Birthday MONTH!

November 2018:

 A month to remember!!

After 46 years you might think, I have had enough of birthdays?
No way!  Life is too short!  Celebrate EVERYTHING!!
Some years ago I stopped celebrating BirthDAY's, and started BirthWEEK!  This year I stepped it up a notch to Birthday MONTH!!!

I started birthday celebrations in great Derby style!!  Having been away for 3 birthdays, it was great to be back on the oval with my Boot Campers.  We raised over $1,000 for Jo, who is off to Manila with Hair Aid #savingtheworldonehaircutatatime !!  Followed (of course) by dinner at the pub!

After a great night out with friends, we both woke a little 'tired', but I insisted I'd be fine, I wanted to catch a Birthday Barra!!

My 3rd barra for the day: 92cm fatty!!

It was a hot & humid morning.  When we first got down the river I was second guessing what we were doing there.  We both were dehydrated already, the mud was roasting and the air was still.  The dogs didn't like the heat either, they kept trying to go for a swim...croc's live here!!

But it didn't take long before we were both on...at the same time!!
It happened so quick, I hadn't even got camera's out.  Having not had a computer for a while, I have gotten out of the habit of wearing my GoPro.  So a couple of photos of both fish on my phone, before releasing one, and getting more organised.
Here's the rest, from our headcam's.

After celebrating my Birthday FISH a little too much, we then started our LONG trip to England!!

John Marven Senior also celebrates his birthday in November, so sharing the love we jumped on a plane to be with him

Broome flight was delayed: thankfully we had heaps of friends on same flight to celebrate with!

We left home early Friday morning.  2.5 hour drive to the Broome airport
        Broome flight delayed, lucky I choose 5 hours in Perth instead of ONE!!
                                                           2.5 hour flight to Perth.
                                                           4 hours in airport bar ;)
                                                           11 hours flight!!!  Slept a lot of that!
                                                           2 hour stop over, looked at the cool shops
                                                           6.5 flight, getting uncomfortable now!!
                                                           Arrived in England Saturday morning.
                                                           Shuttle to train station
                                                           2 Trains to Stevenage!
                                                           BUS to pub closest to John's family.
                                                           Quick pint.
                                                            Walk with huge luggage in the cold couple of blocks.
                                                            TWO FULL DAYS TRAVEL!
                                                            Arrived destination (Johnno's family) 5pm Saturday
                                                           Sunday = JM seniors Birthday!!!
                                                           Timing is everything!!

Our first day in England was John Marven Seniors BIRTHDAY!

The whole reason for our spontaneous trip!

 Our ONE WEEK flying trip to England was totally for family visiting, but I am thankful that Johnno's fab sister had our second day there (Monday) off work, so she took us sight seeing (aka to a pub further away then their locals).

2nd day in England: sight seeing Cambridge

It was too cold to drink beer, so we tried Mulled Wine.

I had cocktails for lunch!!

 The rest of the week was spent hanging out with Johnno's family :)

There was FROST most mornings!

This Kimberley Girl isn't used to that!!

John Marven Senior, with his Aussie parrot TapTap

Stuffing ourselves on our last full day in England;

Hotdogs, coffee and CHEESE!!

 Wait, did I say our last day in England?
I'm not sure how it happened.  But we ended up at the airport on Sunday morning.  Only to work out while sitting around waiting for check-in to open, that we weren't leaving until MONDAY!!
Ripped ourselves off an extra day with the family!
Instead of navigating the shuttle, trains and buses back, and back again the next morning, we booked into one of the airport hotels.  Spent the day sleeping off our slight hangover, before heading to the hotel bar, then dinner.  Not having to get up early the next day, as we were right across the road from departures, and had already worked out where we needed to go!

My last English pie, at the hotel.

Waiting at the airport 4 hours too early for flight after a 10am checkout.

Arrive Airport SUNDAY morning.

Checkout from hotel 10am MONDAY

  2hours in bar before flight check-in opens

  3 hours walking around airport before flight.

  6.5 hour flight

  2 hours waiting

  11 hour flight, that was uncomfortable!!!

Arrive Perth 6pm Tuesday

  45min TAXI to Armadale, Spend night with John's Mum.

Wednesday: Taxi back to aiport

                     more waiting at bar

                    2.5 hour flight, arriving Broome 6pm

                    Stayed night in Broome, too late and tired to drive another 2.5hours home.

Morning shopping for house stuff 2.5hour drive.

Arrive home THURSDAY afternoon!

Back in the land of the Kangaroo!!!

 Our stop-over between long flights was in Doha (we flow with Qatar).  At the bar, we had 2 hours, I got talking to the bartender.  Bragging about how I was going home to the heat, she rolled her eyes at me.  I guess it's hot there too, if you get to leave the airport!  Anyway, she was fascinated about Australia, saying she wanted to go there one day.
Bartender: 'That's where the Kangaroos are from hay'
Me: Yip, they are everywhere!
Her: Really everywhere.
Me: Hell yes, everywhere!
Her: Oh wow, that is so cool, I can't wait to get there.
Me: Um, I live in the country, maybe they aren't EVERYWHERE, not in the cities.
Her: (eye roll, stupid bloody tourist) yah of course.
hahaha
Walk out the doors of Perth Aiport, there is a big Christmas Roo!  Fabulous!!

HOME!! Very Jetlagged!!

 Felt very sick, Jetlagged, totally out of sorts on return.  Couple of Sun Salutations on Cable Beach (and coffee), helped to ground me, back in my country!

WARM!!  Coffee on Cable beach!

On but wait there's more!!!  This is birthday MONTH after all!!

Arriving back in Derby Thursday afternoon, after a morning of shopping, but not having to go back to work until Monday, we decided to satisfy our fishing cravings!  It had been 2 whole weeks since I caught my Birthday Barra!

99cm Beauty!!

Fabulous welcome home fish!

Finding the Barra: our way!

It's all part of the adventure of life!

Sunsetting on a super hot & humid day...after I caught a barra!

We have been home, back in Derby, for over 4 months already.  We got off to a slow start on the fishing front.  Going back to all our old favourite spots was not working for us, everything has changed in the 3 years we have been away.  It was back to exploring and hunting out new holes.  Chuck in the fact that I work every second weekend, and get very jealous if Johnno goes fishing without me, so that cut our fishing times in half.  But a few months down the track and we are finding some fish again!

Johnno started it off with this beauty Mulloway.

As always we do everything the hard way.  Don't talk to enough people, like to work everything out for ourselves. Johnno is still hell bent on JUST fly fishing, but I twist his arm to flick with me every now and then...so he has caught a few fish lately as well ;)

Johnno joined me on the 'dark side'', flicking lures got him catching fish again!

After my big iMac died (for good this time), I was back using my 10 year old Laptop.  It didn't handle GoPro footage so well, well at all actually, so YouTube clips were out for a while. Then we got out of the habit of even wearing our GoPro's...

Once I finally decided, my new computer of choice has been a Windows XPS laptop...you never know when you will need to take your whole computer with you!!  It's taking some getting used to, and I still haven't brought a professional movie making program, just going with the very basic on photo's program for now, until I research all the new stuff out there.

So we started finding some fish.

Proper Dark Siding it!!  BAIT fishing!!

 My fish count has slowed down dramatically since leaving Exmouth, even though I AM counting catfish hahaha!  At the start of this year I did some goal setting: 8 goals for 2018  with one of those goals being catch 800 fish!!  In Exmouth this could actually be a hard, but still realistic target, I was at....I had to look up the number, and am a bit shocked!!  I was going to say over 300, but I was only at 262 when we left Exmouth in the middle of the year.  That number has jumped to 312, man I catch a lot of CATFISH!!! hahahaha
Anyway, for every 10 catfish we catch, we manage to catch some barra as well!  There's good days and bad days, like everyone's fishing...don't you have bad days??
I had a good day catching 3 barra while Johnno only caught catfish (oh yah, and that one barra at the start of the day 😜 ).  Then the table turns, the day I caught NOTHING, Johnno caught these 3 beauties within a couple of hours.

62cm dinner!

Long fight to get this Queenie in, even though there was some hard pulling to keep it out of snags and reef!

First Derby MJ

Then we have weekends like this one.  MAN ITS HOT!!  Barra like the hot we tell ourselves, so we will brave it out!  I had to work Saturday morning, so Johnno got everything ready and picked me up with the tinny in tow.  But as stated before, we are still exploring, learning where the Barra live these days.  So our first stop, where we had planned to fish all day, was a fizzer.  We got hot and bothered, and with no fish signs at all, decided to move on.  Second spot, too many people, obviously a good spot hahaha, but like it said 'we like to do things the hard way'!  3rd spot, so promising, but also so late in the day, we were a long way from home by then.

I pulled out this very dark, fresh water barra, late Saturday afternoon to save the day!

Hot and bothered after just a few hours in the mid day heat, we went home to plan better for the next day....we should have planned better!

Admittingly it was MY idea!!  Big low tides meant we would have heaps of time to WALK around the reef at Blue Holes.  We looked on Google Earth and were super excited...maybe two too many beers excited.

Sunday, up early, COFFEE!!!  Yah lets go, we got everything we need in the car from yesterday.  Grab some breakfast and lunch from servo on way past...should have stayed in bed!!  Man it we HOT and Humid today!!!  But trying to fight our way through the Mangroves, with a hangover, and 99% humidity (it was so), I thought I was going to faint!!  Anyway's, we made it to the water, and I caught a Barra!!  Wahoo!!!

Then the sandflies started attaching, and it was a mad, even more humid, dash back to the car!

I've been hiding in the aircon all afternoon, rehydrating!!!  My ankles and wrists are swollen from bites.   Oh but did I mention...I caught a Barra!!

Back Beyond the Boabs!

I ❤ DERBY!

Couple of my favourite baby boabs.

We moved back to Derby...I missed the Boabs!!
The river called me back...or maybe it was the local ladies.
Oh yah!  Feeling the love when I was told I had been Sung back to Derby!!!  

Don't care how I got here, just glad we are!  I've missed my trees!

I have a new love for Baby Boabs!  They are so beautiful!

Tree on the left has nuts, right Kites...I love them too!!!

This is an infant boab.

Dogs weren't so happy about looking at the boabs in the middle of the day.

Serious mum, it's too hot!

Another day, another lot of Boabs.  

Shame Charlie got so excited running around the boabs...no water to swim in here!

NO Swimming here!  Everyone doing what they love...Charlie playing in the mud!

My new favourite photo!!  It's my screen saver at work.
Has it all, Beautiful Boabs, blue sky, and open space!
My heaven!

  No Filter Needed!

Another fav photo, baby boab and wide open space!

We thought you were bringing us feed?

 Ooohhhh these calves!  I just wanted to take them home!!  I kept stopping to take photos of the Boabs, they kept walking up to the car.  But not close enough for me to huge them?  Don't they know I love cows?

I'm such a twitcher!

Ok fav photo number 3!

Oh yah, and this happened ...

1.1m's Mulloway

Dinner for LOTS of meals!

Birds Eye View of Exmouth

Johnno's Xmas Present 2018: we finally used the gift certificates I gave him!

Keeping it simply, (because I have just sorted the first 600 photos to make this blog!!), and have another 900+ photos they gave me, still to look at!!

Birds Eye View is a company in Exmouth WA, run by the very fun & energetic owner Gavin: meeting Gav is worth the trip on it's own!!  

Tiny (like the smallest planes in the world!!) microlights, fly from Exmouth Airport just out of town, over the Ranges, to the amazing Ningaloo reef.  We saw so much in the water, but sorry I took my short lens for scenic photos, so didn't get any good shots of the Whales, Whalesharks, Sharks, Turtles, and HUGE balls of bait fish we passed over.

I'll tell the story by photos:

Johnno getting the safety talk from Gav...What could go wrong?

View from my seat, we are all ready to go!

I had my Nervous Giggle going on as we took off, my poor pilot had to listen to me for the first 10 minutes before I settled down.  As we left the ground I was suddenly VERY aware of how very small the microlights ARE!!!

I suddenly felt VERY SMALL!
and our Microlite sudden felt very small as well!!

Johnno was grinning the whole hour!

Exmouth Marina

Both Microlights had GoPro's taking photos...so I have another 900 photos to look at yet!

Crossing the ranges.

Start of the West Side of Exmouth WA
My photos do not do it justice, the whole hours was stunning!

Tandibidi, Exmouth WA

Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth WA

West Side, looking over rangers to Gulf/Town side.

Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth WA
From microlite, Birds Eye View.
Notice Johnno the 'little' dot.

Neds/Mesa Camp
Camping spot on Ningaloo Reef,
in Cape Range National Park
Exmouth WA

Sun starting to go down behind us.

Thanks Johnno down there, checking out the Sharks, Dolphins, Turtles, Dougongs!

Turning to head for home as the sunsets behind us.

Cape Range National Park looked amazing with the sun setting behind us!

Exmouth Gulf ahead with sun setting behind was so beautiful!

Such amazing colours!
  Birds Eye View

 A link to their website:  Birds Eye View