Saturday, May 23, 2015

First Visitor to Mareeba!

While our second set of visitors have just left ... back in December, just over 5 weeks after we moved into our house and even before all our belongings arrived, we welcomed out first visitor to our new home here in Mareeba. The house was all a bit upside-down and having arrived from Tanzania with 4 simple suitcases, we were living with all kinds of things begged and borrowed ... but it worked and Nana came to spend out first Australian Christmas with us!

As you can see our Christmas decorations were small, understated and mostly from the local charity shop (whilst our others things were still on a ship on the way!) ... but fun nonetheless!


While we weren't able to answer half of her questions about how things work over here or about where different things are ... we were able to explore with Nana and try and work out the answers together!

Abigail started her month long Christmas holidays just 2 days before Nana arrived and so we had lots of opportunities to explore our new 'home' town and area with her. While Mareeba itself pretty much shuts down for a couple of weeks over Christmas with businesses and shops closing, all the local touristy things were thriving and so we had the chance to visit some of them with her.



We had lots of crafty fun at home too with all kinds of projects ... and lots of water fights to cool down, in the garden, in the sea, at the pool, at a local creek and a trip to Green Island, as it was so stinking hot!

 



But one treat that wasn't available to all, was a chance to go up in a MAF plane over Mareeba, while one of the training pilots was keeping his hours up. It was a short 20 minute ride but gave us the chance to see our new home and the surrounding area from the sky.



We also celebrated our first Christmas here during Nana's stay. After early morning pressies, we took a trip to the park and even spied a couple of kangaroo's off in the distance! Yes, really!


With limited kitchen equipment while we waited for our container ... we went for a more simple option for Christmas dinner! A BBQ, seemed to be very fitting for where we are now living, followed by a meringue tower! Very different from anything we have ever had before on Christmas day and a lot of fun!


It is safe to say, as well as exploring with her, we made lots of memories and we had lots of fun with Nana over our first Christmas in Australia. Early in the new year, Nana flew back home and then we properly started the task of settling into life here in Mareeba!


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