One day at a time

Took the first step to getting fitter for my trip back to the UK in August, by joining a new gym over the weekend and went for my first real workout this evening. My arms and shoulders are slightly sore afterwards, but not enough to stop me moving them. Now I just need to keep this up until my trip in 8 weeks time. ---- Sent from my 3 mobile

North Queensland - Sky 1 Originally uploaded by PD Blog Pics Pictures from a recent trip to North Queensland

Tuesday 15 June 2010 Today I drove for five hours, down to the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walkway. The closest large town is Innisfail, where we stopped to have lunch. I bought a new USB Wireless modem, but that proved to be more of a problem than a solution. The Canopy Walkway was well worth the trip, with a observation town and cantilever bridge over the gorge. The drive there and back proved to be enjoyable and I had none of the usual signs (tied shoulders or stiff back) after completing the trip. Tried to use the new USB modem, but to activate it, you needed to call a number only accessible by Telstra services !! Tried their website through Campbell’s service and registered it for what turned out to be a purely voice service. We had dinner in Port Douglas and had a nice Mexican meal and on our return to the resort, packed for tomorrow’s journey back to Melbourne.

Monday 14 June 2010 Today was the trip up to Karunda. This time we were going to take the SkyRail (cable car) up to Karunda and then take the scenic railway down to Cairns. The drive down to Cairns was enjoyable. Using the i30 is very easy. Took a while to pick up the tickets, was in the wrong queue to start off with. After this little hiccup, we were on our way in the first leg of the cable car trip, over the rainforest canopy. It is a little un-nerving to be that high above the ground with only a relatively small piece of metal connecting the cable car to the actual cable. Went to a short walk about the rainforest and saw one side of the Barron Falls, before reaching Kuranda. The town was busy, as the train had just arrived too. We had lunch and then went to the butterfly sanctuary, which is just a big enclosure with some amazing looking butterflies and moth. They proved to be difficult to photocopy on the wing, but I got some good shots of those that settled occasionally. ...

Sunday 13 June Had an interrupted sleep and woke quiet early, although it was light outside. After a small breakfast in the hotel room, we set off to find the beach and walk into Port Douglas for a more substantial breakfast. Finding the beach provide to be more difficult than it seemed and in the end, we had to walk through the Sheraton resort complex to find it. It’s an amazing sight, a vast stretch of sandy beach, fringed with coconut and mangrove trees. The walk up to the town was very pleasant, wandering bare foot, along the edge of the water on soft cool sand. When we reached the town centre, it took a while to decide on a venue for brunch, but found a nice one on one of the side streets. Afterwards we went to the Sunday Market and look around the stalls. Before wandering back to the resort, Campbell went shopping and bought a couple of pairs of shorts. After a short rest, we drove back into the town to do some food shopping and have a late lunch. I had a very nice ca...

Saturday 12 June 2010 Work up at my usually work day time to ensure that I had enough time to have breakfast, picking Campbell up and get to the airport in time for our flight to Cairns. It was all going reasonably smoothly (although we had to park on the roof of the multi-storey car park, until I realised that I had left my phone in the car as we got to the airport in the courtesy bus. Had to make the round trip, but although it felt time ages to me, we still had time to check in and walk to the gate before they started boarding the flight. I have noticed that Qantas check-in people don’t tend to bother checking to see if there are particular seats available if you ask them for emergency exit seats for example. The flight up took 3 hours, but we had plenty of toys to keep us both entertained and we did get feed as well. Pick up our luggage and hire car from Cairns airport. I did get an Hyundai i30, which I was pleased about. It’s been interesting trying it out and there was a ...

i20 awarded ECO Car Magazine “Car of the Year” 2010 The Hyundai i20 range will go on sale in Australia on Monday 19th July, 2010.

iPhone FaceTime - please is that the best that Apple can do - sorry but I've been using video calling on a mobile without the need for wireless and identical phones at each end for a couple of years now. Very disappointed that Apple think they have invented something that has been widely available (probably outside America) for several years.

Spent the day at a work function in Torquay, just outside Geelong, The drive down was uneventful, although I ignored the GPS on a few occasions, it didn’t appear to make the journey that much longer. It has been a long day, working both inside and outside (doing corporate group activities). I hope that the other participants are enjoying the retreat and there have been several compliments about the venue so far. Got to see the unpleasant competitive side of some of the senior management of the division and for that fact I’m glad that this is the last one of these events I will be involved arranging. One more day to go.