The TSRC opened on the Sunday with a marathon (there was a also a bike race and open day on the Saturday that Mark and Julie went to). I only signed up for the 10km as I (correctly) assumed I would still be sleep deprived on the day. The bypass was pretty impressive, although it was hard to see much from the eastbound lane. The downhill was okay (after a quick pee stop), but at the turnaround point the uphill was disgusting.

Uptype: post date: Ubiquiti have discontinued UniFi Video. The cameras from reolink seem to be basically the same, but cheaper. I’d probably get them instead. Very annoyed that they made it end-of-life just after I bought the NVR. Recently I ended up installing some IP security cameras at our place, and since a few people have asked about them I thought I’d do a quick summary on here. It’s something we talked about for a while, since we had an incident one holidays.

Part of thinking of names for a child is deciding on which surname to use. There are lots of different ways of choosing surnames other than the modern English way of taking the paternal one. The wiki page on surnames is supringly detailed. After having a unique name like Guinane, I didn’t want Newman as a surname because it’s too common. Looking at US Census Data it’s not actually as highly ranked as I was expecting, but still a lot more popular then Guinane.

A few guys from work and I did the Mount Cordeaux/Bare Rock track in Main Range National Park. Rachael and I had done the short Rainforest circuit at the start of the track on the way back from Boonah a few years ago. From here the hike up was mostly through rainforest and not to steep. At Mt Cordeax there was a nice lookout back towards Lake Moogerah. It then continues on a little bit further on Bare Rock track to another lookout.

We tried to drive south as quickly as possible to get away from the rain. Getting through Cairns took ages due to the traffic all being backed up, and the rain was still very heavy. There was a bunch of waterfalls we had skipped on the way up that we had planned to visit on the way back, but we decided they it would be a bit too dangerous due to the heavy rain.

We left Cairns super early to drive up to Port Douglas to do a sail to the Low Isles. The sail out was pretty uneventful and the weather wasn’t particularly great, it kept raining off and on. Once we got to the island though we got to go snorkelling off the beach. We saw turtles and giant clams, so was pretty cool! We did a tour of the island as well, which has a couple that live on it permanently that work for the BOM, and some housing for researchers.

On the Sunday we got the Kuranda Scenic Railway up to visit our friend Jaimee in Kuranda. Was a slow train, but a nice journey and impressive to think about the effort that was involved in constructing it. Barron Gorge was a bit disappointing after seeing photos of it in flood about 2 weeks earlier. But still nice that the train stops for 10mins to have a look. Kuranda itself was nice, lots of markets and food places.

We stayed the night at Cardwell, was a nice little beach town with views of Hinchinbrook Island. Pretty much everywhere was closed for dinner as apparently it was the “off season” so only had the pub or fish and chip shop to choose from. There was a resort style section that looked abandonded, not unlike Seaspray at Zilzie. We had pizzas at the pub and there were pretty good. In the morning we did Cardwell ParkRun and it happened to be the first birthday, so we got a free sausage sizzle for breakfast as well.

Last time we were in Townsville, we had some friends recommend Crystal Creek but didn’t have time to go up there. So we made sure we stopped in on our way past this time. Everything was super green - not surprising after the floods. Little Crystal Creek was an awesome little spot. The water was a bit cool, but a great little swimming hole. The waterfall was suprisingly strong and hard to swim over to due to the current flowing away from it.

After Eungella, we stayed the night at Seaforth. There wasn’t a whole lot there. We got fish & chips for dinner, and instead of seagulls they had curlews that bug you for some instead! They get really big tides there as well, so the swimming net was kind of pointless if it is not high tide. We got recommended going to Cape Hillsborough at sunrise to see the kangaroos and wallabies feeding on the beach.