Still shaking off the salt water and dreaming of incredible underwater scenes, we hightailed it to Brisbane - stopping for a forgettable night in Gladstone en route. Sash was pretty keen to check out the Giant Pineapple (being of the age where giant things appeal) but when we pulled in after a brief de-tour, everything was shutting for the day. A young attendant took pity on us and let us climb the pineapple and check out the history of pineapple production in Australia. We also took the obligatory photo of the family waving from the top of the pineapple, just below the stalk...
Upon leaving, I did a very unusual thing for me - I checked my facebook account. Much to my delight I happened to notice that a very dear old friend from Melbourne, Anna O, had posted that she was in Brisbane with another lovely friend, Thu! Turns out that they were just in town for the weekend and it just happened to be the very weekend we were passing through on our whirlwind tour of the east coast... I was thrilled at the chance to see two of my fave peeps from Melbourne so I rang Anna and we arranged to meet up the very next day in the heart of Brisbane.
We checked in at a caravan park near the water (for final fishing attempts by BT) and made plans for our brief time in Brisbane. Early the next morning we took off into town and headed straight to Myers to meet Santa and ride the santa-land train. Not surprisingly it was insanely crowded and took forever, but the kids enjoyed every second so it was totally worth it. The year in a tent must have addled our brains a bit because we actually purchased a copy of a really weird photo of the kids with Santa where they held their hands out and then someone photoshopped some reindeer eating out of their hands. Weird...
Following our Christmas frenzy, we met up with Anna and Thu for a lovely long lunch of catching up and laughs. It was truly wonderful to see them and a timely reminder that there are people in Melbourne who we were longing to see - and that our homecoming wasn't something to dread!
After fond farewells and promises to catch up soon in Melbourne, Anna and Thu headed to the airport and we headed for Brisbane's big wheel. It was huge and provided an amazing view over Brisbane. We ended our day in town with a peculiar dinner at a funky and outrageously expensive Korean restaurant. We were totally exhausted when we caught the train home - but excited about the next leg of our journey which would take us to the Gold Coast theme parks!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment