Tonya Beach Camping

 Marcus doing what boys do when there are girls to impress.

 The beach gets it's name from the SS dickie that ran aground in 1893
read about it here

http://www.sunshinecoastvisit.com.au/pages/our-history-heritage/

Chris & Dan - Not fighting ?

A Stolen Esky & BBQ Dinner at Dicky Beach

7:00 rose and observed all quiet in the other tents.
Went and had a nice warm shower.
All tents still quiet.
Walked to the shops and bought a coffee.
texted Megan and asked if she would like me to buy bacon and eggs and aything else.  No reply.
Walked back to camp and as I arrived, my phone beeped.  It was a text from Megan asking if I had the esky.  Ah no.
Bugger!
It had been pinched.
Megan had gone looking along the creek inside the park - No esly.
We decided to go and buy Bacon Eggs bread for breakfast.
On the way back, went for a walk on the beach.  Figured that if it was kids wanting grog then they are hardly likely to lug an esky with two bottles of wine all the way to be beach.  If they were wishing to sell the esky then it was gone for good.  Otherwise ......

There it was, just over the fence from our tent.  Sans two bottles of wine.

10:00 Started cooking breakfast.

Then drove down to Bribie as the second German girl had a soccer match.  On the way home we dropped into hetr house and spoke to her host parent. 

Decided to risk structural collapse and tied a tarp up as a wind break.  We had one tarp and Megan bought two more at $4 each so now we have three walls and they slow the icy (well as icy as you can get on the sunshine coast) breeze.








 

     

Megan went and bought sausages and steak and salad and prawns and we had a BBQ.

Crazy Johns Prepaid Android Data Setup

I have Chris on a Crazy Johns Prepaid.  This seems to be the best prepaid.  10c/min voice calls, 1c text messages and 500MB data and 3 months credit expiry.   I have just bought two more sim cards from Crazy Johns for Jemma and Dan.  Chris has not been able to connect to the internet and I figured it was time to sort that out.

Tried the Crazy Johns internet help
http://www.crazyjohns.com.au/settings/

The recomended settings did not work.  Rang  Crazy Johns on 132299
The kind lady tried to suggest that coverage was poor in my area and I insisted that this handset could never connect to the internet and further more when I put my voadfone sim in then it did connect.  To which she reminded me politly that Crazy Johns was not Vodafone and this I said to her confused me because Crazy Johns uses Vodafone towers etc.  I think that confused her sufficiently to put me trough to "Roy".  Roy turned out to be remarkably understandable and technically competent.  Amazingly we (he) solved the challenge and now Chris can connect to the internet and use up his 500MB / recharge.

Phone = Huawe
Model = U8510.
OS = Android 2.3.4

On the device, navigate to Access Point Names.
 via Menu > Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks.> Access Point Names
press Menu.  Select Reset to Default.

The phone did its reset thing and came up with a Vodafone APN.
Menu > Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks.> Access Point Names
Select the vodafone APN
press Menu.  Select Delete APN.

Press Menu.  Select New APN.
Set the parameters as follows
Name = Crazy Internet
APN = purtona.net
Prozy = <not set>
Port =  <not set>
Username = <not set>
Password = <not set>
Server = <not set>
MMSC = <not set>
MMS port = <not set>
MMS port = <not set>
MCC = 505 (Although I did not set that it just happened)
MNC = 03 (I did not set that either)
Authentication Type = PAP <-- *****NOTE Not mentioned on the CJ web site.
APN Type = "default"  Without the quotes
APN Protocol = IPv4 ( I did not type that it just was )


Check that the "Crazy Internet" is the selected APN with a green dot.

Navigate
Menu > Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks.>Data Enables
Un check.
Wait
Check it.

Return to main screen.
Choose internet and browse away.  Happy that everything is good and the world is in its place.

Dickie Beach

The Thomson family are going camping.  Well Thomson's plus one.  (Tonya).  With the Vito in the shop, we have 5 in the Tiida.  I am glad I bought a car with rear seat leg room.  But look at the luggage.  Tents, chairs, sleeping bags.  Not even any gas stoves or cooking gear.

Tonya had indicated she would like to catch up with another German girl and speak Germaneze. The other girl ended up being invtited to join us camping.  So now we are Thomson's plus 2 making 8 in total. We arrived at Dickie beach with 5 squeezed into the Tiida and three across the front of the ute.

This is our little tent setup.  We added Ian & Fay's push up gazebo to our load on the way up.  It's a bit coool and windy here and we considered tieing the tarp up as a wall but the gazibo does not have any cross bracing and I reckon it would blow down pretty quiick.

Tonight we bought Fish & Chips at a cafe across the road from caravan park.

See no teens? - They have gone for a walk on the beach.

We are playing Monopoly.  I am just waiting for the Tantrum.  Jemma asked "When does it finish?".

As all adults know, Monopoly finishes when someone has a tantrum.

We also know that monopoly is cronically under financed and this one fits in nicely with the eu debt crisis as it turns out it is the "Here and Now International" version.  No longer is whitechapel $60.  Now we have Tapei at $600000.  In fact all the extra zeros make it so much harder or maybe we all just knew the rents in the old currency.

Megan has just made us hot chocolate.  How you may ask.  Well we did bring a kettle and we have a tent site with power - that ain't campin.  But gee that hot chocolate hit the mark.  Oh Chris & trying to negotiate the sale of a property with Jemma and as we all knowm no one ever trades in monopoly and so it stagnates.  oh hangon, do I hear a tantrum coming on.

Glass House Mountains Lookout

We have a exchange student - Tonya - from Germany staying with us.  She met Marcus in Germany when marcus did a talk on being and exchange student.  Tonya is staying with a family on a vinyard (what a life) in Victoria and is visiting Queensland for a week.

On Sunday we pick up our actual exchange student from the airport and Monday Tonya goes back to Victoria.

Today (Thursday) we drove to Megan's parents place.  This is a view from The Glass House Mountains Lookout.

 Ian & Fay.

Breeding Tiidas

The Vitio is at the repair shop getting a small indescression dealt with.  The insurer RACQ provides $40 per day to hire a car that turned out to be a goldish coloured Nissan Tiida.  Coincidentally I had to buy one and it turned out to be the same colour.  So we put them together to see if they would breed.  A Micra?



The purchase of a Tiida was driven (pun ?) because Marcus is almost 16 and when he reaches that milestone he can get a learners permit.  As both the ute and the Vito are automatic, I figured buy a small manual car.  So sometime back I went to various car yards to check out what the options might be.  I decided on a minimum set of requirements - Small (for fuel efficiency), Manual (For Marcus to learn to drive), 4 doors and enough leg room for adult back seat passengers.

I was quite suprised at how many cars had very little rear seat leg room.  I tried VW, Toyota Corolla, Holden, and so on.  Even though at over $40k the Audi A4 was out on cost grounds, it too was lacking in rear seat leg room.  The Nissan Tiida, while not quite us ugly as the 1970's Citrone and is sufficiently un remarkable that it  is unlikely to ever make it onto Top Gear unless they wish to fit their entire crew into their small car.

Day Camp 2012