Home – Good Old Chinwagging

A good old chinwag is a part of the fun of life, telling tales of exploits in travel, of that fishing trip or that thing that happened on the way to the pub. Here’s some of the fun we have had with family, friends and while earning a living. We enjoy telling about it as much as doing it.

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Hope you enjoy

Rainbow Beach 2024

The fishing trip went fine, lots of fish caught. It was a club tournament, our club size rules for legal fish are more difficult than Queensland Fisheries legal. We had three day's fishing, a practice day, to find your feet, look for excellent fishing spots and enjoy yourself. The tournament is over two days, in this case we practiced on ...

A Visit from Grant

Me mate Grant rang and hesitantly asked if he could stay at our place for the night. Now Grant isn’t real good on the using modern equipment like telephones so receiving a phone call from him is a real treat. Grant, a retired mechanic from Wellington, had his own business and retired to a country town four hours south of ...

Buying a House Boat

The phone call came late in the evening. I usually leave calls after eight at night. The phone played that stupid noise I had assigned the ring tone. Who the hell is this bloody phone bloody scam? I thought I'll just turn the bloody thing off. I can't find the phone, must be under my side table. I twisted to ...

Carpet Laying by Gazza

Through my life my close friend and ally in the sometimes serious and sometimes mischief passage of our joint existence has featured in a number of incidents that somehow become known as the Gazza Curse, I will leave the reader to determine whether this is one of them. Anyway, its Gazzas story so I will let him tell it in ...

The Forklift

My son and I own a small flooring store, part of a bigger franchising network. He runs the store and I get to do all the jobs that are not selling flooring. There appear to be a lot of these jobs. Including removing the waste, disposing of equipment and fixing broken things, this tale is about fixing broken things. We ...

Exploding Wheel Barrows

I bought a flat pack shed to replace the pool shed. Long overdue, I hear you say, and you are right. Anyway, I brought it back home to build and found I needed a place to build it. The instructions suggested constructing a 3 metre by 1.8 trestle thingy. It sounded more difficult than putting up the shed. Anyway, I ...

Rainbow Beach 2024

Buying a House Boat

Bulldozers, Golf and Fishing

Getting to Ngawi is a mission the road is simple enough to start with across the plains of the Wairarapa, but just before Lake Ferry, you head east and very quickly are on a sealed road hacked out of the cliffs. The cliffs hug the coast, in places old baches are stuck to the seaward side, waiting for the ocean ...

Unfortunate Incident at Lake Barambah

Who would have thought we would have an unfortunate incident at Lake Barambah as we headed for the weekend fishing trip the said Lake Barambah, or Bjelke Peterson Dam, or whatever you want to call it? This lake and dam is situated about 200 kilometres from our place to the North West. It's one of many irrigation dams in Queensland ...

Just Fishing – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

Sometimes you shouldn't ask questions like "what could possibly go wrong", you might not like the answer. This fishing trip, I was going to call it an adventure but it was never meant to be an adventure I am just fishing trip with the lads. We should have realised there might be more to the trip, knowing that one of ...

The Gazza Curse, Croc what Croc

You know when the lad, Gazza is 5000 kilometres away I don't really expect the curse to strike, but there are sometimes it just does and of course with this curse strikes when you least expect it. We decided after all the hard work of prepping for Christmas, enjoying Christmas and enduring the Christmas recovery period laying languid in shallow ...

The Gazza Curse Strikes Again.

The Gazza Curse Strikes again, flashed through his thoughts as Gazza speed up State Highway One towards "The Skippers" house , he shook his head to make this thought go away, surely not again surely. After getting a dose of food poisoning Gazza found the strength to make his way to his mates house, "The skipper". The purpose of Gazzas ...

First Red Claw Catches

First trip for our camper, we travelled very west of here, to a place called Lake Boondooma . This is a man-made lake which has a huge area for camping. The camping is "bush camping", off grid no power, no phone or Internet. The camper has power on board and we have a solar blanket to help charge the batteries ...

Coast Guard Rescue

Sometimes things just don't go as right as they could and sometimes when that happens particular people are always present. You feel that perhaps, just perhaps they have a little bit influence, it could be some sort of bad air or perhaps it’s a form of karma attached to your relationship with that person. Just maybe, a bit anyway, or ...

Gazza Curse Again

On previous occasions I have professed there are some people that bad things just happen when in their company . Gazza is one of those people, this is an account of such an occasion.He arrived to go fishing. I didn't immediately think of him as the instigator or the catalyst for each event, it's just if you sit back and ...

Off Fishing for the Weekend

Off fishing for the weekend, we had planned this for weeks, the weather was forecast in the high 20's centigrade. Preparation for the trip included me hammering and banging in the shed by me, Ali doing the normal gear reconciliation and quarter master activities. Expectations are high, this will be a great fishing weekend. My garage efforts saw the boat now equipped with a ...

Caught by a Lure

“Bugger it’s got me” The sound of a fisher that’s just been hooked by their own lure. Fishing in the Upper Noosa we only use lures. Mostly traditional lures, although we have tried various squidgy soft baits and this time around the girls have ornate spinner baits. The fact is that most success has been on standard lures. Lures are ...

A Visit from Grant

European Football Cup Final

Elliot Heads our first destination, a small tight campground packed to the gunnels. We arrived in time for the European Football Cup final and the Australian State of Origin NRL(National Rugby League), both on during our stay. We had been promised a big screen event for the European Football Cup Final, and if successful, a repeat for the State of ...

You Know You are in the NT

. You Know You're in the NT

A cop in board shorts, thongs, a fishing shirt, pork pie hat and high vis jerkin stops you because he is clearing the road for a 4wd UTE that's rear axle fell off. Then he asks you to run your hazard lights to warn other traffic, while he nicks down to the scene ...
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Bigger Pot Holes than you

Bang!, Bang! The road is straight for as far as eyes can see in the fading light, immediately in front of us is a concrete structure, like a low bridge or causeway, guarded by a depth measuring pole rising two meters either side of the entrance, disappearing in my rear view mirror heading the opposite direction is a double trailer ...

2007 To the Rock and Back

This is a journal of our trip out west in August and September of 2007. Our plan is to drive to Birdsville following the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks to the Stuart Highway, heading north. We would then stop at Uluru and Alice Springs and continue home via Tennant Creek and Mt Isa. Some short instructions in looking at this diary. We have used Google Maps to provide a complete Route Map. At ...

First time to Stanthorpe

Drove down to Stanthorpe left around 7.30 and went via the office then on south west and we arrived around 11:30. Stopped for gas at Warwick, the guy at the gas station said it has not rained since Christmas. The wind had been blowing from the south and this was wrong for rain it had to come from the west ...

The last leg home

Up late and with a couple of coffees to get us started for the day, we left the Barcoo Hotel in Blackall. Back on the road south, we headed ever closer to home. We decided to stop at another pub, this time it was the Morven Hotel in Morven. The Morven Hotel wasn't in our book, but after a wonderful half ...

Outback Pub Crawl

Today was again east and then south on our way home, since we had stopped at a few pubs on this trip we decided we would follow the "Outback Pubs" brochure we picked up in Charleville and see a few of these characters shown in the brochure. The Walkabout Creek had been one of those pubs, and we looked forward ...

A night at Walkabout Creek

Today was an early start we got up and had a quick breakfast before hitting the blacktop further north to the Three Ways turn off and the turn east onto the Barkly Highway. Mt Isa is around 650km from Tennant Creek, and it would be a full-day drive to get there. The trip was largely uneventful as we drew further ...

Plane on the road, Mungerannie hotel, finished with a spar

We were up reasonably early and we both wandered off for our showers. The morning was freezing and everybody even the rally blokes had their beanies pulled tight down over their ears. They were standing around their brightly painted cars sipping from steaming hot coffee mugs instead of the frosty tubes of beer their drink yesterday afternoon. Conversations were a mixture ...

Duaringa Hotel

It was close to 9am by the time we left Charters Towers on Saturday morning. We are all fuelled up and on the road south to Emerald. Much the same scenery as yesterday, but with a few more cars and less road trains. We drove through Emerald just after 2pm, so we agreed on 3.30 as our "stop and look ...

Off to Charleville

[su_panel background="#c6c6c6" color="c6c6c6" border="5px solid #7a7a7a" shadow="0 1px 2px #eeeeee" radius="0" text_align="left" ]We had spent a delightful half-day in Charleville, we had visited three pubs, watched a bit of test cricket and decided to have a perfectly ordinary meal in the Cattle Camp, our home for the night.I realised I didn't have enough cash to pay for dinner so I ...

A drink in Wentworth

[su_panel background="#c6c6c6" color="c6c6c6" border="5px solid #7a7a7a" shadow="0 1px 2px #eeeeee" radius="0" text_align="left" ] The Pub I went into the pub and stood at the counter. There were three middle-aged guys sitting on bar stalls around the rectangular shaped bar. The third Ashes test was showing on the telly, Steve Waugh was in batting. There was nobody behind the bar. I ...

Christmas Island for Christmas

The reason for travelling to Christmas Island at Christmas is to see the red crab migration, it hadn't occurred to me to study this in any great detail before leaving and so I wasn't really sure what to expect. If I was honest , I was probably hoping for a bit of a fishing trip, with an island in ...

Sun Moon Lake Here We Come

After my assignment in Taipei Al and I decided to brave the wilds of inner Taiwan and find somewhere to spend a few days doing very little other than a some walking and perhaps some bike riding. Our destination is Sun Moon Lake in the province of Taichung. An exciting way to travel is to take the train, and there ...

Tawali Resort

I am not sure how we ended up on our recent trip to the Tawali Resort in PNG. It was a complete blast I cant believe I have had the opportunity to do these things. We went with the Lae Explorers club which in there are own words are a "Bunch of Drinkers with a Travel Problem". Twelve great people, ...

Christmas in Lae

Not the first place you think of for Christmas, however a choice we really enjoyed. Would we do it again. You bet! ...

2011 Rarotonga

This is the holiday that we weren't really sure why we were going other than Al's sister and brother-in-law were going, which in itself is reason enough. But Rarotonga! This turned out one of the best island holidays we have had, we meet a great bunch of people through family and greeted and treated above and beyond by some of Chris and Barbs ...

Phuket for my Birthday

Little more to say, as a treat for my sixtieth Birthday my wife was taking me to Thailand, I had no more details than that so it was a case of sitting back and enjoying the ride. I kept a small journal of events which I am sharing in this series of posts. ...

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