Belly dancers, hammocks and hailstones as big as golf balls

Due to our poor map-reading and almost double circumnavigation of the Glass House Mountains we were late arriving at Willie and Helen's house in Ormiston on the outskirts of Brisbane. It was dark as we walked up to the front door and it was immediately obvious that something was amiss - a dog was barking in the house and they don't have a dog, at least they didn't when we were here four years ago. The door opened and Helen appeared holding the offending article – a small, fluffy creature that personified “cuteness”. This was Abby, the latest addition to the Tait family, and perhaps some attempt to fill up the house now that the two oldest Taits, Jenny and Cameron, have both left home to study in the USA. There then followed a pretty full on week.

Unfortunately our timing was not very good as Willie was very busy at work and burning the midnight oil at both ends! His company had a big military contract and a deadline was fast approaching requiring him to leave for work at 6am and not getting home until well into the evening – almost every day we were there, including weekends.

First up for us was the result of the Scottish Referendum on Independence. I'm sure if we had been back in Scotland we would have stayed awake throughout the night watching the results programme. However, with the time difference, it was much more civilised in Australia and, after a good nights sleep, we watched the results come in throughout the morning as the same BBC programme shown in Scotland was broadcast live here in Australia. As Sandra had threatened to emigrate if there was a Yes vote, I'm glad it was No – I'm sure emigration would have been too much of a hassle.

As luck would have it, it was the Brisbane Festival and the city was alive with performance arts – pretty much along the lines of the Edinburgh Festival. On Saturday afternoon we picked Willie up from work to go to a show then on for a meal. The show, called “Soap”, was a mixture of music, song, dance, acrobatics and humour delivered from a number of full sized baths on stage along with copious amounts of water – it paid not to be in the front seats!

On stage with "Soap" before we were told to stop taking photos

Then on to the restaurant along with two friends of the Taits.

Sandra and Willie in Turkish Restaurant

For some reason I had it in my head we were going Mexican so I was surprised when we arrived at a Turkish restaurant. There are two reasons to go to a Turkish restaurant – the first is obviously the food, the second – even more obviously, is the Belly Dancers. Neither disappointed.

Helen, me and Helen;s friend in Turkish Restaurant

 Just as we completed our meal there was a crash of music and Fatima (or one of her sisters) appeared wearing an appropriately revealing costume – at least, a substantial amount of sinuous belly was appropriately revealed. My previous experience of belly dancers has been a lot of veils concealing a lot of belly and often a face that has seen a bit of life on the wrong side of the tracks. Not so Fatima who, as can be seen from my photo, was quite nicely proportioned and who, for some reason seemed attracted to our table. She returned several times to allow us to study at close quarter the Art of the Belly Dancer – and then she swooped. Picking on Willie she stood him in the middle of the crowded restaurant for a sensuous one-to-one dance. Willie had no option but to respond as best he could – and to give him his due, he probably wiggled as well as any other man would do in similar circumstances. I have resisted to temptation to use the photo of him performing so as not to embarrass the poor boy.

Willie's dancing partner

Then a walk along the very attractive river bank in the centre of Brisbane before a trip to the top of a nearby mountain for a birds-eye view of the city at night – spectacular.

With Jenny and Cameron in the States studying only Kirsty is left at home but only for another day or so before she leaves for a couple of weeks on a school trip to Japan.

Kirsty and Abby

Then W & H won't know what's hit them – the empty nest syndrome. However, before she left for the Land of the Rising Sun, we managed an evening out where we all went to a seaside park and ate fish and chips. If the weather had been a bit warmer it would have been very pleasant, however with the chill factor demanding fleeces all round, we only had time for a brief photo call before retreating back to the house.

After Fish and Chips - blooming freezing!

With the house being a bit on the empty side, Helen had decided to re-decorate a bedroom for Jenny for when she returns next year. Sandra and I waded in and spent a few days scraping, filling, sanding, under-coating, re-under-coating, re-sanding, top-coating etc.

Painting walls - just like being at home!

 It was difficult for three people to work together in a relatively small space particularly when they include two forewomen and one labourer – the latter being the person who inevitably “did it wrong”. However, job well done, and the room was looking good before we left.

Our trip to Brisbane would not have been complete without visiting Paul and Pam who live just a few minutes away from W & H. Paul is my second, or perhaps even third, cousin and is notably for looking amazingly like my late father – the Douglas genes will out, warts and all!! It was really annoying to hear that his two daughters, Kate and Emily, were on a whistle-stop tour of what appears to be The World and had recently spent a few days in Edinburgh where of course we were unable to offer them a bed for the night.



Paul, me and David ; Pam and Sandra

 Their son David, a traditional Douglas name, has yet to make the trip and hopefully, if he does, he will pick a time when we are at home. Like nephew Calum he is a good rugby player, but touch rugby which is a much bigger sport in Australia than the UK, he has plays for Queensland and hopes to be in the Australian team playing New Zealand in the near future.

After a week Chez Tait it was time to be on our way again. I have just about given up trying to plan a route as inevitably we never get to where we planned. The general idea was to head west and do a big loop round before arriving in Sydney in about a weeks time. Setting off due south we passed through Beaudesert, then headed west through Boonah onto the Cunningham Highway and arrived in the substantial town (pop 12,500) of Warwick before looking for somewhere to spend the night. About 20k out of town is the Leslie Dam where we put up the tent at the Washpool campsite right on the shores of the lake and surrounded by the inevitable mob of kangaroos. With hammock slung up between a couple of trees it was too pleasant a spot to leave in a hurry so we spent another day there.

It's a hard life

On packing up the next day – disaster – we broke one of the angle joints on the tent. It was a surprise that they had lasted as well as they had, but annoying that they had broken only a week or so before the end of the trip – c'est la vie. For some reason we decided not to go west but to head back towards the coast – I have a suspicion that Sandra has identified a craft shop she wants to visit. We initially aimed for the small country town of Killarney where we noticed a signpost for a tourist drive to Queen Mary's Fall and we were off again into the unplanned.

Queen Mary's Falls

A very scenic drive took us past Daggs Falls and onto Queen Mary's Falls. The falls themselves were pretty spectacular but so was the wildlife – with our first sighting this trip of a Koala in the wild. But it was the birdlife which really excelled with Sandra heading off with her camera looking for fairy wrens whilst being surrounded by multi-coloured parrotty things one of which had the temerity to land on her head.

We were heading for Kyogle – but we never got there. Stopping for a picnic lunch at a fly speck on the map called Wiangaree we noticed a track going into the Border Ranges National Park and thus ended up at Lynch's Creek. This is the site of a school which closed down half a century ago. The school, which once had 40 pupils in a single classroom most of whom rode to school by horse, is still standing and it is possible to camp in the school grounds.

Lynch;s Creek School - where we camped

These are grassy, flat with plenty of shade and toilet facilities which I doubt have been upgraded since the school closed. Sandra has read somewhere about a particularly poisonous spider which, allegedly, lurks under the seat of these old-fashioned “thunder box” toilets - and can jump - so has declined to make use of them, disappearing into the woods when nature calls.

Spiders - what Spiders?

First up was a running repair on the broken tent – it's amazing what you can do with duct tape. We got the tent up just in time as the sky suddenly darkened, lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the heavens opened. Rain would have been bad enough but within seconds the ground was white as hailstones the size of marbles lashed down. Luckily for Sandra she was in the tent but, on a brief excursion to batten down the hatches, the top of my head took the brunt of hailstones bigger than golf balls – OK slight exaggeration, but look at the photo.

It's now the following morning, the storm is over, the sun is shining and we have decided to stay another day.