Note on access/reading lists

Just a quick note that I'm not adding many people to my DW reading list at present (until the filters are back, basically), because I know my own tendency to procrastination, and a long reading list is BAD BAD BAD. (Of course, this way I can still procrastinate by going to my circle page & clicking through directly to journals, but y'know. Takes more effort.)

I'm also mostly not adding people to my access list, because I don't yet know what I'm going to do with that. (Current exception being people I already know IRL.)

So, yeah, this probably does mean that every so often I'll have a big session of reading back on people's journals & leaving massively out-of-date comments :)

Things that are random

I love overnight trains for the time-savings (do not waste entire day with 14 hr journey!) but do not love them for the experience of trying to sleep in an upright seat. Or even two upright seats. What I really love in overnight trains is where they have proper sleepers which I can actually afford (c.f. Russia, China, Vietnam, SE Asia generally. Actually even the London-Scotland sleepers are affordable with advance tickets, as was the Cologne-Moscow one. The Sydney-Brisbane service doesn't have any sort of sleeper.).

Anyway! So after maybe 6 hrs of interrupted sleep and a 7am arrival into Brisbane, I went in search of COFFEE and now I am vibrating slightly. (And feel a little unwell, which is my *other* reaction to the consumption of caffeine.) On the upside, actually did Useful Work (of the sort that translates into Useful Cash) over breakfast. (Should now do more Useful Work, really.)

Things that are the awesome:
* wireless modem enabling me to sit on floor in Roma St station & have internets, also in cafe & have internets, etc etc.
* nice person who let me have the time remaining in their locker for free (even if I was v slightly suspicious about this & did not *entirely* relax until I was back here & could rescue rucksack).
* it is sunny in Brisbane!
* I am going to go snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef!

Thing which is really really awesome: went surfing yesterday morning & actually got on waves at the *correct* point, viz, before rather than after they had broken. (Baby surfers learn on the white water bit; being a big wuss, I kind of got stuck there for a while.) Admittedly the waves in question were pretty titchy, but still. The advantage of having spent so much time messing around in the white water is that I'm now pretty confident/comfortable on the board once I'm on my feet. Hopefully will get a bit of surfing in tomorrow in Agnes Water assuming the conditions are anything like.

Equally hopefully, will make my bus connection (should have 15 min for a 1km walk... I might give the coach terminal a ring, they're usually quite helpful about this sort of thing IME) this afternoon. Otherwise I will have to get a bus to Fingerboard Road, wild camp overnight (I am in fact equipped to do this if need be, assuming I can get water in Bundaberg, since the next few days includes a night's pack-everything-including-water-in camping on a coral island), & get another bus to Agnes Water in the morning.

Have now booked my train ticket to Melbourne in a fortnight's time, as well as booking shipping home for Cepheus-the-bike and a tea-chest full of Stuff, and telling my not-exactly-landlady when I'm leaving[0]. Which is all a little alarming, and also sad. Not that I'll make it back home before the start of July, mind: freighter travel is what you might call *sedate* in its speed.

This post brought to you by a combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation. Whee!

[0] NB: anyone sending letters that will leave the UK after about the start of May, or parcels[1] that will leave the UK after the start of this week: these should prob be sent c/o my cousin Carol in Melbourne.
[1] This is not just wild optimism, I am expecting at least one parcel before I leave :)

Travel update

Arrived in Bundaberg an hr late, so now will be catching another bus in 90 min or so to Fingerboard Road roadhouse, where I will stop overnight (possibly on the floor there, or possibly by pitching the tent somewhere, depending on what the people there say) & get a connection to Agnes Water in the morning. This is an improvement on the other option which is to spend tomorrow in Bundaberg (there is not v much of interest in Bundaberg, unless you like rum, which I don't so much), get to Agnes Water late tomorrow evening, & not be able to go surfing and/or sit by the beach with a nice drink at all.

The effects of spending the last 7 months gallivanting around the world now become clear: I am entirely sanguine about this situation (though admittedly would have *preferred* just to get the damn bus on time).

( The lovely ppl on #dw offered to chip in for a motel if I was stranded due to cash crisis, bless them :)
[me gets happy warm feeling] )

Camping 2

One of my 101 things is to review some old albums. (While I have internet.... who knows if the might of Telstra will reach Agnes Water?)

( in the ambient hutch )

Not in field/roadhouse after all

Update on my meanderings through QLD! I am now safely arrived at Agnes Water. The bus reached Fingerboard Road (having provided entertainment in the form of Intolerable Cruelty en route: score), and lo! it was a patch of gravel off the side of the road, with a whole lot of nothing surrounding it and a (closed) roadhouse up the way. But! there was also a shuttle bus for Agnes Water, which took me (the sole customer) the 40k or whatever into town (this appears to be some kind of deal with Greyhound, in that I didn't pay any more money for it), and delivered me to a hostel.

So now I have a bed, a beer, access to electricity, and all hail Telstra, for lo! the modem works still.

(I was intending to camp here as well as on the island, but I didn't fancy setting up at the cheap public campsite (or indeed anywhere else) in the pitch black tonight, and the cost of a bed here is about the same as the cost of a pitch at the campsite down the road for tomorrow night. (And here they are helpful about things like sorting you out transportation to the marina for 6am.))

Only downside: the shuttle bus dude says there's no surf atm :( Oh well, I will go swimming instead, & then I will sit on the beach for a bit. And then I will do some work (deadlines this week!).

night all.

ETA: I have found where they're keeping all the stars! In the middle of nowhere in Australia. Even better than at Confest because it's a new moon atm. I am hoping *very hard* for clear skies when I'm out on Lady Musgrave Island.