We’ve abandoned our plan to head north to the Solomon Islands and we’ve started south.
We spent 6 weeks in Townsville visiting the vet every 5-7 days. Tigger’s eye kept improving and backsliding. We made an appointment with a Specialist Ophthalmologist who flies in every few months. We almost cancelled it as Tigger seemed better. We had a weather window, and no cyclones were expected, so we applied for our animal Export Permit - for the third time! The specialist examined him and said that it wasn’t properly healed, would repeatedly recur, and might get worse. He recommended more complex surgery than the regular vet could do. Tigger’s eye was stitched shut (again) for two weeks and we gave up hope of leaving.
In theory it might have been possible - wait two weeks, find a weather window with settled conditions and no expectation of cyclones - but it was pretty thin. We get a couple of weekly prognostications about the upcoming weather, and the Bureau of Meteorology puts out a daily assessment of Cyclone risk over the next 3 days, but we would be at sea for 7-8 days - going right through where they form!
So we headed out of Townsville and started south. We’re now in the Whitsunday Islands and we’ll continue on tomorrow towards Bundy. We’ll be able to leave Australia at the end of the Cyclone Season in May.