We were having such a wonderful time on Sunday sitting around at the beach having a few drinks (as you do). Radio was on so we could listen to the cyclone alarms. We took down all our shade cloths and turned boats upside down and just sat back and waited. Towards late afternoon I said to a couple of the others, “can you hear that!”….They looked at me strange and said that they could not hear anything.

Normally we could always hear the sounds of the lorikeets and the black cockatoos ect, but it was just dead silence…could have heard a pin drop.

Just on dark, my wife Cathy decided to take the kids home for some dinner and to get ready for school in the morning.

     I had a bit of a sleep and woke about 7.30pm so the neighbors decided to drive me home just around the corner. It was when we pulled up at my beachfront that we heard the warning sirens on the radio and the words “This is to advise all the residents of the northern beaches that you must evacuate immediately”.  It was a mandatory evacuation, MUST LEAVE.

   I ran up to the house and told Cathy to grab mattresses and pillows act and lets get the hell out of here. We proceeded to ring a few neighbors and started to invite them to my safe work place in town…. Then we loaded the dog, cat and the birds and the girls into the cars and headed away from the beach, not really sure what we were going to come back to. Apparently just after we got out the police and emergency workers arrived at the beach to begin knocking on doors and clearing out the rest of the people.

   At work by the time everyone arrived we ended up with 4 dogs, 2 cats, 2 birds, 14 adults and 3 kids. Most stayed up for hours playing cards and listening to the radio and watching the devastation of poor Innisfail…200 kms north of us. They finally let us back into the beach at about 10.30am where we all caught up on some well-earned rest, getting ready now for Cyclone Wati, which is coming in from the same direction.

What a wonderful weekend

I arrived home Friday nite to watch our beloved Cowboys football team get a Drubbing in the rugby league…Then it was work Saturday morning as per usual.

When I got home Saturday afternoon we had a big burn off at a neighbor’s house across the road. I wandered back home to trim a couple of dead branches from my fig tree. Out with the chain saw and get ready to climb the tree,’ I should not attempt these things at my age’.

We have this nice Jack and Jill setting that we have had for 18 years. I placed my half empty beer upon it and put my phone on top to stop the flies from getting inside the bottle.

Up the tree I go with the electric chain saw to place myself above the offending dead branches. I yell out to my 80 yo father in law to please get out of the way and stop giving me instructions as I know what I am doing, *cough.

These branches are about 15 inches in diameter and about 20 ft long.  As the first one drops and misses the pool fence by a couple of inches “we won’t talk about the garden”, I get ready to drop the second one.

“Don’t forget to put a cut underneath the branch first”, screams my father in law.

Now me being a Taurus, I take not a word of notice of him…”big mistake”. I proceed to cut the branch from the top, slicing down. It starts to groan and crack so I jump back to the safety of a couple of higher branches.

Well, at that stage the branch starts to fall at a totally different angle to what I expected. It first hit my little garden shed, moving it at a horrible angle, sent the two crab pots, ”what was left of them” flying across the yard, then lands on top of the Jack and Jill. It was all in slow motion from where I was watching. My father in law calmly walks over and picks something up and holds it up for me to see. Yep, it is my mobile phone, a direct hit.

What could I do but just sit in the tree and laugh.

 Just then my wife arrived home from shopping… Woops!

I was all excited as a neighbour wanted me to take her MGB GT for a drive as it had been sitting idle for 3 months.

I arrived home with the camera and went to the neighbours to grab the car.."camera with me off course", Found a beautiful setting by a river about 50 miles from home to get some photos..

You guessed it...Bloody battery was still in the charger at work...100 miles in the opposite direction...no camera all weekend as my duaghter was at a party with my old camera....today I go to buy a spare battery...lesson learnt

It is just part of an idea someone put in my mind a while ago, it is very exciting to me. But still just a small hobby.

Which means Buzznet is very slow as is everything else,so I will try to comment and post at my snails pace for another 3 weeks *sigh!

Found this F18 sunrise photo...Not mine..but I think it looks cool anyhow

Well,there was a lady tourist with camera in hand also, so she walkes over to me and proceeds to tell me how to take the best photos of the sunrise.

Hmmmmm...I think with a big grin on my face.So I ask "and how long have you been taking beach and sunrise photos". Ohhh for the last 3 weeks she informs me.

Ok, this is where my sarcasim comes in...I proceed to tell her that I have 12 gig of sunrises on my computer,I have 3,000 sunrise postcards coming  that she can purchase at our local shop...and I have been shooting this sunrise since 1997...at approx 50 shots every morning...with that she went back to the park and I kept clicking  lol   Photo lessons