I (Katie) had kept in touch with the family I was an au pair for in Melbourne the last time I was in Australia and now they were living in Brisbane and expecting our arrival. It was the first time they would be meeting Paul which they were looking forward too and that I hadn't seen them for 7 years meant I was really excited about seeing the children again. The family picked us up from the train station and took us the 5 or so km out to their house where we spent the afternoon and evening with introductions, catching up, and a great roast dinner. Heather and Stephen haven't changed a bit and it was really great to chat with Heather again as we had become quite close before. The children claimed to remember me, well the older ones at least. Jack now 13, Anastasia now 12, Emily now 10, and Harry now 7 who was born the last time I was with the family. They're great kids and we were soon reminiscing and sharing funny stories about when they were small.

We hadn't planned anything for our few days in Brisbane apart from getting our laptop (which had decided not to turn on for some reason) fixed, and seeing a doctor to get the referral I needed to get an ultrasound scan in Sydney. We had two full days to spend in the city so we headed out early Sunday morning to check out some of the sights. Sunday markets were open on the south bank of the river and in an area of dedicated leisure and parkland we browsed the stalls, eventually decide ding to buy each member of the family a little something from there to thank them for our stay. After our little shopping spree we walked across a bridge to wander the rest of the city centre. Asking around brought us to a laptop repair shop but being Sunday it was closed. It did however have a out of hours number so we made the call. Paul spoke to a guy on the other end, apparently the owner of the shop who promised to look at it for free if it was brought in at 10.00 the following morning, so that was arranged. We had a good walk around the city taking in a couple of other markets and the botanical gardens before we got to a train station which would take us close to home. Back with the O'Briens, we distributed the children's gifts and gave a little assistance to Harry who was struggling his magicians magic pen and needed a some coaching to prepare for his star performance. The rest of the evening we joined in the family movie night with fish and chips.

Monday morning Paul went straight into the city clinging on to the laptop and hope that it would be fixed and our hard drive saved by the time we got our bus out at 1900 that evening. I had an appointment with a doctor booked for 11.15 so once the children had been shuttled to school Heather and I went for a coffee at a local café and nattered for an hour before going up to the medical centre. The doctor was great, everything was fine, I got my referral and she even used a Doppler to listen to the babies heart which was a first for me and thrilling to hear. Shame Paul wasn't with me but I didn't feel too bad as we'd be having the scan two days later.

Meanwhile, in the city Paul had dropped the laptop into the shop where the very helpful man had had a look, decided that the hard drive wasn't working but could fix it and rescue all our saved items by 16:00 that day. He had paid $120 up front, and they would call at about midday to give an update. I met Paul at about midday on the south bank where we had been the day before and we spent a few hours on this scorcher of a day on the manmade beach and pool. When by 14:00 we still hadn't heard we tried to call, but the main guy wasn't in and nobody else could tell us anything. We were starting to get a bit nervous by this point so we headed to the shop in person. We saw the guy in the shop as we got there and he informed us that the hard drive was broken which seemed to us to be what we all knew already. He offered to rescue our information and replace the hard drive but it would cost us a further $360 and he couldn't promise it would be ready by 4pm. We were realising by this point that we'd made the wrong choice coming to this man and said so. He was full of it, so we decided to cut our losses with him. We bought an external hard drive from another shop, told him to put all our information on there and went away to wait an hour when he said it would be ready. We spoke to tAcer (the laptop manufacturer) on the phone who gave us the address of a service centre in Sydney so at 4pm went back ready to collect our laptop and external hard drive. To cut a long story short, it wasn't ready, nor was it when we returned at 5pm, in fact the helpful man suggested we might like to change our bus ticket to a later date or time to wait for him to pull his finger out. It was unclear what he had actually been doing with the computer all day and he was very non specific in describing it but he had apparently pull all other work aside other than ours. Like I said, he was full of it!

To sum up the whole fiasco we left the shop with one laptop in the same condition that we dropped it off in the morning, $120 lighter in pocket and with our brand new portable hard drive still with the charlatan on a promise that he will put all the info onto it and send it on to our friends work address in Sydney the next day. We got back to Heather and Stephens just in time to wolf down a dinner of sausage and mash before the entire tribe took us to the bus station just in time to catch another joyous night bus to Sydney.