Happy New Year to All

As I mentioned to most of you, I was heading up into the Daintree rainforest to explore a bit today and here's a link to the blog I set up to post the pics. They're of a place called Cape Tribulation (named by the explorer James Cook because this is where his ship, the Endeavour, ran aground on a reef and thus began the troubles of this exploration) and the Daintree River and rainforest. It's only a short trip away when you come to visit, but for now you see the pics at www.daintreematt.blogspot.com

Have a great New Year!

Love and miss you, Matt :)

Merry Christmas to all... and to all a few pics :)

Though it's hard to feel like it's Christmas while exploring the Tablelands of Oz in a tee shirt, it was most certainly a very fine day and at the end of a 12 mile hike and I'd like to share a few pics with everyone.

From top to bottom:

Pic 1) This is a view from Dr. Doug's ranch. It's quite a bit different from the tropical environment here at home, yet it's only a hour away. They call it the Tablelands beacuse it's a lot like one of our mesas back home... only bigger. And it takes a deep eastward drop through the rainforest down to the Coral Sea where I live.

Pic 2) A pic of Scrubby Creek - it borders Doug's ranch and is a tributary to the Barron River.

Pic 3) A twisted tree encountered on our hike that made me think of LOTR and Ewoks.

Pic 4 & 5) These are pics of a chimney vent crater from a once active volcano now named Mount Hyppamee. It's filled with water and the green surface you see is a type of pond weed that covers the top inch of the surface. They've only explored the depths of this chimney to ~ 100 meters and if Chip were here, I can only imagine him doubling that :)

Pic 6-9) Some pics of Dinner Falls. I'm not sure how it got it's name, but if you ask me - all you have to do is look at the pic with the three seperate falls... the swell on the left is a spoon, straight down in the middle is a knife, and on the right is a fork. Just one man's opinion.

Pic 10) This is called Bromfield Swamp and it's one of the lower points of the Tablelands that was once an active volcano (do we see a theme developing here?). I only learned today that North Queensland is a volcanic environment with many lakes and depressions that are remnants of activity eons ago. And here I was thinking I needed to worry about the snakes :)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Vrooom! Kinda...

G'day to everyone back home!

Here's a pic of my sparkling new Toyota. It's my first "geek" car since my Datsun in vet school but it gets great gas milage (or is that kilometerage?) and has a good bit of pep so I'm actually enjoying it. And no, I'm not going bald... that's the wind coming off the Coral Sea blowing my hair back... Doh!

I went to the bike shop this week and placed my order for a Thule bike/kyak roof rack, so it won't be long before I'm ready explore a bit beyond the Cairns area. I've been told about a fun bike path that leads up to the Crystal Cascades waterfall... that sounds like a good place to start. I've also been warned about kyaking the rivers as it seems a croc has no problems flipping a small boat with its tail... so I'll save that trip to share with someone experienced in finding the safe waters to paddle in.

And I won't be making it to the rainforest this weekend. One of the nurses who is leaving is having her last beach party on Sunday and it would be a shame to miss that... ya gotta have priorities :)

Until next time...

Cheers, Matt :)

Happy Christmas Everyone! :)

Tonight was the big night... well, semi big. We had our X-mas party for work and almost everyone showed up. We all had a great time letting our hair down - sharing friendship, a few drinks, some great BBQ (steak, chicken, sausage, and fish... Oh my!), and quite a few laughs.

So here we go... a chance for you to meet the folks I'm working with.

From top to bottom (picture-wise, not pecking order :)

Pic 1) Vanessa (in the green sleeves) brings a lot of sensitivity to her job as a nurse here while also teaching the puppy training classes two nights a week; and Salina (in the pink bandanna) has honed her nursing skills to the point where she knows what I'll be asking for in surgery before I do.

Pic 2) From L to R: Bronwyn is our office manager (and dang good at it); Kelly is an excellent scrub nurse who is leaving soon to join her boyfriend down in Townsville as he begins his professional rugby career with the Cowboys; Kat is a receptionist who moved here from the UK 5 years ago and has been a huge help for me figuring out how things run here; and Jade is an enthusiastic nurse in training who just graduated high school and has a great future ahead of her.

Pic 3) This is Dr. Pete doing his best Klink impression with a potato chip and his wife Linda. They're the ones I visit up at their place in the rain forest.

Pic 4) Kat's boyfriend John; Jodine is another incredible nurse we are losing so she may join her soon-to-be hubby down south as he starts his new job training airline pilots; Kerri is a receptionist/nurse who knows enough to be a veterinarian herself; and Dr. Kate is one of the happiest, most gentle and thoughtful veterinarians I have ever met... she's leaving to join her boyfriend in Brisbane and will surely be missed.

Pic 5) Dr. Rod is mid-sip. He's the guy who owns the pratice and built it up over 17 years to become the place most folks in north Queensland prefer to take their pets; And that's Dr. Doug next to him - he'd almost qualify as an enigma because he's so quiet, but he's one of the most intelligent people I've met over here... he knows something about everything without being a bragard about it.

Pic 6) Most of the gang at the Christmas party... sans me. I'm the guy pointing the lens :)

Cheers and Merry Christmas to everyone! :)

Happy Christmas, Everyone

Weekend Update

Welcome to Weekend Update... I'm Matt Kelcourse, and you're not :)

I'm in the middle of being on-call from Thursday night thru Monday morning, so this weekend is pretty uneventful. Kinda poetic considering it's been a rather slow (and easy) week. The only real excitement is I took delivery on my new car on Thursday - Yahoo! I'll post a pic of it next weekend after I get back from the tablelands, but I warn you now... it's the geekiest car I've owned since my first year in vet school, so please keep the chuckles to a minimum :)

Next weekend, however, is gonna be a blast. I have four days off in a row (Thursday - Sunday) and I'll be starting off with some cattle rustling, Aussie style... Giddy Up!!... in a small town in the table lands called Wongabel to help take some skin and blood samples on 60 head of cattle. I told Doug (the veterinarian taking the samples) the same thing I told Dr. Paradis when I graduated Tufts and she was surprised I wasn't going into large animal medicine after having so much fun on the rotations... "The next time I deal with a cow as a veterinarian will be me preheating the oven to 350 degrees" :) So I'll just be there as his assistant; keeping track of the samples, labeling the tubes... tipping a few cows when no one is looking... the usual stuff.

Friday will be a casual trip into Cairns to finally buy some bedroom furniture... it's about time I stopped sleeping on a mattress on the floor... get a bike rack and GPS mapping system for my car (don't wanna get lost :), meet some folks from work for the Christmas party and then Saturday it's up to the rainforest to share dinner with a few folks, spend the night around a campfire, and then play a round of golf at Mareeba Sunday morning.

I'll have a bunch of pics and comments to post when I get back, so a few of my prior posts will get bumped. I hope you had a chance to see them.

Till next weekend... I hope all is well and you're enjoying the Holidays.

Happy Thankgiving, Oz style

Another Happy Thanksgiving to you all. This time it's Oz style with some southern flare. The deep fried turkey was a hit! Most were pretty skeptical about the whole deep-fry thing, thinking it would be fatty and icky... but we converted them all today. And it was fun hanging around with some Americans - hearing the "accent" and all. And I was introduced to an Aussie dessert called a pavlova... a pastry, fruity, creamy type thing - it looks like a swollen pizza - you'd love it! And we all had such a good time that time flew and before I realized, it was getting too dark to ride my bike home, so we through my bike in the back of Alex's wagon and he gave me a ride home.

From L to R in the pic: Alexandria and her husband Alex (the hosts), me, and Lance (a guy from LA). The other pic is the view from their back patio - it's the edge of the rainforest mountains as they slope down to the beach of Palm Cove.

Well, it's been a long day so I'm heading to bed; but in 2 weeks I'll have some pics of the Tablelands to post after my visit there. Til then, Happy Holidays :)