One month on - where have we been??

Happy 60th Birthday Helen's Mum!

Well, we've finally got our backsides into gear and are leaving Brisbane, and in fact, Australia, tomorrow and heading for Christchurch in New Zealand's south island. So, we'll try to summarise what exactly we've been doing for the past few weeks.

After about 3 weeks of us being in Brisbane the rain finally started to relent. The area where we are is on what's called a level 6 water restriction because as a general rule the area doesn't get much rain at all. The water restrictions mean that each person is limited to one 4 minute shower a day, no-one is allowed to wash their cars at home, public beachside showers are no longer in use and a host of other things. It seems that even with all this rain the damns are not filling as much as they should be; it seems that perhaps the damns are actually not as efficient as they could be and all this torrential rain is going to waste.

We have done a few things of note while we have been here. We visited the Glass House Mountains, which were pretty spectacular. They are 16 volcanic crags that emerge from a vast expanse of green land. We also visited a couple of nearby towns; Landsborough and Maleny.

We caught the train to Brisbane city a couple of times and spent full days there. As we do every now and then, we tried to incorporate a bit of art into our sightseeing and spent $20 each to see the Andy Warhol exhibition; the largest ever collection in one place no less, at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. However, as much as we try to appreciate various artists from time to time, we just don't tend to get it. This wasn't much different so our interest waned after a fairly short while. It was quite interesting all the same for a quick look around. Sorry to all you art buffs out there.

A highlight was our trip to Australia Zoo, the zoo that Steve Irwin's family own. We patted koalas, stroked kangaroos and saw the crocodile show of which we have attached a short clip to the site.

We didn't get chance to head up the coast to Noosa or Fraser Island this time; if we have time and we get to return to Brisbane we will do that then. We did spend 1 day on the beach at Bribie Island. It was scorching hot and even with factor 30 we all managed to get a little red. It's no wonder the skin cancer rate in Australia is so high - the sun is lethal.

A funny Aussie trait we've noticed, although by no means practised by the masses, is that people walk around bare foot. In the malls, on the streets and so on. So that's pretty bizarre. And we still get childish amusement when flip flops are referred to as thongs.

All in all we have enjoyed our time here, perhaps spent a little longer than our itinerary would have liked, but, hey. We've been able to do some cooking for the family, which we have missed, although with everyone's various food habits it could prove somewhat of a challenge. For example, take a simple chilli and rice. So for a start, I don't eat meat so we had to have a meat version and a veggie version. Then, Karl likes his with mushrooms but no kidney beans and Isabel likes hers with kidney beans but no mushrooms. Then Christy will only eat plain chicken anyway. I think Matt and Andrea were the only ones without specific requests. So, several pans later we all enjoyed a tailored chilli and rice…or not in Christy's case.

It's been really lovely staying with Andrea and Karl and I think the only reason we have stayed longer than we thought is because they have made it so comfortable for us. However, tomorrow we head for New Zealand.