I know its been a long time since I last put anything up here, and I cant really remember what i did between the last entry and christmas. I'm pretty sure we just worked and shopped for presents for people on either side of the globe. I think we managed to get everyone's presents without having to send anything by post as well, which was nice. God bless the intyweb thing.

 

Worked pretty hard leading up to Xmas - when the boss suggested that this was a busy time of year, he wasn't joking. Average daily attendances went from about 80people to 120. He did add an extra person onto the rota from 10am till 7pm, but only on weekdays, which makes weekends hell obviously. The record for 2006 was something like 145 attendances in one day - sort of pales into cpomparison with the record of 420people in Mayday A&E department, but this place is so little that it seems so much worse. So saying, the facilities are better and nursing staff are infinitely better trained and have much better attitudes than the average English nurse. Getting CT scans is easy and orthopaedic registrars actually believe you when you say you need their help. One thing not so good about the system here is that so much of the outpatient work here is private and so surgeons and paediatricians are always on call for their private patients and readily admit them to the ward when they're getting paid the readies. Guess who has to do all their monkey work for them though! There are huge numbers of people who turn up saying 'Dr So-and-so told me to come to be admitted' wih no letter from said Consultant and no advice as to what they want doing with them. Also, because a lot of specialist work (bypass grafts, valve replacements etc) get done in sydney, when they need rehab / respite, they get sent back to Coffs for a period on the ward. Now, in the UK that gets organised by the people who will be looking after them on the ward when they get there and they see them on the ward when a bed becomes available. Here, they just get sent up when a plane happens to be flying past and dumped in the ED. Again, guess who has to do all the monkey work.  Of couse, being the happy season as well means that all the drug addicts / alcoholics have been hard at it and now they all want to kill themselves and / or each other. Soon after they kill us.

 

Worked all over christmas but had the evenings off to have festivities with Adrian, MJ, Sarah, Fraser, Bej, Sarah, Emma and her boyfriend Chris (does every Emma have a Chris?). Christmas Day dinner was an absurd feast done with as much Ozzy-ness as possible for a group containing only 2 Ozzies (one of which is fully Dutch by heritage) - we ate Crayfish (BBQd), Kangaroo (BBQd), Emu (BBQd) and Crocodile (BBQd) for starters. Then for mains we had a giant Ham (baked!), sausages (BBQd) all the trimmings and some green stuff that i gather is called salad. We opened our pressies before dinner - I have graduated from CDs to DVDs - I got 4 DVDs, all surfing movies as well as two books describing the intimate details of every good surf spot on the Australian coast - confusing when your new religion has more than one bible!

 

Boxing Day was again spent at work, but the evening provided probably the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen. If anyone has ever had a better backdrop for a game of beach cricket than ours that evening, then they deserve Australian citizenship. It was one little activity we were really looking forward to, to cap off an awesome Ozzie christmas cooked on the BBQ and it couldn't have been more memorable - check out the photos - none of them have been photoshopped at all, I promise!

 

Boxing Day marked the start of our holiday and our last night with Bej and Sarah before they headed home to NZ to get married. Sweetly, they did some shuffling and invited us to the wedding at the last minute, but there was no way we could get there for less than 4000dollars so we opted to just see some photos instead. Got a great phone call from them while they were in the 'wedding car' on the way from ceremony to reception which was nice, just a shame that we got it while at work!  Needless to say the girls shed some tears and there were some big manly hugs at the end of the evening.

 

The mammoth trip up the coast started the next morning - first stop Byron Bay - couple of nights there and days spent wandering shops and sitting on the beach. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor the whole week - overcast most of the time that we weren't in the car and raining a bit more than we'd have liked. Typing this sitting on the deck at 3pm looking out to sea in just a pair of board shorts reminds me what normal weather is though. Just missing a beer.....

 

Noosa provided the third evenings accommodation - a stunning town north of Brisbane with a large French influence. Its allegedly the most sought after postcode in all of Australia and its obvious why. There are many rivers and lagoons all through the town with huge waterfront houses all with their own jetties and large motor-cruisers moored outside. Serious money makes this town the Knightsbridge of Australia - the high street is small but only has the big international names on it. Went for a surf in Noosa as well and had my first brush with nasty marine creatures - Bluebottle jellyfish, what we call Portuguese Man-o-wars i Europe. Paddled through a wave trying to get out the back and felt sudden burning down my left arm. Went back to the beach and saw hundreds of the little bastards washed up on the sand. About an hour later the pain had gone but big linear welts appeared on he inside of my arm. They're still there now in fact. Apparently they've closed the beaches in Surfers Paradise this week because of all the jellyfish - doesn't bode well for the surf competition going on up there next week. Oh, and did I mention that we're going up to Surfer's on Monday? Not a coincidence in fact, simply the first place we're seeing Lucy and Paul when she gets over here.

 

One night there and off to Fraser Island, the biggest sand island in the world, formed from sand blown north from New South Wales and south from Queensland. Its basically a big World Heritage Site that is used by big Australians in their big 4x4s as an off-road theme park. Fortunately we had a Land Rover Defender that coped with all the ridiculous elements we threw at it, but it wasn' the most comfortable way to travel. Fraser's Mitsubishi Challenger was much more luxurious with its traction control, soft suspension and air conditioning. MJ and Sarah spent a considerable amount of time in there especially when Adrian was driving! We did get stuck once however in very deep sand as we came off the beach and a I suspect a little bit of clutch was sacrificed in getting us out. The lakes on Fraser are mostly freshwater and truly amazing; the whitest sand you've ever seen and such clear water to swim in. We couldn't swim in the sea water around Fraser because of the currents and Tiger sharks - advice I was going to heed carefully. The hotel was nice enough and we even had a hot-tub on the deck to sit in and drink Lychee Martinis (Fraser...) and bubbly stuff.

 

On the drive back south, we stayed in Brisbane for a night and then went to a wildlife sanctuary where we saw our first Koalas and a wallaby tried to box with Sarah. The best bit was the way MJ didn't try and get the Wallaby off her daughter, but (eventually) managed to get a photo of the assault. Outstanding.

 

Fraser sloped back off to Byron for some Salsa classes and the out-laws went home to the UK leaving us to get back into our tedious routine. Light at the end of the tunnel is Lucy and Paul coming out nest week - off to Surfer's and then 3nights in Byron before coming back to Sawtell to do some diving, surfing, wine tasting etc....

 

We're both looking forward to coming home in March, but are in the process of renewing our Visas so we can work here again from April to July. March should be a big month for us with my final MRCS exam (again), Skiing and job interviews for August. For you who know what I'm talking about, there's an ST2 post with full run-through training to CCT for Paed Surgery - never to be offered again - so I'm keeping all fingers and toes crossed for that one. MMC has fucked us all this year and its just another thing that makes life that little bit more difficult to relax in to. Hopefully some wuestions will be answered in April and then the fallout will begin. I just hope Lou and I are lucky enough to get what we want, where we want it. Being married to another doctor looks like it may cause problems if we actually want to see each other occasionally, and even more problems if we actually want to live together. Heaven forbid we have children and want to bring them up together.......