Visitors

My sister was here visiting for 10 days, so of course we did lots of touristy things and generally had a wonderful time.  She brought the fine weather with her, though it also turned very cold and Barb had forgotten we can have cold weather so she had not brought enough warm clothes - but she survived.

 The Mackay Festival of Arts was on while Barb was here, opening with a concert under the stars with the visiting Queensland Symphony Orchestra string ensemble.  What a fantastic night that was - in the Botanic Gardens with an audience of around 2000!  We nearly froze, but we loved it.

 We went for several walks in the Gardens and I took this photo of an egret on one of them - I am quite thrilled, especially as about one second after I clicked, the egret found something to eat and moved like greased lightning.

 Further on in the Gardens we saw this cheeky scrub turkey  eating ripening bananas.  It is a male, but fortunately it is not breeding time so it will not be trying to build a mound and move all the garden mulch a couple of hundred metres to where he thinks he wants it.  I have never seen one in the Botanic Gardens before, but home gardeners hate them as they dig up all the young plants, making a dreadful, destructive mess.

 We made the most of the sunshine, driving north to Airlie Beach and Shute Harbour in the Whitsundays.  This is a photo of Shute Harbour, with lots of very large yachts moored.

 Back in Airlie Beach the water was a bit more protected.

 We were all wearing slacks and long sleeved jumpers with no desire to take anything off, but these hardy souls were sunbaking around the lagoon which has been built  there.  It is very crowded in the summertime and is a great asset for the area.

 Barb went home yesterday and Jock is missing her!  She used to have a banana for breakfast every day and Jock pleaded for a piece every day as well!

My cleaning lady brought a present for Jock this morning - a soft toy with a squeaker from the op shop.  He had us all in stitches, running round the house with the toy in his mouth.  He kept it beside him all morning, letting us all know it was his!  he is quite amazing with soft toys, not tearing them to pieces as our previous cattle dogs would have done.
Barb drove me all round the place while she was here - we did over all the shops, not really buying anything, but just getting to all sorts of places I can no longer access on my own.  We had a lot of fun, but now I have a large amount of office work to catch up on so I had better get started.