Boycotting the company's pizza day

...aka Pay day, or as it's now known "inconsiderate pigs" day! Just a spat of how something that's meant to show gratitude, just looses all of it's meaning when this is what a boss calls his staff. But I'll have more on that on a future topic for my travel log! Basically, in short, when people ask about how things are going, I chose to just bypass the work conversation and go onto talking about the other awesome things that are going on in my life....

....So on that note!

Well I promised more, and more is what I have done! Starting with Mackay, a town where I never want to live, ever, but had the pleasure of spending my long bank holiday weekend, or Queen's birthday weekend (England, please take note!). We had Kirra and Amber round here on the Friday night for films and Vegan Mexican (I know!, but it does work, and well actually). We probably stayed up a bit later than we should've done, as we had an early start to get to Mackay. I think we got up before 6 (which is early for a Saturday), got an Uber to the airport, with a very chatting driver, and set off on our flight up north....

Awesome views, flying over Brisbane,
New Farm in the middle of the picture, our house is in that picture!

Makes 12km look like noting!
I wanted to add this picture as it shows my whole bike ride to and from work. You can just make out the Gateway Bridge (near the middle of the picture), and my company is across the river. And New Farm is at the right of this picture, as the river bends up, it's just to the right of that

Arriving in Mackay offered us slightly different views!

We arrived in Mackay about 9:30 in the morning. Dan (who I used to go to secondary school with, and with whom I haven't seen for just over 3 years) picked Sandra and myself up from Mackay airport, and we headed back to his crib to catch up with Zoe (his now wife, and whom I haven't seen for just over 4 years). We chilled at there place for a bit, before heading out in the Jeep and checking out some of the local beaches and areas that Mackay has on offer.

Our mode of transport for the weekend. It did get a bit bumpy in there at times!

The Eimeo Pacific Hotel bar

Dan being entertained by Banjo

Saturday night we just chilled out, ripped down Banjo's (unused) dog house and burnt it down, drank beer and ate pizza, and booked ourselves on the forest flying (flying fox) for Sunday morning...

Me, Sandra, Dan and Zoe

A quick training zip.
Before doing the real deal...

Maybe not the most exciting video in the world, but it's always fun to play with the GoPro!

But it's me flying through the rain forest's tree tops!

Plus it sounds really cool!

We spent Sunday in Eungella National Park, which is located about an hour and a half inland (west) of Mackay.

Araluen Cascades in Finch Hatton Gorge

This was about as close as we got to spotting any platypus

...but we did see plenty of turtles!

The view from Eungella Chalet, taken from the first actual bar garden that I've seen in Australia.

Lucky Banjo, I don't get belly rubs like that!

On the Monday Zoe had work, so Dan, Sandra and I headed out to Cape Hillsborough, which was my highlight of the weekend, from a location point of view. The areas surrounding the beach were amazing. Plus there were walkways that took you to look outs....but better than that, there was caves and rocks to climb up and scramble through, off the beaten track.

The view from Andrews Point lookout

Wedge Island

Flying back to Brisbane on Monday evening presented us with some issues. We arrived at the airport at about 5 in the evening, for our flight at 6. Upon arrival we were told our flight was delayed by 45 minutes, no biggie. Only to find out shortly after this that our flight had been completely cancelled. A whole , sold out, plane load off people left the terminal and headed to Jetstar's check in desk. Fortunately we got near the front of the queue, and managed to be 2 of only 26 people to get transferred onto the flight heading towards the Gold Coast (the other passengers would have to wait until the following morning to get flown back to Brisbane). I later found out that evening, this is why our flight was delayed (Dad, please don't ride this!). So anyway, great we're on the 6:45 flight to the Gold Coast, not so great when that flight gets delayed "indefinitely". Apparently that plane took out a bird, so Jetstar needed to fly in an engineer from Cairns to approve take off of our flight. We ended up taking off from Mackay airport around 11. In the end we took off so late that they had to fly us to Brisbane, as the Gold Coast airport was closed. So I suppose that it kinda worked out well for us!?.... but it's all good, Jetstar had us covered whilst we were stuck in the Mackay Departures Terminal:

Wow, thanks Jetstar, a whole $8 to spend in the airport each! I wonder what we can get

Finally....

...Oh....maybe not then!

Of subject here, but on my weekly food shopping trip:

Coles new microwave range, and at $11 each! Wow, what's not to like!

Dolphins, turtles, wallabies, kangaroos, and even whales. Just an average winter's day on North Stradbroke Island.
We were meant to head to Straddie Island on Saturday for Kirra's birthday, but Sandra was ill, so we traveled over on Sunday to meet all the others there. And as far as wildlife goes, I've never seen so much on 1 trip to Straddie. I've seen a whale once before whilst I was there, a few years ago, but this time we saw two schools of whales. We arrived at these rocks at Point Lookout, overlooking the sea, where a group of three people were sat. They had been waiting there for 3 hours in the heavy rain and the cold winds, and they saw nothing. That was until we showed up. Now it's not because we showed up that their day got better, but at the moment that we showed up, so did all the whales. Pretty amazing views. I obviously couldn't really get any awesome pictures of the whales on my iPhone, sorry:

Wallaby

Where we were looking for whales....

...see!
And we actually did see two schools of whales.

And Kangaroos to finish the day off!

Been getting more into my boxing. Last night was my first spar with head guards on, so I wasn't really sure how it was gonna go down (as in, how hard punches were gonna fly). Urmmm, it went down pretty well overall I think, just a small bruise under my left eye, which can't be that bad as nobody has noticed it or mocked me about it today. Afterwards people in the group were saying how much I've improved, so maybe I did better than I thought. Even Terry said how good it was....after first telling me "well that was sh...". I mean I really still have a lot to improve on, but I'm getting there slowly. It was the first time I got any notice there really, last time I spent any decent amount of time with Adam  (one of the trainers at the PCYC club) I'm pretty sure I P'd him off with my abilities, or lack there of, trying to follow the drills he was going through with our group!

And after many trials, and tribulations, and sort of joining gyms, and quitting gyms, on Tuesday evening I finally actually joined a gym for real. I paid an actual joining fee, and signed up for 12 months, and I'm actually quite excited about this one. think 24hr fitness

Also, thanks to all for the feedback and ideas for my blog. I really am looking to take this to the next stage, so keep any comments coming in please, all are greatly appreciated. I will slowly be setting up a new blog page, so my page address will change soon, but I will keep you all updated on that! And to prove that I am listening to you guys, the back ground has been changed (as per 66% of commenters' requests)

As always, thanks for reading (see, look how appreciative I really am!)