Bundaberg weather and bumbling bureaucracy

Well, not sure where to start first. Probably the weather - it is now 1700 on Sunday the 11th. and we are cooking dinner (drumsticks in the oven) in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Went for a bit of a walk earlier along to the port where the sugar bulk carriers are loaded - just upstream from the marina. There is a bulk carrier alongside at the moment; the "Doris" and they load the the ships by conveyor. Similar to the nickel in New Caledonia. We cut our walk short because we could see really black clouds inland and as we returned the rain was just starting so we made it without getting too wet. Had a beer at the cafe and then repaired on board for a quiet night in! But not so quiet at the moment; the thunder is massively loud and there has also been some forked lightning but at least our mast is wooden and quite a bit shorter than many around us. There are times when one feels quite glad to be smaller!!!! Still, it's supposed to clear later tomorrow and be fine for the rest of the week so that will be more pleasant.
On the bureaucracy front not sure where to start. We used to think NZ was bad but this place takes the cake - for sheer inefficiency as well. We'll start with sending a parcel of Christmas presents to NZ. At the Post Office we struck a problem as we were asked for a passport as ID - no doubt so that they could track us in case the envelope contained a bomb!!! We didn't have our passports with us but then they decided our NZ drivers licences would do. But not before a lot of toing and froing. Then there was the matter of sending by courier a letter to the UK. We naively thought that it might just be a matter of ringing a courier company and getting it collected - but no! Whenever we mentioned international on the phone you could almost hear the intake of breath as if we were trying to smuggle the crown jewels! We decided to use DHL but it took many phone calls (during which our phone ran out of credit) and visits to websites. We eventually managed to establish that Toll (of NZ Rail fame) where their agents in Bundaberg so the next morning we asked the marina shuttle if they could drop us at Toll about 3 kms out of the CBD. This address had been given to us by DHL. However, when we eventually arrived there it transpired that we had been given a bum steer and the place we should be at was in fact in town very near where we would have been dropped off on the shuttle. So, after a very bad tempered long walk in the heat we eventually arrived at Toll Priority - an encouraging choice of name!! We successfully consigned the envelope and fingers crossed it will be at the destination by Wed. this week.
Then there is the matter of the prepaid phone and wireless internet connection. We were completely unable to initialise either when we first started and it took another visit to the Telstra shop in town to get the problems sorted. They said they usually get people coming back. The problem with Telstra is that they don't have any competition - they are way worse than Telecom NZ. Anyway, since then we have had to recharge both and when we tried to use the credit card it was declined. Telstra's response was that they are conducting a security review with cards and they couldn't tell us when it would be completed. So, how to purchase more credit? We had to buy a voucher (with the credit card!!) which was then used to recharge the phone. How we get on when we are not within range of a voucher seller we don't know. Presumably we just have to purchase several in advance which means that Telstra gets our money in advance before they have provided the service. Perhaps they are not so stupid after all! And in the case of the internet it doesn't warn you that you're running out of credit; it just cuts you off and then you can't get onto the net to recharge on the website which is the only way of doing it. So you have to ring their help line and you get a Filipina operator in Manila you can hardly understand who can actually do the recharge for you - provided you have purchased a voucher. It seems that whenever there should be a simple way to do something Australian bureaucracy delights in making it as difficult as possible - if not downright impossible.
Forgive the rant but we have to get these things off our chest. On a brighter note the hot water cylinder is here and should be installed in a couple of days. And we have identified a pump for the deslalinator which will work but it has to come from the States by airfreight so that will add another $200 or so. Never mind, we will eventually get all these problems sorted and then will truly be able to adopt the laidback cruising lifestyle - yeah right!!
Went to the farmers market this morning with one Australian couple and two Spanish couples. It always amazes us how international this life is. Fortunately their English was much better than our Spanish.
Cheers from us....................

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