Happy girl

The coffee gear won - no regrets… It has been great to have good coffee, but of course good coffee makes you want to wee…

As the colder weather sets in the toilet seems further and further away especially for the girls who can’t just find a secluded spot quite so easily as Sam and I. I was out walking on Friday night when I saw an ad for chemical toilet on one of the local Mission Beach notice boards.

It was brand new - never used - purchased for $180 and selling for $80.00. I consulted the females and they voted in favour, so after a little bit of haggling we got it for $60.00 and everyone is now a very happy camper.

I was a little wary of having a toilet inside the camper especially seeing as it is right next to my bed, but it has been odourless so far (and there are far worse smells to contend with in our camper anyway!)

So now the night-time wee no longer involves walking out into the cold - in fact I could almost get it in without leaving the bed…

Danelle trying to figure out how to make it work…

We left Paluma and began heading north unsure of where we would get to. We stopped at Cardwell for lunch and a coffee, as well as a cold shower in the public toilets. Sam and I managed a shower, but the girls had no pressure so they missed out. Smelly girls…

We drove on and decided to check out Bingal Bay just 8km north of Mission Beach. It was in the Camps 4 book as a hot spot so we thought we’d try it. We only got as far as the end of town in Mission Beach before I saw the council run caravan park and dropped Danelle off to check out the prices.

At $18.00/night for a powered site right in the shade next to the beach we were stoked. You can’t book at this place so its simply a matter of getting lucky and rolling up at the right time. Today was our lucky day as a large shady site with power had just become available and we managed to snag it.

So we have been hanging around this beautiful spot for a few days just enjoying the beach and the laid back vibe. We originally booked for 2 nights but have added another 2. The water is warm and the beach itself looks like something out of a travel brochure. Its been really nice.

We went up to Bingal Bay for a look and it is a beautiful spot too. The difference is that there are only a handful of campsites with no power and no hot water for the same price - so staying here was a no brainer.

Tomorrow we will move on… somewhere…

We can’t decide whether to head north to Cairns, Port Douglas etc or to head south to see friends. Gavin and Helen are in the Sunshine Coast and if we were to move fast enough we might catch them. The attraction of the north is the warm weather while the detractor is that it is highly commercialised. The big detractor for going south is that we lose the last little bit of warmth and will hit rain… rain…

We haven’t seen rain for sooooo long and we don’t miss it.

Anyway that’s where we are today.

After leaving Townsville we headed up to Paluma, a little spot right up in the hills.

When I say right up I mean it… We drove 20km up winding roads to get to the lookout area right in the middle of the forest and the drove another 15 kms of winding dirt road to get to the campsite by the lake. It was a tight windy road and it took a while to get there - and once there it was cold!

The clouds were over the lake and the air was very cool indeed. The camp itself was nice, but a little over-regulated. I guess its one way of making sure it stays pristine. $20.00 gets you an unpowered site and if you want firewood (you aren’t allowed to gather wood) its another $10.00. We waited for the ranger to leave and gathered wood… naughty I know…

It was a lovely spot, spoilt only by 2 car loads of 20 something Euro travellers who rocked in at 5.30pm with music blaring. The vibe of the place changed as they were loud and raucous and pumped out their music till 11.30pm. Admitedly it wasn’t super loud, but I tend to feel that anything that intrudes on other people’s enjoyment of the serenity of a place is not good.

Its something we have noticed as we have travelled - that the younger crew don’t see loud music as an imposition on others. I don’t mind my music loud, but the whole element of consideration for others seems to go missing with some of these guys.

They nearly had a grumpy old 40 something come over and tell them to turn it down before he did something equally inappropriate with their stereo.

All in all Lake Paluma was nice, but a long drive for a relatively expensive campsite.

So here’s my list:

The coffee gear - so soooo glad we didn’t leave this stuff at home. To have a good coffee regularly is a life saver.

Iphone - this has been great for internet access, email, researching places we are going to, finding our way to those places and for having fun in the car. The apps that get the most use are facebook, news.com.au, newsgator, ipod, maps, around me, Motion X GPS, Bible reader, flashlight,word warp (game), weather and the camera - as crappy as it is!

Inverter - we bought this late into the trip and its only a 200W version but for $36.00 it powers small applicances for quite a while. Its great for giving the kids a movie in the car or for the same late at night in a remote place. It charges stuff and can power the fan on a hot night.

Single burner stove & gas bottle - the camper comes with a stove, but early in the trip we realised we didn’t want to cook meat and other fatty stuff inside so we simply got a 5kg gas bottle and a small single burner from K Mart for $22.00 that sits on top. We have used this almost every day.

Fm Transmitter/Charger - for the iPhone. This plays music in the car and charges the phone at the same time. For $60.00 it has been a good buy.

Decent Camping Chairs - we left home with a couple of very comfortable but aging chairs. These died about 3 weeks into the trip so while we were in Katherine we both decided to buy whatever chair we liked. It cost a few bucks but a comfortable chair is like a comfortable bed - you gotta have it!

Stuff we thought we would use a bit but haven’t:

The TV - not just cause reception is hard to get but we simply don’t watch it much.

That’s about it - everything else gets a pretty good work out…

enchanted dvd One of my big concerns in regard to the budget on this trip was how I would
fund reading. Books are expensive and I love to read. I figured it could add
at least $50.00/week to the costs unless I could find a way of getting good
cheap books. So to discover some gems in Op shops has been a real bonus.

The Halls Creek op shop had a number of half decent titles as well as the
usual pulp stuff and the Salvo shop in Kununurra has several books worthy of
a read. I bought 4 books for the grand sum of $7.00 which has to make a
bibliophile very happy.

As I was rummaging thru the laundry baskets of books in the Kununurra op
shop I came across one entitled Following Jesus by a bloke called Segundo
Galilea (Danelle reckons he sounds like a coffee bean) and after a brief
skim decided it was worthy of purchase. Galilea is a Chilean Catolic priest
and liberation theologian who has written a short and relatively simple book
around the theme of what it means to truly dedicate ourselves to
discipleship. I read many books of this kind, but not often from this
perspective so I figured it would be a good balance to the predominantly
North American based stuff that I find myself reading.

It’s immediately worth noting that our context has a huge impact on shaping
our theology - much more than we tend to give it credit for. The Latinos and
others from impoverished contexts gave us liberation theology and wealthy
white westerners gave us prosperity theology. I haven’t come across a name
for a theology that has its roots in suburban western life, but is not
prosperity driven. I imagine it would be something like ‘comfort theology’
or ’security theology’ as that it what seems to form so much of our middle
class western dreams. Hence Jesus becomes the one who makes life safe and
secure for us. as if.

This is challenging because we have to admit that it’s impossible to do any
kind of theological reflection outside of a context. And because of that we
need to regularly be open to the insights of other cultures to help us get a
fuller revelation. At times this can be challenging and it may even seem
that our brothers are waaay off the mark. however reality is that we may be
the ones missing the point.

Here are 3 few quotes from Following Jesus that I thought worthy of sharing.

“We believe that it is appropriate to the religious life to call into
question or even protest against the church and society: against the church
to the extent that it I decadent or ambiguous, or has lost its radical
dynamism; against society, to the extent that it become dehumanized or
dechristianised (not sure what he means by this), and thus the source of
oppression and injustice” p.82

So. If we are leaders with any nouse then we will be protesters when we see
either the church or society lose their way. We won’t stay silent and tow
the party line, but we will have the courage to speak up - loudly. The net
result of this is that we will not be popular for long.

“A religious movement will never be authentic unless it returns to the root
of its own prophetism. Its radicalism is a sign of vitality and of its right
to continued existence. Its absence is a void that calls into question its
very reason for existence in the church and society. One of the causes of
the present crisis in religious life rests on the fact that many who have
given themselves to this life have discovered this void” p. 83

How true. When we lose our founding charism we become a social club and this
is one of the issues we are currently grappling with as the church in the
west.

“Normally the people of greatest character, most maturity, are those who
have the greatest difficulty with obedience. This is quite normal. One does
not arrive a free obedience without passing through rebellions. Obedience
consists of a synthesis between the acceptance of the will of God and a
complete Christian freedom. It is extremely difficult. It is a work of the
Holy Spirit. And one does not arrive at this without having passed through
many crises and even through many errors.” P. 93

I thought this was insightful. A conformist finds ‘obedience’ easy. A
non-conformist or a questioner will struggle much harder to accept the rule
of another.

This book has some real gems and is worth a read.

It was a big drive across and not that interesting to say the least. The section of the Barclay Highway between Mt Isa and Richmond I am officially renaming the Barclay Track – only to be attempted with a 4WD! Seriously – someone in the Qld gov needs to have a good look at that one. It’s a shocker – like a roller coaster!

The kids were excited to get to Townsville as they were keen to stay at Caravan park they had seen in the brochures. Sam revealed the power of branding when he insisted we consider a ‘Big 4’ park next place we stay. So here we are in the Walkabout Palms Big 4 right on the edge of town and at the intersection of two of the busiest roads in Townsville! It is well set up and we have enjoyed a few days of comfort and indulgence (hot showers and electricity). The mosquitos and heat bugs that have plagued us all the way around disappeared when we got here too. Its been great to sit down at night and not be constantly swatting bugs away or waking up in the night scratching yourself… so to speak…Aside from the constant road noise that reminds us we are back in the city it has been a good place to stay.

We have been in and out of Townsville City a bit and spent a bit of time down on the Strand – the beachfront area. We have lazed around a bit and done the usual school stuff. I was finally able to download the Iphone 3.0 update which allows the phone to function as a modem, so the kids have been able to do their Mathletics and our internet hasn’t been restricted to a 3 inch Iphone screen. 3 G reception actually gives you reasonable speed and with 1 gig of download in my monthly virgin allowance we are pretty well set.

I have to say that my first impression of Qld is one of commercialism. I know we are tourists of a sort, but I have really enjoyed a ‘rougher’ Australia than we find here at the moment. I can only imagine how we will feel when we hit the Gold Coast…

As of tomorrow we begin heading north towards Cairns and the towns up that way. We don’t really know what to expect so we will just be figuring it out on the run. We got offered 3 nights in Palm Cove at a 4 ½ star resort for $200.00 which sounded tempting. It involved listening to someone drone on about Timeshare for 90 mins – which I could do with no problem and not get suckered into – but the more we thought about how we’d need to reorganize car and camper etc we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. We are well organized in the camper now and the appeal of a luxury apartment just wasn’t enough to sway us believe it or not.

Danelle has reorganized the camper so that our storage is much more efficient. The only problem is now I have no clue where things are… It took me 9 weeks to get the hang of plan A and now I need to remember that my clothes are in the ‘bread cupboard’!

Anyway, that’s a brief update on the traveling Hamos.

I wish I could easily recall a time when I heard a politician from the left side of politics actually affirm the decision of someone on the ‘right’, or vice versa. But it seems that written into the political job description is ‘except in the most embarrassingly obvious situations DISAGREE at all costs!’

It seems every time the left has an idea the right will fault it… Or every time the right do something well the left find flaws.

If life were as black and white as some politicians make it sound then it would be simple to choose who to vote for… But what you actually read is not pure information or even reasoned opinion, but ‘propaganda’ - a unique kind of perspective and one that actually insults the intelligence of the listener.

It assumes we are dumb enough to see complex questions as having simple solutions. It assumes us = good and them = bad.

It ought to be an embarrassment to the people who use it, and it should be - except that it works! People fall for the nonsense that gets said on tv and in the media - more fool us…

Let’s be honest folks - no political party has all the right answers - nor is any of them devoid of some useful insights, but the rabid bickering and arguing that seems to characterise so much of the political game is so tedious.

In fact its one of the main reasons I have never run for prime minister…

The result of the vote was such that we will not be returning to work with that community. In most Baptist churches a 75% majority is required to be on staff. The 12 who voted ‘no’ was sufficient to swing the vote against us.

Obviously we are disappointed for ourselves, but moreso for the many good people in the church who we have connected with and shared the journey with.

There is much more that I could say on this topic, but a public blog isn’t the place. This is just for those who may be interested to let you know the outcome.

I updated to the next version of worpress and they have disappeared. So for those who are worried that they may have offended me… nope…

Just lost em!