Their participation in the 128th ACU has increased their community spirit and personal confidence level. Both boys achieved rank with Willy becoming a lance corporal and then a full corporal and Sam becoming a lance corporal. First-aid, navigation, bush skills, leadership development, discipline and responsibility have seen the boys take out some awards and play a part in many community activities. They have been in honour guards at all the Anzac days, Remembrance days and Vietnam Veterans days since joining up. They have also undertaken many training courses with the Army at the Enoggera and Greenslopes base in Brisbane and had a lot of fun as well.
Being a Rugby League follower and a great fan of the Brisbane Broncos, I was very happy to take up a friends offer of going to the final Broncos game for this year to see them play the Canberra Raiders, another team I follow. My friend who attends regularly could not go that week and so for $50 I was able to go with my football mad son and daughter.
The game was extra special apart from being the last home game, several of the Broncos players were leaving retiring after long careers, the team needed to win the game to make the finals, it was the 20th anniversary of the Brisbane Broncos and it gave me a chance to see for the first time the new stadium that replaced the old Lang park stadium. With free train transport to Brisbane provided for all ticket holders I jumped at the chance.
The game proved to be a real nail biter but the Broncos came through making a fantastic day out for myself and a couple of football mad kids. The Stadium is a fantastic venue and is a credit to Brisbane.
August 15th - our anniversary, a chance for a cheap accommodation package and we were on a quick 2 day retreat with the kids to coolum just to relax and chill out.
Tell us about a time when you were brave.
Submitted by Hops.
In 1999 I was living in Thailand with my family at a place called Sanpatong in the North of Thailand. I had been living in Thailand since 1990 and worked managing a camera lens factory in Lumphun. About 120 meters behind our house was a fruit factory that was owned by a Taiwanese company. They had been maturing fruit with the use of hundreds of tons of fertilizes and this exploded when somebody dropped a cigarette butt where they should not have been smoking. The explosion was felt 8kms away, levelled over 400 houses and caused damage to buildings up to a 5km radius. Over 40 people were killed and hundreds injured. We lost most of the house and the children were slightly injured but we later found out that we were lucky because a Temple that was between us and the factory blocked some of the blast.
After the explosion occurred I got my family to a sport oval near the house for evacuation and medical attention and was then told that there would probably be more explosions because of the stored fertilizer. Myself and my neighbours decided to go back anyway as there were still many people injured and unaccounted for. We worked all that day helping rescue services and for the next week while my wife and kids were with our relatives I stood watch over the remains of our house to deter looters and tour buses from Bangkok that arrived every 10 minutes..
In August 2000 I returned to Australia after nearly 11 years to make a new home. Missing a train bombing in 1989, taking cover under a car in Sanam Luang from gunfire during the coup in 1992, evacuating from shellfire while working near the Burmese border, a serious road accident for my son in 1994, Dengue fever in 1998 and finally the explosion was enough to send me back to Australia from my wife's home country and a place that I had at the time spent about a third of my life.
You can be brave when you are single but that changes with family responsibilities. We still visit every few years or so and will eventually retire there.
My wife Amporn has finally made it to become a proud member of the family of Australian citizens. After 18 years of marriage, 3 children and seven years living in Australia, Amporn was sworn in as an Aussie on the 10th of July.
Not really any extra benefits than she had as a permanent resident but more responsibilities and she can at least now have a vote and carry an Australian passport. The extended family as well as our children were there to watch and celebrate with her.
My apologies for the poor video footage but the lighting was terrible and you know, camera phones like the light.
Congratulations Amporn.
The last few months have been very busy and I was looking for something relaxing to do with the family. Just of late I have had a couple of free tickets for the cinema, and while I was sitting in my luxurious cinema chair I started to think about those great days gone of the double feature at the drive in. I know in my area they have all disappeared but I thought maybe somewhere else in Australia there are some still open. So I searched the Internet and was at first disappointed to learn that in the 1980's Australia had over 300 drive ins in operation but now only had about 20. Further research however gave me a name of a drive in at a place called Wonga just North West of Gympie in Queensland that was not only still open but was rated as one of Australia's best drive in experiences. A quick visit to Google maps and I soon discovered that this is only a 1 hour drive from where I live. Wow my kids will actually be able to experienced a real drive in!
The Wonga drive in is actually located on a piece of farmers land out in the middle of nowhere, and has been built by a guy out of parts he has bought from other closing drive ins all over the country. Even though he has done what we all dream about in opening a drive in in his back yard, don't get me wrong, this is no small time operation. He has two operational screens, a fully operational cafe that puts other drive ins to shame, a choice of window speakers or FM sound, rented chairs, swings for the kids and a cartoon before the double feature. Car loads are only $25 and the same movies that are currently showing at the cinema are being billed.
Getting to the drive in was a bit of an adventure but with the use of my GPS we arrived right on opening time. Visiting the Cafe we found the food and confectionary was well priced and very well made. Burgers, hot dogs, choc top ice creams are all there as well as juke box and pinball. Deck chairs are available for $2 for those who wish to sit out in the open air. The owner is now making a third screen and field and plans to have a fourth in the future. As we settled in to watch the feature, I felt like it was 1982 and time had stood still. A mickey mouse cartoon and two features later we still had a 1 hour drive to home, but none of us cared as the experience at Wonga drive in makes it all worth while. Wonga has its own website and 24 hour information line. Visit www.wongadrivein.com.au for details.
The days events included shopping, ten pin bowling, playing cricket in the rain, eating out and of course a cake in the evening.
Here is a small video of Anne's super day with her super family!
Hope You Had A Great Day Anne!
What do Aussies and their dogs do in Summer in Australia?
Hit the Beach!
Even Jazz loves surfing almost as good as skateboarding.
Christmas was approaching fast, .... what to do, where to go for the family holiday. A work colleague over heard me say that I had picked up a family tent very cheap and suggested I go to one of her favourite camping places.... North Stradbroke Island. Hey the boys are both seasoned campers and bush men, and I used to do camping in my youth so why not? After convincing my wife, we packed up for the big trip. How was it possible that we could not fit everything in the car...... after all we were only going for four days. Hmmmm I need to eliminate what wasn't important. Now my colleague told me that the island was limited for supplies so we packed army ration packs, bags of instant noodles and a ton of canned food. That was important. The tent was important so it stayed in the car. Then I saw the problem.... my wife needed to lose one of the three bags of clothes she was taking. So, the boot went down finally with some brute force, the three kids and my wife climbed aboard and off we went.
3 hours later after driving through rain that limited my vision to 3 metres we arrived at the ferry terminal to find that the booking I had made was lost. An hour later we were on the top of the ferry with the car parked below pretending to enjoy the trip with 60 nott winds lashing us about. Staying posative we arrived at the campsite an hour later and between down pours of rain we managed to amuse other campers by attempting to put up the tent in a howling wind. The instructions looked easy enough ......... Just a small hint to all prospective campers out there, when you camp on a sand Island take some better pegs than those little metal pegs that come with new tents. Using our initative we got the tent up with a combination of ropes, house bricks, sticks etc. Settled in we had the comfort of knowing that at least we were well stocked up with food, and thats better than something silly like chairs taking up the room in the car.
After asking the ranger where I could buy some ice, he directed me to a shop up the road where I discovered that all the food we had brought was locally available. Oh well, next time we will know better..... Lets stay positive!
Hoping to wash all the bad luck away we headed to the showers and I must admit I was feeling positive until I was coming back and was told that my youngest daughter had succummed to that old camping accident that we have all endured, called "tripping over the tent rope in the dark" and had hurt her arm.
While it was not broken she stayed in a sling overnight and then we spent the next day at several clinics getting x-rays etc. Ahh the family camping life.................
Perhaps not an ideal start, but things got better and North stradbroke Island is certainly worth a trip away.
