Settling in

Once the shipping container (who's name was Bruce by the way) was emptied, we had the delightful job of unpacking everything. Setting up house is fun, but a lot of work! The kitchen was first for me, since we needed to start cooking again. We were having way to much fast food! Robbie and Alan went about setting up the animal room, which is under the house. This house was ideal for that reason - we have this area under the house that stays relatively cool so we won't cook our animals come summer time. It is concreted and has plenty of power points.

Since we'd moved in, we'd been feasted on by nearly every blood-sucking animal known to man! We'd had mosquitos (of course!), leeches, chiggers (mites found in long grass) and ticks! We found Tayen with more than 20 ticks on her, and we had quite a job picking them off one by one. It didn't bother Tayen too much though; she was asleep for most of the time and when she woke up, she was just interested in seeing what they looked like and how they were feeding on her! So Alan got to work mowing down the long lawn to try to minimised these blood suckers! Luckily, Caitlin had given him some "Anti-chigger" socks before we left Victoria which were very handy!



Alan with his Anti-Chigger socks

 So the house was slowly coming together - beds being put together (yay, no more sleeping on the floor!), our lounge suite put in place (yay, no more sitting on the floor!) and office set up (yay, have to start work again....)
We also had started painting the hallway when Tamara was with us, and we kept going with that. Robbie did most of it I'll admit, but I managed to finish it eventually!


Painting the hallway

Robbie left us on Monday, and we had 3 days with just the four of us before Nina and Kristen came to visit, to give us a hand setting up the house. I had to get back into work mode, as during the move we'd been out of email contact for a while, and Minibeast Wildlife pet orders were piling up. I made our first mail-out on Tuesday from Kuranda, and got to meet the local post office operators who were a little dubious about me sending live insects in the post! Alan was busy collecting animals for filming in the documentary we are working on with the Discovery Channel and Beyond Productions. This is the real reason we moved to Kuranda - to help shoot this doco and expand the business into something that really makes some money - just kidding! We have been visiting north Queensland every year since 2005, and we love it, so we decided to move up for a while to see how we liked living here permanently. This job just helped us to move here sooner rather than later.

Nina and Kristen arrived on Thursday, and straight away we got stuck into sorting things out. There was a flurry of activity that included putting away so many clothes, especially cold weather clothes that I don't think we will ever need in Kurnada! We also sewed some curtains for the kids room and made a dress for Tayen (Saige's dress is yet to be started!) We sanded the walls in the girls room, and gave one wall its first coat of paint (thanks for your help Kristen!) We just had to get rid of that yellow, after all the yellow at Jones Court!

Nina is a wizz on the sewing machine (too bad my machine needs a service and wasn't working right!)



Sanding the yellow walls in Tayen and Saige's room

We also tried to do some touristy things while Nina and Kristen were visiting, so we went to Trinity Beach for a swin and a play in the sand, visited the Butterfly Sanctuary in Kuranda and took a walk to the Barron Falls.


The Barron Falls in dry season



Tayen, Saige and Kristen at the Barron Falls