Tweed Heads – Rain, Insects and no Net

Once again we’re here in Tweed Heads visiting Kitt’s family and taking a bit of a rest. While I’ve had a few days of clear blue skies during my past visits, I’ve got to say that the bulk of the time here has been overcast, humid and full of biting, itching bug things (and frequently raining). I’m told this is not uncommon around Christmas (when we’re usually here) but so far this trip in October is living up to the norm – although fortunately it’s not too humid.

Sadly, I’m finding it very hard to get a ‘net fix. Kitt’s mom has dial up but the phone is in frequent use, plus I can’t really plug in my laptop. There’s no neighbours around with wireless and the cybercafes are far away so I’ve got to borrow the car to get to them. We were at Tweed Mall the other day and found a public wireless at a cafe although the staff didn’t know anything about it. We grabbed some drinks and powered up to get our fix. Half way through downloading my email though the hotspot shut down – very annoying.

There’s a wireless cafe I know further down the road past Tweed Mall in Coolangatta. Tweed Heads is in New South Wales while Coolangatta is in Queensland – one little step along a footpath and suddenly you’re an hour behind (Queensland don’t do that Daylight Savings thing). We were going to head there yesterday morning so I could do some emails, upload this post and generally get a small fix of ‘net time. That got scrapped though as time was running out and it was decided that we’d all leave early to go further up the valleys to Janet & Tony’s place for a party (see the “Wetstock” blog post). Fortunately they had ADSL at their place with wireless so I was able to jump on briefly. Sadly, their net connection was flakey as heck and it took all my effort to get some emails out, pay a couple of bills and check a few items before I lost patience with it. Janet was saying that the connection had been bad lately – the joys of Telstra’s BigPond network plus being a fair way out from the city.

Finally today I’ve managed to drop by the cybercafe in Coolangatta while Kitt goes to the local craft market with her sister & father. I’ve printed off our boarding pass, checked emails and am now getting a chance to blog and confirm the ‘net still exists.