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!
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On stage with "Soap" before we were told to stop taking photos |
Then on to the restaurant along with two
friends of the Taits.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.