Taking Stock – February 2018

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

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Another month down already – time sure does fly by these days!  Time for a February ‘Taking Stock’ Post.  I am going to do these posts at the end of every month this year, just out of interest to see a nice summary of the year and to help me settle in to my blogging flow again!  These posts are a bit cheaty I think and get a bit long – do you guys even make it to the end?  I’m not sure if I will have time to answer all of the sections today, but I’ll give it a crack.  You are welcome to join in too, love seeing what everybody else has going on in their worlds.  I’ve pasted a blank list at the end of the post, you can share your answers in the comments, via email or social media or just in your own private notebook or journal.

Here we go – Taking Stock February 2018 Continue reading →

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Reach for the Star – Don’t Lower the Bar

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

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A few weeks ago as I was doing my mindless, post dinner scrolling of Facebook, I came across a post by Mia Freedman.  I really admire Mia and the journey she has taken with her online empire MammaMia and often find interesting and thought provoking content via her social media, books and podcasts.

This post though, has really had me thinking over the last few weeks and I’ve been jotting my thoughts down, trying to work through in my head what it is I feel – why the post has bothered me so much.

I’m trying to be a little braver too and voice my thoughts out loud in the theme of being conscious that the world needs more voices in it, more people taking a risk to express different opinions so we don’t just get sucked in to believing/hearing only those voices that are loudest.  I also think that it is important to not just be a consumer of creativity and online content, but also to try and put some of your own ‘creating’ out into the world too – I think the world is a much more interesting place when that happens, and there seems to be fewer and fewer people creating these days.

Anyway, here’s the post that sparked all of this: Continue reading →

Categories: Soapbox | 5 Comments

Kirrama Range Road, Blencoe Falls, Murray Falls

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

Kirrama Range Road

Following on from our Goshen Station camping post, I thought I’d better hurry up and finish that trip off with a little post about the beautiful Blencoe Falls and the Kirrama Range Road – remembering that I am still playing catchup and we did this trip in July 2016!

As we camped at Goshen Station for a week, we decided to take a day trip out to Blencoe Falls from there.  It was only a short 40 minute drive to the falls and a fantastic day out.  We took a picnic lunch, did a walk, checked out the camp grounds and had a swim.  It is a beautiful spot at Blencoe Falls but quite crowded when we were there (it was school holidays).  The waterfall lookout and viewing platform boasts spectacular views – definitely deserves the title of being one of the most stunning (and least known) waterfalls in Australia!  There are views of the waterfall and the Herbert River Gorge – there are lots of Hoop Pines and it felt like we were in Canada somewhere!

Lexi and I did the short (took us about an hour) walk from the viewing platform to the campgrounds.  It was an easy walk with some beautiful scenery along the way.  Continue reading →

Categories: Atherton Tablelands, Camping, Qld Camping | Leave a comment

Goshen Station Camping

Posted on February 11, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

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One of the best camps we have ever done hasn’t yet been recorded here on the blog, so time to rectify that!

Campsite No 5 at Goshen Station is awesome.  We spent a week here in July, 2016 and loved it.  It was the perfect cure for the hangovers we were sporting from a busy week and awesome night hosting the Boots for Change dinner on the farm the weekend before, complete with guest Paul West from River Cottage.

Goshen Station is a working cattle station where the first series of Australian Survivor was filmed in 2001.

It is about 5.5 hours from Cairns (90 kms past Mount Garnet) west of Blencoe Falls.  We took the Mt Garnett (Gunnawarra Road) way in and then went out via the Kirrama Range Road – a fantastic round trip. Continue reading →

Categories: Atherton Tablelands, Qld Camping, Tropical North Queensland | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Easy Valentine’s Day Ideas

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

love-1356538452Xd3With Valentine’s Day coming up next week, I’ve been inspired to write a post about it.

I’m not usually a Valentine’s Day fan, but I’ve decided to make a bit more of an effort this year.  I think it is something to do with trying to slow life down a little in 2018, to spend more time focusing on the important things which are the people I love and the things I love to do.

I don’t disagree that Valentine’s Day feels a bit contrived – Matt thinks it was all invented by the greeting card industry to convince us to buy expensive flowers, cards and chocolates, but I think this is kinda missing the point.

Valentine’s Day is about love.

I like the idea of having a day to remind us to be kind, to be nice, to love the important human beings in our life, especially in today’s times of busy, busy, busy, where making a bit of extra effort often gets forgotten, or put on the too hard/too tired pile.

I think a little TLC goes a long way.  I also think that it takes effort to make marriages and family work and I’m going to use Valentine’s Day as a reminder to put some oomph in. Continue reading →

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Fealy Family Highlight Reel for 2017

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

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Seeing as I did such a terrible job of blogging in 2017, I thought the best way to bring everybody up to speed was to do a ‘Fealy Family 2017 Highlight’s reel’ post, so here goes …..

The major events of 2017 were Matt’s Nuffield Australia scholarship travels (Matt spent a total of twelve weeks last year overseas!), my QLD Rural Women’s finalist award, a trip to Bali for the kids and I, a visit from the Brissy cousins and Jack finishing primary school and graduating as the male school dux along with receiving the instrumental music award for the year.  Pretty awesome all in all.

However, if I had to describe 2017 in one word, I think I would have to choose ‘overdone’.  It was a fantastic year, so many amazing things, but looking back we definitely overstretched ourselves and pushed our little family to the limits of what we could cope with, and to be honest, without all the help we received from our extended family – I think the wheels would have fallen off. Continue reading →

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Taking Stock – January 2018

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

IMG_5740Well, all the kids are back at school today and Matt is back in the Blue Sky orchard picking mangoes, which means our ‘routine machine’ has cranked into motion again.  I used to love routine and the productivity it brings, so far this year – honestly?  I just want to keep everybody at home and on holidays forever – sigh.  All good things must come to an end I guess.

I’m feeling restless, all over the place and a bit low and teary today.  Feeling old with our eldest baby starting high school and so not ready to launch back in to the craziness of mango/avocado season, work, work and all of the things and demands on our time.

So, I thought today was a good day for a ‘Taking Stock’ post – feel free to join in and post your responses too via the comments, Facebook or wherever.   Continue reading →

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Roadtrip Tully, Cardwell to Ingham

Posted on January 21, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

IMG_2516Although things have been very quiet on the blog over the last couple of years, those of you who follow us on Facebook, Twitter  and Instagram will have seen we’ve still been out and about having a few adventures with Black Betty and Peter Prado.  As I have been getting to know our blog again, it is really interesting to review our stats and see that we still get anywhere between 50-100 visits per day to the blog through people searching for camping spots and landing on places we have visited, so I definitely want to add this small trip to the blogosphere!

Way back in June 2016 when Matt and I were both still Scout leaders, we headed off to a scout camp with the kids in Ingham and along the way managed to add in some quality family time by turning it in to a long weekend.  To start with, we took a whole day to travel just over 300 kilometres to our overnight camp at Abergowrie State Forest.  It was an ‘explore your own backyard’ kinda day.  We really loved it – we could almost pretend we were back on the road travelling around oz again!

Here’s how the weekend went down ……………. Continue reading →

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18 things for 2018

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Are We There Yet?

new-years-eve-2238337_960_720Poooft.  Hear that? That is the sound of a layer of dust being blown off this little ole blogging space!  I can’t believe I only wrote one measly blog post in the whole of 2017 – what a disaster!  I sure did miss it but 2017 was definitely the year of total overcommitment for the Fealy Family, despite our best intentions for it to be otherwise.

2018 is going to be different!  You heard it here first and no famous last words this year. Continue reading →

Categories: About Us, Planning | 2 Comments

Kipp Turns 2

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Are We There Yet?

34aa94cd29eab76aabfa4b2fc466c57bI am having blogging withdrawals and feeling desperate just to get back in to the swing of things, so today I’m doing a very quick post.  I’m going with the mantra that it is better to have some record on here than nothing at all.

This post is one of many long, long overdue, about twelve months overdue in fact.

Kipp is turning three next week and I have just realised that I have not yet done a post about his second birthday – aaaaargh – mum fail about number bizillion and three at this point.  Anyway, I’m going to do a bit of catching up over the next few weeks so there might be a bit of jumping around all over the place on the blog. Continue reading →

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