Bon voyage Pixie Rourke

If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning*, you probably already know about the Pixie Rourke.  The Pixie Rourke is a QantasLink Dash-8 aircraft.  She was named after my mum, in recognition of her work to promote tourism on Lord Howe.  

Since September 2010, the Pixie Rourke has been flying to Lord Howe regularly.  My little girl, Elsie, thinks that all Qantas planes are called Pixie Rourke.  Whenever we go to the airport, she shouts at the top of her lungs: “Look everybody, it’s the Pixie Rourke!” 

We haven’t seen the Pixie Rourke on Lord Howe for a while.  QantasLink has a partnership with The Captain’s Choice Tours and it seems that Pixie is about to head off on a 19 day adventure to Horn Island, Cape York, Kakadu, the Bungle Bungles, Mitchell Falls, Broome, Uluru, Coober Pedy, the Flinders Ranges and Kangaroo Island.  Bon voyage Pixie! 

* Thanks, Ed – you’re the best. 

The Nappy Saga

I did my first online Woolworths order last week.  The most important thing on the order was three packets of nappies for little Pixie.  Our cargo ship, the Island Trader, has been on the slip and there’s been a five week layover between voyages – so I’m running a bit low on everything.  Especially nappies! 

The ship loads in Port Macquarie on a Wednesday and unloads on Lord Howe on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the tides and how long the voyage takes.  My order was in and confirmed last Thursday.  So imagine my horror when I checked my email last night (after the ship had loaded) to find this: 

Woolworths Out-Of-Stock Notification

We are temporarily out of stock of the following items from your order.

Description	Unit price	Quantity	Price
Huggies Ultra Dry Nappies Infant Girl Convenience 32pk	$15.04	3	45.12

The refund amount for the Out-Of-Stock product(s) is $45.12 and will be credited to your Woolworths account and will be automatically deducted from your next order.

Has Woollies really run out of nappies?  That sounds sort of serious.  What is Grant O’Brien [new Woollies CEO] doing?  And couldn’t they have told me about it 6 days ago so that I could order them from someone else?  Help! 

The Moods

The Moods are here! 

A fabulous jazz band with a weakness for really bad puns, The Moods are a Pinetrees institution.  They first played at Pinetrees in 1992 and they’ve been coming every year since.  They’ve become a part of Island life.  Their songs are played on Lord Howe radio.  And there are quite a few people who come to Pinetrees every night when The Moods are playing and then disappear for the rest of the year. 

The school kids love them too.  Every year, The Moods play a concert at Pinetrees for the school kids.  One year, they marched the kids all the way from Pinetrees across the cricket ground and back to school, playing “When the Saints Go Marching Out”.