A long weekend in Queensland

Brent was having his 40th and we were invited. In the end, it was just me that travelled across, leaving Toby and Angela behind - sadly, money, time and clashes with Angela's sister's graduation (that was cancelled in the end) all conspired against us all going.  So I made up my mind to have enough fun for the 3 of us, and bring back memories and photos to talk Angela and Toby's ears off.

After an early start and an uneventful flight, reminiscent of my Sydney adventures last year, I was driving north in a rented Hyundai.  The rental company had neglected to give me a map.  Could I find Brent and Jill's house?  I picked the right off-ramp, picked the right arterials to wend my way through, and got within 1km of their house before I had to ring for assistance.  Pretty happy about that, I was!

It was great to see Brent and Jill again.  They're the sort of friends that you can arrive after a couple of years apart, and just start right back where you left off.  They have a new baby now - Harrison, who is 6 months old but should only be 4 months old, since he couldn't be bothered hanging about inside Jill and popped out early.  He is one very cute and bubbly and happy baby. His older brother Jack has grown a lot, and is hitting the Terrible Twos which I remember well with Toby.  No concept of 'later' or 'do this first to get this' or anything like that.  He is causing his parents lots of grief.  But his charm and happy personality lets him get away with it.

Jack

We chatted about all the things we'd been up to over the last 18 months, since Brent came to my 40th.  We spent a lot of time in Brent's shed, which is nicely set up for building model RC cars.  The current project, he's building a 4wd from scratch, with chassis rails cut down from box alloy and bent using a jig consisting of his vice plus pencil marks on the workbench.  His (woodworking) electric planer and thicknesser were involved in the finishing touches.  Brent assures me that Alu alloy is soft enough to get away with this!  I'd have loved to see the sparks that would have made!

Jill especially has it hard right now with both boys at the wrong ages.  I've seen this before, though with just Toby we didn't experience it.  I kept reassuring them that once you get out the other side - in a couple of years say - it gets easier rather than harder.  Our friends who were all at their wits end a few years ago now generally have pairs of siblings who play together and look after each other and are less work than Toby is by himself.  I've also noticed that they learn negotiation and compromise and plain arguing skills far better than I did as a (virtually) only child, and better than Toby is now.  So it all gets better - ok?

So - Brent and Jill's plan was to head south to Surfers for a well earned 1 week holiday.  I'd be there for just a couple of days, but they would be staying on with their family.

Brent and I set off with a shopping list for some food for the week - just to start us off so we had essentials to start us off.  Of course, we also had to go elsewhere - Trade Tools (great shop!) for electric drill parts, McDonalds for icecreams, the tip to get rid of some lawn clippings, McDonalds for icecreams (again!), pharmacy for cheap ventolin for me.  Then we finally hit the supermarket and collected pizzas for dinner.

Over pizza and beers I learned some sad news - our friends Colin and Jane have split up (some time ago).  They are trying to resolve things amicably but it sounds pretty hard.  I feel for them both.  I better have a chat to Colin.

Saturday dawned bright and early, and the epic packing adventure began.  Bassinnettes and cots and suitcases and crates of food and boxes of nappies began leaving the house, getting stacked up on the porch and then loaded onto Brent's ute and the back of Jill's Pathfinder.  Juggled around Jack's swimming lesson and Harrison's morning routine.  Disaster was eventually averted when Harrison's only dummy was found.  Eventually we were all done with the mountain of gear that a toddler and a baby need, and off we set, the 3 adults in 3 cars.  I wound up the Hyundai's stereo to 11 and sang gustily all the way from Brisbane to Surfers.

I followed Brent in, and we found the accommodation without much bother.  Waiting for us were Brent's mum and dad, Lesley and Bruce, who I seem to only ever meet up with in Australia in spite of them living in Central Otago.  Also, up from Canberra were Brent's sister Eleanor and her teenage kids Mike and Rachel.

We were all staying in a large, pleasant house with a big living/dining area - so large that it had a TV at each end that you could watch on two different channels and not bother each other - and several rooms.  I lost count how many.  It was quite a strange place in some ways though - it showed clear signs of some slightly dodgy DIY work, with wonky tiles, crooked kitchen cabinets, and missing wallboards with bookcases strategically placed to hide this.  But perhaps the strangest thing was the 'extra' bathroom - a shower and toilet, outside with no doors or walls:

We unpacked our mountain of stuff, and lounged around the pool for a while catching up.  Then it ticked towards dinner time.  While Eleanor and her kids chatted to friends who were visiting, the rest of us were off to the German Beer Hall where I had been just 18 months ago for my 40th.  Jill fearlessly launched into the unrelenting Surfers traffic and did two trips to get the seven of us there.  The German Beer Hall is always great.  We chatted away over Jaegerschitzel and Sauerkraut and Steins of Lowenbrau.  Jill took the kids and Brent's parents home, and left Brent and I to finish our steins at our leisure.  Eventually we were the only ones left, so we left the proprieter to close up, and headed next door to an irish pub.  This was a somewhat surreal place, with a decidedly average, but enthusiastic band with an older girl on bass, an older bloke on guitar and vocals, and a fairly rocking younger guy on lead guitar.  We figured he may have ended up on the band as their love child, brought up touring from irish pub to lounge bar, playing guitar before he could walk.  Maybe.  Either that or he was a ring-in after answering an ad.  One or the other.

It was also very sparsely attended.  An Irish pub, on a Saturday night, in Surfers Paradise, with few uninterested patrons?  'Can't organise a pissup in a brewery' comes to mind.  'Can't fill an Irish Pub in Surfers Paradise on a Saturday Night' has a similar ring to it.

A couple of women from WA tried to catch our eyes and we chatted away for a while.  They were... interesting.  Not really in a good way.  Brent wasn't having a bar of it.  I humoured them for a while before decided to try our luck elsewhere.

Off we headed to a dooof-dooof-dooof place across the road.  The pedantic bouncer, who looked about 12, insisted on ID'ing us.  I could have been his dad.  Tosser.  But the place was pretty good on the inside.  Loud rock from a great live band who actually looked like they were having fun, and were playing note-perfect covers from all sorts of eras and styles as long as it was LOUD and ROCKING.  We were probably the oldest people there, but it didn't matter too much.  We had some beers and chatted and waited for the band to play Hunnas (they never did).

Eventually we decided to call it a night.  Off we headed and I decided our first stop needed to be the beach - you can't come all this way and not go to the beach!  And then, you can't go to the beach and not swim!!  The water was beautiful and warm, as I waded in.  Brent was standing back and seemed puzzled that I was doing this.  Perhaps he thought I should have taken my pants off first or something.

Then it was time to squelch our way back home.  Took about 20 min or so to walk back south through the main drag of Surfers, then back into the 'burbs where our house was.  It was a beautiful night (of course) and we chatted away about this and that as we wandered.

Sunday was a quiet day for me, as I was feeling a little, er, jetlagged.  The girls headed off to shopping and left me, Brent and Bruce in charge of Jack.  Who promptly fell asleep for hours, so that wasn't a hard stretch.  I did some unanticpated washing, seeing as my pants were unaccountably wet and sandy, and we relaxed by the pool and read and talked in the lounge.

The girls (and young Mike) were back around 5pm with mountains of groceries for the week.  I was promptly put in charge of the bbq, which was a daunting prospect.  But I did ok I think.  The sausages had some char but weren't burned, Rachel's vegetarian sausages weren't too cross-contaminated, the medium rare steak was medium rare.  Job done.

Monday saw me up bright and early - still on New Zealand time so at 5:30am I was out by the pool checking emails and getting eaten by sandflies.   Today was going to be hinterland - Tamborine Mountain - day.  We loaded up 3 cars and headed north-west.  Now, signposts are few and far between up this way, and the maps are pretty unclear.  (That one I linked to is the clearest I've seen - but like all the others doesn't make it clear where the main highway 95 actually goes through the town). It doesn't help that Mt Tamborine, the hill, is nowhere near Tamborine Mountain, the town.  Or that the town is so sparsely populated that it's not really recognisable as one.  Navigation is not the easiest, and my last trip up here I never managed to find the things I was looking for.  And this was proved as we tried to re-group at the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk.  Our car (me, Brent and Bruce) were the last to leave and the first to arrive.  Brent gave Jill a ring and found her driving around the outer suburbs of Tamborine Mountain. I managed to direct her in and she was soon on the right road.  Eleanor pulled up just afterwards.

By the time we'd all got into the right place it was nearing lunchtime, so on the advice of the Skywalk staff we headed to Cedar Falls for a picnic.  Now, this is probably 900m from the Skywalk.  And we managed to get lost again!  Only Eleanor ended up in the right place.  We overshot the place completely, and Jill ended up in Thunderbird Park.  But eventually we were all in the right place at the right time and tucking into yummy picnic salad and leftover BBQ meat, eyed warily by the massive goannas that were lurking about.

We went for a wander down to the waterfalls that Cedar Falls were famous for.  Very gorgeous they were too.  Mike, Rachel and their friend Elliot (who had turned up sometime the previous night) couldn't resist the swimming holes at the base of the falls and jumped in.  I was very tempted too.  But I'd done my swimming for the trip the other night...

Soon we wandered back up the hill to the skywalk.  Very good wee walk it was too.  I've been on a few of these skywalks now, from the little bridge down the road from my place at Otari Wilton Bush to the one in the Otways.  This one was probably the most spectacular.  The ongoing battle between invading eucalypts and rainforest cedars, palms, conifers and orchids, versus eucalypts, was pretty visible.  Lots of birdlife as well.  A long way from the usual dry, sparse countryside you associate with Australia.

The skywalk itself was in several parts - a long catwalk that took you high through a small gully, a gravel track looping back to uncover the understory underneath the catwalk, then a cantilevered viewing spot with a 'rocking the cantilever strictly prohibited' sign at the end.  Which we followed.  Mostly.

Alas, time was ticking away and my flight was that evening.  Time to head home.  After regretful goodbyes I was driving back to Brisbane airport.

1,722 km to Cairns.  Australia is big!

What a great holiday!  Brent and Jill's hospitality showed no bounds as always, and it was great to meet Harrison and catch up with Jack, who's turning into a proper wee boy.  Brisbane is close and not too dear to get to if we look for specials.  We need to get back soon, as a family!