With no offence meant to any house-guests current or future, I am never driving to Brisbane to pick anyone up ever again. I will possibly even considering subsidising part of the train fare to Hervey Bay. We set out on Friday afternoon at about 3:30pm after a one of the classic pre-long car trip arguments (which always make for that great strained atmosphere for the first 200km *sigh*). After the first 200km we were forced to truce as we became entangled in the kind of traffic jam that I would assume has many people pulling out large chunks of hair. I was certainly pulling out mine - there were apparently brushfires along the Bruce Highway and that meant that about 20km worth of traffic had to crawl along at a snails pace for two and a half hours and be diverted by police down weird little roads for 23km until we could snake around back on to the highway.

There were quite a lot of cars who had overheated and/or run out of petrol and had to pull off the road. I was getting quite worried about the Humber, as its temperature gauge was on ‘Hot’ - but of course it didn’t have a problem at all. M used a bag full of pistachio shells as percussion an we sang and seethed in equal amounts.

Finally we made it to Brisbane and located the hotel - Ellise and Dave had just about given us up for dead and handed us a beer each and kindly let me rant for about ten minutes before dragging us out to get some food. The next day I had my opinion of Brisbane changed by walking and ferrying our way from Kangaroo Point to Southbank and the Westend and the Botannical Gardens. It was all so pretty and not at all crowded - it was quite extraordinary! On our walk along the river we saw a rock climbing club having an open day encouraging people to have a go at climbing the cliffs - of course M had to have a go… and went up the cliff at a rate that made me wonder if he was trying to escape me?

Later on (after gazing in wonder at the fake beach and everyone on it) we went to a wondrous cafe called the Three Monkeys and had coffees (I had hot malt milk - yum) and shared a slab of cake. We bought some supplies for a kickass curry and then made our way back to the hotel via a few ferries and the botannical garden…. here is the view from my room….

We headed home to Hervey Bay yesterday - it was a long hot drive and made it back just before dark. The cats were happy to see me! We introduced our first ever guests to the new couch and then Ellise and I sent the boys to the bottle shop while she cooked and I pretended to help. Here’s a pic of my study as it looks at present;

I am supposed to be working at the moment, so I will now disappear into the ether before anyone here realises that they could all be swimming instead of ‘letting me get my work done’. Oh the guilt.