This week I have been finishing work on the Moranbah Hawks Junior Soccer Federation Website. Moranbah is a small mining town South-West of Mackay in Queensland. I have built the site as part of my voluntary community services project. The site is  built around WordPress and has been developed in conjunction with Dave Witty from the club. If you would like to check it out the website address is www.moranbah-soccer.net

Click here to visit the Moranbah Hawks Junior Soccer Federation Website

This week I have been working on a website for the Mainstream Community Association. Mainstream Community Association Incorporated was established in Mackay in 1996 and the aim of this service is to provide support services to people living in the Mackay community in the accommodation of their choice and who have a psychiatric disability. This site is being built as part of my voluntary community services project. The site is built around the Joomla CMS. If you would like to check it out the website address is http://mainstream.org.au/

Click here to visit the Mackay Community Association Incorporated Website

I spent a couple of hours on Monday and Tuesday putting together a basic website for the Mackay Regional Mental Health Network. The website which initially contains information on events for Mental Health Week will be extended over the forthcoming weeks and months to provide comprehensive information on mental health resources within the Mackay area. The brief was to design something quickly with lots of colour using stakeholders logos.

Click here to visit the Mackay Recovery in Motion Website

I finally managed to take some reasonable photographs of the infamous Mackay Goosepond’s Crocodile. The estuarine crocodile was busy sunning itself in its favourite spot on the banks of the Mackay Gooseponds. A small crowd had gathered and a ranger from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service was in attendance. The Rangers plan to catch the crocodile by harpooning him. He will be relocated to a crocodile farm. Update: The Goosepond’s Crocodile was captured in the following months and relocated to a crocodile farm.

My personal view point is that we should learn to love and respect these wonderful creatures.

Click here to download a high quality photograph of the Goosepond’s Crocodile
(2.2MB JPEG – To save right click and select “save target as”. You are free to
use this photograph as long as you reference this site).

Click here to view a video of the Mackay Goosepond’s Crocodile.

PHOTOGRAPH FOR DOWNLOAD

Work has shut down for Christmas so I am on holiday until the 6th of January. Lisa’s family are visiting for Christmas so we will be busy entertaining. We will hopefully do a little fishing and make the most of the seven metre tides and full moon. The weather has been very hot and humid, particularly during the day although I have managed to get the yard and beach front tidied up and looking good. We have also been planning and budgeting for the coming year. Apart from that, we are just looking forward to a great 2008…..

We are in to the final month of the year and I have been busy with the National Prescribing Service educational visiting program on Osteoporosis. At home I have spent quite a bit of time hanging out in my tipi which really looks the part now. Lisa’s family arrive in a few weeks for Christmas. I have two weeks off over Christmas to join in the festivities. Off the beach there have been plenty of Tuna around.

In the past week I have been privileged to kayak with a fifteen metre humpback whale and also a school of approximately twenty dolphin. I spent about an hour with the whale as it hung out near dudgeon point. The whole experience was one of the most amazing few hours of my life as she swam inquisitively around me.

I have just returned from the annual National Prescribing Service facilitator conference which was held down at Brighton le Sands on Botany Bay. The conference was held over two days and included a number of workshops, informative talks and lots of networking. On the Friday I managed to go downtown to do a little shopping and also visit the Sydney international boat show on Darling Harbour.

I have just returned from two small trips. Firstly I went up to Midgenoo to check out our land. On the weekend I  took an overnight trip out to Cullen Island off Sarina Beach in the kayak. It took four hours to reach the island – mainly because I was preoccupied with following a school of Dolphin around whilst attempting to record their calls using the hydrophone.

I have just returned from a couple of days in Brisbane. I spent a day doing some training with the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (for Home Medicines Review Facilitation) and a day with the National Prescribing Service learning about the latest topic ‘Selective Use of Antibiotics’. Back in Mackay it continues to rain (unlike in Brisbane where the continue to have the worst drought on record). I have however managed to restore our wedding path to its former glory. At work I have been concentrating on getting the new website up and running whilst I wait for the next round of visiting to start. Lisa is now on school holidays. I celebrate my birthday in a couple of days!

The last few weeks have been pretty quiet with the temperature getting down to about 5C at night. I am in the final stages of finishing our latest website. I have been out a number of times on the kayak with my latest toy – a hydrophone,  although all I have managed to hear so far is the tug boat engines at the port of hay point. We hope to get some decent recordings of the local dolphins and maybe even the Dugongs.

It is June and it is still managing to rain here in Mackay. The workmen have just finished fixing the road in to Mackay and two days later the pot holes are reappearing. This week I have just about completely rebuilt this site to take full advantage of cascading style sheets. I have also managed to fix the problem of the menu disappearing under the Google Maps maps.

In April 2007 we headed up to Tully in North Queensland. We stayed a couple of nights at the Treehouse hostel in Mission Beach before joining a trip down the mighty Tully river in a whitewater raft. The Tully is a spectacular explosion of bubbling white water in a spectacular setting – thoroughly recommended!

Tully River White Water Rafting Photographs

I arrived by kayak at Sarina Beach in the last few days of 2004. Iplanned to stay for a few days camping out the front of the Surf Club, made some friends and ended up staying for a few months.

In July 2005 I set out from Sarina Beach and headed out to the wonderful Middle Percy Island in a small sailing boat called Blue Moon with my friend Luke Benes. After a stop over at the beautiful Curlew Island we arrived at Middle Percy Island on the 16th of July, bringing some gratefuly received supplies for the islands caretakers – a young couple with a dog named ‘Zee’ We stayed on the island for the next two weeks – this was much longer than was originally planned due to the gale force winds that lasted all most a week. I had a wonderful time exploring the island and sleeping in the tree house down near the beach. I spent hours in the A-Frame looking at all of the signs that had been left by passing boats – some from as far away as Scotland, Norway and America. The Homestead on the island was in a sorry state of affairs, as was the historic ship ‘Islander’ which had been build on the island. Percy Island has an amazing history and is definately worth a visit if you are lucky enough to ever be passing that way. Flinders certainly thought so when he stopped at Percy Island.

Middle Percy Island Photographs

The following Photographs were taken in the days after my accident at Sarina Beach near Mackay.

In February 2005 I was staying at Sarina Beach down under in Queensland. I had spent the afternoon drinking down at Mackay Harbour with some friends. On returning to Sarina Beach I decided to join the boys on a midnight boat trip. We all piled into the tinny and headed out into the darkness. Unfortunately I decided to sit on the Bow of the boat wearing my headtorch with my feet dangling over the front. Due to being intoxicated I was pretty relaxed and was probably not holding on very tightly.

Heading out across the moonlit inlet we suddenly turned (for one reason or another) and hit a wave. I went flying out of the front of the boat, smacking my head on the boat, before having my knee, wrist and armpit mangled by the outboards propellor. The boat continued on before realising I had disappeared. Luckily my headtorch continued to shine and I was promptly pulled back in to the boat. Numbed with shock and too much Bunderberg rum, I thought I was fine, not aware of the blood pouring out from my knee, arm and armpit. We hastily headed back to shore and managed to get me a lift down to Sarina where I was stitched up by the on call doctor.

A couple of days later a large tiger shark was caught in the area, which also has the occasional visiting crocodile. It took a couple of months to get back in to the swing of things and I have never lived the incident down. Everyone in Sarina Beach remembers the day when the Pome was run over by the boat and I do enjoy telling the story of my fight with the ‘propadile’ and showing off my scars. I was extremely lucky to escape with relatively minor injuries; a timely reminder that boating and alcohol definately don’t mix.