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Whitsundays and another visit from an ACTUAL PRINCESS

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Showing Princess Emily around Australians have a thing for abbreviations (Aussies). Perhaps when your world revolves around the beach and surfing it doesn’t leave much time for uttering full words. We have noticed this since our first moment in November 2024 when we arrived in Bundy (short for Bundaberg) and then headed for Brizzy (Brisbane). The marina manager mentioned that the cafe across the street was great for brekky (breakfast) and the brewery opens in the arvo (afternoon). The servo (gas station) sells diesel and it is just down from the Maccas (McDonalds) but watch out for hoons hooning (essentially high school drag racers). We have adopted many of these catchy terms but didn’t expect that our sailing up the East Coast of Australia (Oz) would involve a new sailing vocabulary.  Kind of how we felt leaving Brizzy We returned to the boat in late May from an important, ultimately seven week trip to the United States. For the s econd year in a a row we were a bit behind in maxi...
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Wild Times in the Outback

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Game on! Things are getting real As we descended the steps of our airplane in Alice Springs I noticed that the passengers in front of me were all furiously fanning their faces. Must be hot out there I thought. That was until the first fly landed on my face. My next thought was Oh shit - that was as fly 10 through 20 proceeded to join it. If you remember only one thing from the 15 years we have spent writing this blog remember this: Bring a freaking fly head net to the Outback. Seriously. With plans to go hiking the next day, we diverted the rental car to every store still open on a Saturday at 5pm. Kmart (yes, still a thing here), Bunnings (the Australian Home Depot), Woolworths (the grocery store) and the chemist (the Aussie term for pharmacy). At Bunnings we had a moment of hope when they directed us to aisle 24 only to find that the fly net bin was completely empty. The store clerk told us his inventory system read "107 in stock".  Unfortunately neither the clerk nor we co...
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