather to face another local school team.\u00a0 Now, as the coaches emphasise, they don’t keep count of the number of goals scored.\u00a0 Of course they don’t – that would be way too competitive.\u00a0 Anyway, Jack assured me earlier that they had won 3-1.\u00a0 So the kids keep a record even if the grown-up pretend not to!<\/p>\n
Linda and Phroggy were in Nambour this morning at Linda’s hair salon.<\/p>\n
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… and are going to North Lakes this afternoon to re-visit Costco.\u00a0 The i-pad bought last weekend had a faulty screen protector and also Linda wants to get a proper case for it.\u00a0 So, after football, Robin delivered Jack and a pile of toys, books etc to our apartment.\u00a0 He went off for a run and then home to do some work.<\/p>\n
We are due a repeat, return match of Snakes and Ladders.\u00a0 So far, Jack has proved invincible, but his record can’t last forever.\u00a0 There is, however, a certain reluctance on his part to get to the board out.\u00a0 \u00a0Lots of stories being read and Lego played – but no sign of S&L!\u00a0 Indoors we made thunder and lightning ice-cream again, while outdoors we got the real T&L!\u00a0 Flash Bang!\u00a0 And here’s Jack helping make the product!…<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190330_162149-1024x576.jpg\")
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… or at least test the finished article.\u00a0 He loves this part of the operation – and the pulverisation stage where Crunchie bars are reduced, in his case, to a fine powder.\u00a0 He pummels them to death with a wooden spoon before mixing the fragments into a litre of icecream!<\/p>\n
About 10 kms away in the middle distance, just off the coast of Mudjimba is Mudjimba Island.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/1.jpg\")
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I’m never sure which was named after which.\u00a0 I’d bet it was the island that got its name first and that the name means something significant in the local aboriginal dialect (of which one of my more determined readers assures me there are about 250.\u00a0 However only about 150 of these are still spoken and only 13 are really being kept “alive” for future generations.)\u00a0 I hear that the island, affectionately known by locals as Old Woman Island, was once owned by Sean Connery.\u00a0 James Bond himself!\u00a0 (Maybe!)\u00a0 He was married to Australian actress Diane Cilento in the 1960s and early 1970s. They were said to have spent time on Mudjimba Island during their marriage.\u00a0 It’s also true that a lot of people say he never set foot on the island let alone OWN it!<\/p>\n
The island is, in fact, the subject of at least two Aboriginal legends. One involved two women making a home on the island, where there were midyim berry bushes. When only one of the women could be seen on the island, it became known as Old Woman Island. The same legend concerned the midyim berry bush – hence ‘midyam’ becoming altered to ‘Mudjimba’. A second legend interpreted the island as being the head knocked off the top of a warrior, Coolum, who is represented as the flat-topped Mount Coolum about six km northwards.<\/p>\n
Whatever, the island is a well known local spot for snorkellers and divers.\u00a0 It is said to have an interesting coral reef around it.\u00a0 However, most diving trips from mooloolaba go to the sunken wreck of HMAS Brisbane.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/images-1.jpeg\")
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As HMAS Brisbane was in 1995 (above).<\/p>\n
This old warship was deliberately scuttled to make a dive location.\u00a0 The area around the former warship, which now lies in 28m of water, has been designated a conservation park. The decommissioned HMAS Brisbane<\/em> was sunk, using explosive charges, on 31 July 2005. Two minutes and 10 seconds is all it took for the 133m ship to sink to its final resting place some 10 kms from our balcony.\u00a0 This is a picture of the pointy end as it appears today…<\/p>\n And that’s a good place to stop…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now I know this is too long – but I like it and you don’t HAVE to read it!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A little old grey-haired lady went into the bank one day carrying a bag of money.\u00a0 She insisted that she must speak with the president of the bank to open a savings account because, “It’s a lot of money!”<\/em><\/p>\n After much discussion, the bank staff finally ushered her into the president’s office.\u00a0 <\/em>The president asked her how much she would like to deposit. She replied, “$250,000!” and dumped the cash out of her bag onto his desk.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The president was curious as to how she came by all this cash, so he asked her “Where did you get all this money?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The old lady replied, “I make bets.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The president then asked, “Bets? What kind of bets?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The old woman said, “Well, for example, I’ll bet you $25,000 that your balls are square.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Ha!” laughed the president, “That’s a stupid bet. You can never win that kind of bet!”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The old lady challenged, “So, would you like to take my bet?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Sure,” said the president, I’ll bet $25,000 that my balls are not square!”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The little old lady then said, “Okay, but since there is a lot of money involved, may I bring my lawyer with me tomorrow at 10:00 o’clock as a witness?”<\/em><\/p>\n “Sure!” replied the confident president.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That night, the president got very nervous about the bet and spent a long time in front of a mirror checking his balls, turning from side to side, again and again. He thoroughly checked them out until he was sure there was absolutely no way his balls were square and that he would win the bet.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The next morning, at precisely 10:00 am, the little old lady appeared with her lawyer at the president’s office. She introduced the lawyer to the president and repeated the bet: “$25,000 says the president’s balls are square!”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The president agreed with the bet again and the old lady asked him to drop his pants so they could all see. The president did.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The little old lady peered closely at his balls and then asked if she could feel them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Well, okay,” said the president, “$25,000 is a lot of money, so I guess you should be absolutely sure.”<\/em><\/p>\n Just then he noticed that the lawyer was quietly banging his head against the wall.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The president asked the old lady, “What the hell’s the matter with your lawyer?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n She replied, “Nothing, except I bet him $100,000 that at 10:00 am today, I’d have the bank president’s balls in my hand.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Talking of snakes, we saw our third of the trip the other evening.\u00a0 The first live one.\u00a0 Until we ran over it that was.\u00a0 Sadly, I didn’t see it in the dark in time to avoid it.\u00a0 But at five… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-myanmar-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/ex-hmas-bris-bow.jpg\")
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