2020 WTF???!!! Our year in review with 2020 vision videos

Hey there dudes and dudettes.

Well considering this is a travel blog site and the world has shutdown in the blink of an eye due to coronavirus, this is going to be a really different blog and more a historical footnote for us to look back on.

So for those of you not in Australia, we’ve been really fortunate being an island because we were able to lock out the rest of the world and their infested stinky arses. And even more so, where we live in the state of Queensland our state Government went all Night’s Watch and put up a bigarse wall to keep out the Wildlings… err… I mean… nice people from other states. Which sort of meant we did OK whereas Victoria and New South Wales copped massive prolonged lockdowns.

Queensland really only had a lockdown from the 26 March to 16 May 2020 so it was only really 6 weeks when eating out was banned and only essential services were operational. Avril and Kitson stayed home and did the home schooling thing, but I stayed working as usual if not busier than usual.

Like most people we’ve hit the end of 2020 feeling absolutely buggered and exhausted. And even though the year felt like the whole world was in lockdown and it seemed like we didn’t do a lot, as soon as I sat down and looked back to write this blog, I only realised now that holy fuck… we’ve done a shit load!

So here is our year in video clips if you are bored and get off on looking at other people’s lives.

Australia was literally on fire in January but we started the year in Korea and Whistler with our friends Linda, Tin, Calvin, Keisha, Luan and Sophie on a snowboarding trip running around Korea and Canada in a Godzilla suit and eating live octopus in Seoul.

And then Coronavirus hit very soon after we got back. As we all got lockdowned, we did the usual stuff like playing board games and eating take out to support local businesses which made us fat. But I still managed to pump out this Godzilla video to contribute to the viral Bin Isolation Facebook page where people dressed up to take their bins out.

At work, we were one of the few doctor practices to be at the forefront of trying to stay open and still look after our patients by seeing people in the car park. And this little video is a couple of TV and radio interviews that I did on Coronavirus at the start of things when we were all a bit lost.

Amazingly though like a lot of people, being forced to stay home was really good since we got back into doing things that we hadn’t done for a long while. I pulled out my martial arts equipment and impressed myself that I had lost nothing despite not having trained hard for some years.

We also pulled out our kayak and explored Breakfast Creek which is literally our backyard that we had never kayaked on despite living here for 28 years.

And we tried indoor skydiving for the first time which we loved!

We decided that being at home was a good chance to break in some pets but it was really hard to find any kittens because everyone seemed be doing the same. But we eventually adopted Opal and Luna to become the 2 newest members of our superhero family.

Everyone seemed to be stock piling toilet paper in a panic buying spree but our cats just didn’t understand the panic!

Getting outdoors and rollerblading with our new friends became a nice way to spend the cooler months but we also managed to get to Urban Extreme and do some climbing, we also learnt archery, and hit our skate boards.

As soon as restrictions lifted we hit Moreton Island for a camping trip and my first time trying a snowboard on sandhills. It was also great to get fresh oysters since the island had had no tourists for a couple of months so the oysters were all fat and plump.

OK so Kitson gagged on the oysters so it was also time to introduce her to fish eyeballs. No asians actually like eating fish eyeballs… we only do it to freak out white people!😂😂😂

The other good thing about being in lockdown is that it forced me to start editing some of our prior trips and so I managed to get 3 videos done for our 2019 Simpson Desert Jeep Crossing.

But we also managed a camp trip to Lady Musgrave Island which is a turtle and bird sanctuary on the Great Barrier Reef. We decided to climb Mt Walsh on the way up there but came across a fatal car accident along the way. It was a good reminder to rest and not drive when sleepy as we think the driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a tree. I helped manage the scene and we got him out of the car and kept him alive for 2 hours but unfortunately he passed away. His 3 young kids were in the backseat and survived. The arrival of the helicopter was amazing as it was a day with really strong winds.

I’ve yet to get a blog sorted for Lady Musgrave Island but here is a cool snorkelling video I did with a 360 camera and a link to our flickr photos from the trip.