Cairns - and Telstra

Friday, 17 July 2015

Pink ginger

Bird of Paradise

Tree ferns

Red ginger

Bamboo

Trunk of silk floss tree - no possums in this tree!

Curlews came to visit

Tuesday morning was an early start to make sure Emma and Kathryn were at the airport in plenty of time to enjoy the Qantas Club (and breakfast!) before their flights south.  The remainder of the day for us was spent catching up on laundry and life’s little jobs.  A walk to the creek after lunch to feed the fish resulted in the sighting of another snake in the water – the second sighting since last Friday!  The fish didn’t seem too worried, though.

Wednesday was the start of the Telstra dramas for the week, when my wifi moden decided to continually turn itself off.  Into Cairns Central and the Telstra shop, where a nice man removed the battery and immediately put it back; modem working again.  Back home, modem turning itself off, battery being removed and replaced, modem continuing with its annoying habit filled in the remainder of the day.

Thursday morning and it was back to the Telstra shop and a nice lady agreed with me that the modem had gone to the big Telstra shop in the sky.  As it was still under contract, there would be no problem with a replacement being issued.  I was expected to talk to Netgear (the manufacturers), who immediately said it was a BigPond problem and hung up.  Nice lady rang BigPond and explained the difficulty before I had to spell out the delivery address (letter by letter) to the nice man on the telephone.  All sorted, modem should be delivered within three to five working days.  That evening, the nice man from BigPond rang to say the computer would not accept the caravan park’s address because there was no actual street number and couldn’t send it to the post office for collection because I didn’t have a private box number!  He then informed me that I could collect one from any Telstra shop – why didn’t he say so in the morning???

Friday morning and it was back to Cairns Central and the Telstra shop.  Lady was very understanding and read all the notes on the file but couldn’t give me a new modem because they weren’t owned by Telstra.  I could only get a modem from Telstra.  Frustration starting to build but I was assured the Telstra shop at Earlville was actually a Telstra shop.  Back in the car to Earlville and an extremely nice and helpful lady read my file, understood immediately and within half an hour I had a new modem which was up and running and recognised by my computer.

After all the stress of the morning, there was only one place to head – Movenpick for some chocolate ice cream therapy!  We continued to de-stress with a stroll through the Botanic Gardens, always beautiful and peaceful.