Monday 11th October

Heavy rain and thunder and lightning most of the night - flooding on roads. The greyhound driver on the way to Brisbane spoke to another driver on his cb radio and was told he'd be ok if he'd got his flippers on and that there was a "s*** load" of roads closed. The driver said "It's the end of the world". Much of the countryside was under water on the drive down, with many creeks and large rivers bursting their banks. The driver said it must be making us feel homesick but I told him that we rarely, if ever got weather like this so he shut up.

One lad had spent 2 weeks travelling up from Sydney and it had rained everyday. We visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) on the South Bank. It's not quite Tate Modern but it had an interesting exhibition "A Life In Pictures" 1950 - now by Douglas Kirkland, a 76 year old photographer of the stars, mainly for Look and Life magazine and on film shoots. These included 'Out of Africa', 'Titanic', 'Moulin Rouge' and 'The Sound of Music'. There was an interesting series of photos taken while making the Thriller video and a fantastic set of Marilyn Monroe photos taken a year before she died. The only props used for the Marilyn photos were a sheet, a bottle of don perignon and Frank Sinatra records. All the photos were taken hand-held using fast film to avoid the use of artificial light and gave an interesting grainy effect. There was a wonderful photo of John Lennon in the anti war film he made, in costume wearing his round rimmed glasses and his radiant smile.

We dined out at an Italian restaurant 'Vapianos'. We both had 'Gourmet Pizza' which were delicious. The restaurant used a system where they gave you a credit type card as you went in which would be swiped and everything you ordered went on that. After waiting for your meal to be cooked, you collected it and took it to your chosen table. At the end they swiped the card and you paid the balance.

Tuesday 12th October

The hostel intercom announced that the rain had stopped and that it was going to be a good day. 10 minutes later the heavens opened again. Had a very good value big breakfast for $8 in Zi Bar, just next door to the hostel. Occasional light showers today, but only when we stepped out from the shelter of the museum, the peace pagoda or a cafe. The museum of Queensland had an exhibition of the final days of Burke and Wills ill fated expedition, South to North across Australia. It's not surprising their exhibition ended in tragedy, given the amount of supplies they took, including 7000lbs of sugar! On their first day of travelling they covered just 11kms.

There was an interesting display of the 7 VCs awarded to soldiers serving at Gallipoli. An exhibition of aboriginal life and an exhibition of natural history and endangered and extinct Australian species. Now there were 4 stuffed Cassowarys there, one stuffed one at Kuranda and two in captivity and we saw one wild one. I think, and there were thousands of other stuffed and preserved specimens, that scientists and taxidermists are more responsible for endangered animals than they are letting on. There was one stuffed polar bear on show and another in a store room gathering dust.

We rode the Brisbane big wheel by night, 4 times round in 10-12minutes. Good views but at only 60m the London eye is better.

Another pasta tonight at 'Vapianos'. Amie managed to get a $13 discount, I didn't last night, she's just like her father.

Wednesday 13th October

Happy Birthday Dad!!!!

08:15am greyhound to Surfer's Paradise. Most of the roads we have travelled over the last month were single track. We've often covered miles without encountering another vehicle. But things changed as we approached Brisbane and civilisation. They're even more clearly different as we head south out of Brisbane on the Logan motorway. It's the first 3 lane motorway since Cairns and at times, heading into town it's almost at a standstill for short periods. At some point it became the 4 way pacific highway - the M1. The road from Cairns was called the Bruce highway and I for one like it better, not least for its name - not easily forgotten, even by me.

Arriving early, we were told our room wouldn't be ready until noon and that "the Chateau" did a good breakfast. Now the guy who told us this looked like a very fit surfer but had the culinary tastes of Chunk (our juggler friend). It was a 6-12 all you could eat buffet breakfast. The only thing they didn't have was fried bread, sorry Darryl. It's the first time I've had chicken wings for breakfast. This place wouldn't last a week with the Southend Jugglers.

In 1933, the town of Elston decided that it wanted to up it's image in the tourist industry. So it changed its name to that of a small hotel on the beach and 'Surfers Paradise' was born. I'm sure some people have and are making a lot of money out of it. There are shopping malls and modern high rise hotels and residential accommodation everywhere. In their song 'The Last Resort', the Eagles sang "You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye". The beach is undoubtedly beautiful, although because of the storms over the past few days, its not looking its best and is a no swimming area despite the fact that the sun has been out.

There is a lot of cleaning up to do and they're concerned about tomorrow's spring tide. Particularly in Brisbane where they had to release water from the Wyvenhoe dam into the Brisbane river, which is flowing 3m above it's normal level.

We're accommodated in 'the flat', a comfortable 4 person self-contained apartment occupied (at the moment) just by the 2 of us. And long may it stay that way.

Dining in on prawns and pasta tonight. Amie and I both were able to have a bath at this accommodation - bit small but it was nice to have a soak!

8:15pm - delicious. Watching Pulp Fiction on dvd. TV is a wonderful thing but how does it work? Answers on a postcard of the Great Barrier Reef.

Thursday 14th October

Brighter today. We walked along the beach. The lifeguards advise that you don't go any deeper than your waist but the few stingers washed up on the beach would discourage me from even paddling, to say nothing of the height of the waves. Amie arranged accommodation from now to Sydney and we sent off a few emails and dined in the apartment.