On our own

The event of Nina and Kristen flying out of Cairns marked the first real length of time that we would be on our own. Our next visit from family members was not scheduled until late November. It also marked the end of any real house redecorating too, as Alan was about to start filming, and I had two kids running around ready to get their hands into the paint tins!

We took a trip to Cape Tribulation for the day (a 2.5 hour drive from Kuranda). The whole way there, Tayen kept asking all about cassowaries, and how many we would see, and where to look for them, and what they eat - the questions were endless, and we had to keep reiterating that it would be very special if we saw a cassowary, but we probably wouldn't see one.

We had to eat our words. Walking along the rainforest boardwalk with Alan and Tayen in the lead, and me trailing behind with Saige in the pusher, we were told by some fellow walkers that there were two cassowaries just ahead. Sure enough, there was a male cassoway with his chick (the chick would have reached up to my hips!) They were both meandering around, walking either side of the board walk and crossing over from time to time. It was magical, and only got a little tense after around 10 minutes when we started walking again. Earlier when I had been quite close to the chick, I could hear it making little noises that sounded similar to a horse whinnying in the distance. When I moved the pusher forward, the back wheel started squeaking, sounding very similar to the chick. The male cassowary took a bit of interest in me and the pusher, and I had to slowly lift the back wheels of the pusher while we walked away.

Being in a 3 bedroom house, we are fortunate to have the master bedroom, with the girls sharing another bedroom, and a spare bedroom/playroom. As most of the time we won't have people staying with us, the playroom dominated and became disorganised very quickly. I had to find a way to get rid of the mess and make it easy for Tayen and Saige to help pack up their toys when they had finished. I regretted not shopping at IKEA for storage solutions before leaving Victoria, since the nearest IKEA to Kuranda is in Brisbane, 2 days travel away! So after countless internet searches for ideas and visiting many stores, I finally found some cubed shelves to do the trick. I also needed to go to Bunnings to get some storage boxes to fit nicely into the shelves. Tayen and Saige love our local Bunnings, as it has little trollies that they can push around. Bunnings also provides ample opportunities for some impromtu dancing in the aisles!

We've aslo been out to Malanda, which is around 1.5 hours south west of Kuranda. We went on a rainforest walk where a scrub turkey followed us the entire way (about 1 km walk). Tayen had brought her toy mobile phone whith her on the walk, and it was funny to see her taking photos of the turkey with her phone - how quickly they pick up the technology, even though for her it's just pretend!



Alan showing the girls a Prickly Forest Skink

We've been doing lots of activities with Tayen and Saige. We've joined the local playgroup, enrolled Tayen into Kindergarten for next year (a year earlier than she would be going in Victoria - she's growing up too fast for me!) and attending orientation sessions, started swimming lessons and have been going to story time at the library every week, followed by craft time. Both the girls have adapted really well to life at the Forest House, though are missing family and friends back in Vic - Tayen keeps asking when Caitlin and Annie will arrive, "They're taking such a long time!" she says.



Tayen and Saige enjoying morning tea at Playgroup

 Ok, enough of the large posts! It's taken me 2 hours to do this one with all the video uploads, so stay tuned for some short, sharp, undaunting entries!

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



The Forest House

It's been a month now since we have moved into our Forest House! It has been quite eventful, starting with our arrival at about 9:30pm on the 11th September.

The plan was that Alan would drive our Honda up to Kuranda, taking around 3 days to get there. After a rather stressful time packing all of the animals into the car (including 45 reptiles and frogs, and more than 100 insects, spiders, centipedes, scorpions and other invertebrates!), Alan left at around 4pm on the 9th September. I was flying up with my sister Tamara to give me a hand, as I was travelling with Tayen and Saige, 2 car seats, Indi the Beagle and all our luggage including lilos and sleeping bags as we were moving into an empty house. The flight was uneventful, and we arrived in Kuranda at around 9:30pm.

I was out on the front lawn taking Indi out for a toilet break (I wasn't sure the fences were all secure, so I had to keep her on the lead), when I heard a car slow down out the front of our house. This wasn't unusual, since I had already discovered a speed bump on the road just outside our house, so passing cars were slowing anyway. But this one was different - it had its indicator on. I was surprised (and overjoyed!) to find that Alan had arrived the same night we did! He had reached his intended destination for the night at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so he decided to keep going. It turns out that his journey had been quite eventful, since Google maps had directed him down long stretches of gravel road, which were dangerously slippery from all the rain that had fallen in the last week. He drove for 60km slipping and sliding along unsealed road, knowing that if he stopped he would get bogged. He also had a flat tyre, and a cracked windscreen. Oh, and the car was filthy!

Our Forest House (with the filthy Honda!)

With an empty house, there wasn't much we could do, besides clean in preparation for all our furniture, and look after the animals. We started painting our hallway, which was a horrible dark yellow colour. We are painting it cream to match the rest of the house, and also chose some paint for the kids bedroom and the playroom/spare room.

Our shipping container was due to arrive on the Monday or Tuesday, but when it still hadn't arrived on Tuesday morning, and we hadn't hear anything, we called the freight company to discover all our furniture would be arriving on Wednesday. So we had a few lazy days having breakfast in town, exploring our new home, and generally getting sick of not having a chair to sit on! Our lovely neighbour Pam, who runs the Fruit bat rescue house, leant us a few chairs until ours arrived.

When our shipping container arrived, it was all hands on deck to unload it as fast as possible. Up until then, we had mild weather, but the day that our furniture arrived was hot and unloading was hard work, especially up all those stairs!
Tamara had been a great help, and we took some time out to visit Palm Cove, a beautiful beach only half an hour away.

Tamara was going home early on Friday morning, but we had more help arriving on Thursday night - Robbie was coming up for a long weekend of unloading the shipping container, painting and unpacking. The container was practically empty by the end of Friday, so the next job was arranging the furniture and setting up the house - the fun was just beginning!

Where have we been?!

I haven't been on this site for almost 3 years, so this blog is not exactly up to date. But that's ok, because I now hope to post regularly on what's going on in the lives of the Hendersons!

Since my last entry, a few things have happened!

In 2008, Alan's mum Joycie was diagnosed with cancer. To show support and to help raise money for the Cancer Council, Caitlin, Robbie and I all shaved our heads. We collectively raised around $1500. As it turned out, Joycie didn't loose all of her hair from her Chemo treatment, but we didn't mind that we had! Joyice responded really well to her treatment, and her cancer has gone into remission.

Caitlin and I with our shaved heads

Our business Minibeast Wildlife was growing in leaps and bounds. We had begun to breed minibeasts to sell online as pets, and they were very popular. We also had a lot of school bookings coming in, so by the middle of 2009, we had 3 casual staff working for us.

In February of 2009, we had a new baby daughter! Saige Jessie was born at around 12:40pm, and about 14 hours after her cousin Fynn in Alice Springs. Saige completed our family of four girls, and did her part to give Alan his own little team of CATS (Caitlin, Annie, Tayen and Saige). This 'phenomenon' was discovered by my sister Sonia after Tayen was born, and knowing that Alan had yet another girl on the way, we just had to complete the puzzle!

Saige at only a few hours old

At the end of 2009, we sold our house in Bacchus Marsh. We decided not to buy a new house straight away, but had trouble finding a rental until 3 days before we had to be out of our house! We moved into a lovely place in Bacchus Marsh in March 2010 after 7 years in our previous house. It was a little emotional closing the door for the last time, with so many memories that had been created there.

Our old house at 8 Jones Court

After a few months of looking to buy the perfect house in Bacchus Marsh, we decided on a whim to have a look at houses in far north Queensland. One thing led to another, and we purchased a house in Kuranda, in the rainforests north of Cairns. We intended to put our house up for rent for at least 6 months before we would consider moving into it, but opportunity knocked on our door, and we found ourselves with work in Kuranda. Our business Minibeast Wildlife secured 3 months of animal wrangling for a Discovery Science documentary called Monster Bug Wars. Alan had worked with them previously last year with the museum and Beyond Productions contacted him again about shooting 6 more episodes. This meant that we would leave behind our jobs, family and friends. After 11 years at the Museum for Alan, and 10 years for me, it was a tough decision to leave. It also meant that we would be leaving Caitlin and Annie behind. Caitlin is in the middle of her screenwriting course, and had moved in with her boyfriend Adam, so she is quite settled in Victoria, and we were confident that she could survive without us! (not that we can cope very well without her!) Annie is nearing the end of year 12, the crucial final year of high school, and wouldn't be able to join us either (another fact that made our moving very difficult) so it was Alan, myself, Tayen and Saige that made the journey into the unknown. We figured that sometimes you just have to give it a go, so we packed up our lives, and moved to the Forest House!