Long weekend in Esperance

After 3 weeks back in to the grind of work, and a lot of extra hours unpaid, we took Friday off work and headed off to the beach in the caravan.

Friday in Esperance was just stunning - hardly any wind and just beautiful as you can see from the piccies



Chip was in his element - though he is always confused at Ozzie beaches as there are no sticks to rummage and find!

The caravan park recommended an awesome fish n chip shop up in the town and boy I would have to say the fish was the nicest I have ever had - unfortunately Mal can't remember what sort of fish it was!  We took them down the beach with a bottle of wine, and thanks to Chip ate a load of sand as well.


It was good to be back out in the van, we do miss the nomad lifestyle and the feeling like your on holiday all the time - especially happy hours...



We woke up this morning to a cryptic note stuck on our caravan door. and another one on the car door.  We think it was probably a couple of kids who came in a van yesterday - suspect mum and dad write the notes and they run round putting them on people cars/vans for inspiration???


they might have thought because the van is so old, that we were too!!

Luckily Esperance got a tanker full of diesel this morning as they had run out yesterday and our tank was looking very sad - though how bad would it have been to have been stuck there for another day or two???

OMG its 2014 already!

Where did 2013 go?

Can't believe my last post on here was July....that 6 months flew by...

We are still in good ole Kalgoorlie - this place does have a certain charm to it, even though if you asked us if we 'like' living here we would probably say no - strange people aren't we.

We have made the decision to stay at least another 12 months then reassess what we are doing.  After being in the acting Manager role of the Maternity Ward, I applied and gained the Clinical Nurse Manager of Maternity role.  Its a very busy, demanding job but I have surprised myself by loving the challenge of it and there are certainly many challenges ahead this year.  There hasn't been a permanent manager in the role for the last 2 years after an unfortunate 6 week stint from a newly hired manager worked out very badly - my aim is to make the Unit a great place to work so that I am fighting off midwives with a stick who want to come and work here instead of begging all and sundry to come and work here! Wish me luck :)

Here is an article that went in to the local paper the week I came back from holiday in to the role

We went 'home' for 6 weeks over Christmas/New Year and had a great time at Waitarere catching up with the kids, family and friends.  We took little Chip with us and despite some hassles getting him from Customs on arrival in NZ, he had a fabulous time catching up with all his human brothers and sisters.

I brought Mal a kontiki (the predator) for Xmas so fishing was a high priority at every opportunity.  He managed a few good catches and it was great to have a reason to get down the beach more often.  Here are some piccies of his catches

We spent a fair bit of time doing 'home' stuff around our property at Waitarere Beach - it was actually fun to feel like doing that again and finding some muscles that have been resting!  We achieved everything on our list so left feeling very pleased with ourselves.

The weather while we were there was a mixture of windy, rainy and absolutely stunning - Murphys law that the week we left the weather certainly looked like it was finally stabilising in to summer.  Here are some piccies of the beach

So life is now settling in to work, work, work....we do plan on taking regular breaks in the caravan this year to replenish our batteries and we have a few holidays in the planning stage overseas as well.

Hope everyone had a fabulous Xmas and all the best for 2014!