Home sweet home

For the second time in our trip, Dai and Di were there to pick us up from the airport when we arrived after our flight back from Cairns. It didn't take too long to settle back into life at Coolangatta - dinner at the Surf Club, our own bathroom and an endless supply of tea and coffee, plus a night of ten pin bowling. I do normally play best after a 24 hour flight from the UK so I wasn't surprised to come last.

Dai ended up with the nasty pair of shoes

With Dai back in work, we decided that along with Di, we would head into Brisbane City for a bit of a challenge - called 'For how long, and for how little money can you entertain yourselves in the capital of Queensland?'. Well I can tell you that you can certainly make a good start on this game by walking thirty minutes in the opposite direction to your first destination - which is exactly what we did while trying to find Parliament. Eventually we got there for a free tour, our guide not quite as amusing as the one in Victoria but very informative and the building was beautiful. After nearly wandering onto the set of a film called Fools Gold, which Kate Hudson is starring in (Di tried to get us parts as extras but they were having none of it) we had lunch in the Botanical Gardens. After that we crossed the Brisbane River to Southbank, to visit Brisbane Museum (also free!).

To save money we swam across rather than catching the ferry

The museum is huge on four floors with a mini cinema that was playing wildlife films (where Gareth and Di actually fell asleep). The highlight for me was the collection of dead and deadly critters, which included Redback Spiders, the Bluebottle Jellyfish and my personal favourite, the Coastal Taipan snake. We agreed that you can actually have quite a lot of fun in Brisbane for not much money, but a glass of champagne, a nice lunch and some money to go shopping would have made it even better!

My favourite view of a snake - bottled

Next day we had a day of relaxing before heading off to Conrad Jupiters Casino Complex at a place called Broadbeach, for Tempo Rouge. With money from Gareth's mum and dad we'd booked a show and dinner package - dinner was lovely - we ate it all before we had a chance to take any pictures and then it was down the the theatre for the show itself. Di had got us front row seats so it was a bit of a scary experience, you wanted to clap and enjoy yourselves but not make eye contact with any of the cast in case you ended up being dragged onto the stage. Luckily we avoided it - a man called Wayne who had the weirdest looking goatee beard got pulled up instead and I suppose that really is a lesson to him that if you have daft facial hair you are going to attract a bit of unwanted attention.

Next day was Australia Day - a public holiday in Australia which commemorates the anniversary of white settlement in Australia. At Kirra Beach, with a little help from Microsoft, the Surf Club had organised to be part of Look Up and Smile Day. Try as I might, I can't get the picture on here but you can view the 100 image if you type this address in your browser.

http://www.lookupandsmile.com.au/australia_day_above.aspx

We were part of the 1 in the 100 (with the lifesaver image). There are two photos that you should be able to see on the site.

The photo was all done and dusted by lunchtime so we decided to hire a speedboat and cruise down the Tweed River - well speedboat wasn't really an accurate description of this battered old boat that chugged its way breathlessly downstream.

Me and Di let the boys have a go - but they never quite got the hang of it

The water was crystal clear, so we stopped for a swim and a picnic before chugg chugging our way back home again.

Cherry bakewell anyone?

On the way back to the apartment we stopped quickly for a photo opportunity that we missed three years ago when on holiday and weren't going to miss this time around. Coolangatta and Tweed Heads are known as the twin towns - bang right next door to each other but Coolangatta is in Queensland and Tweed Heads is in New South Wales - meaning they are in different time zones.

Sarah was an hour late - again!

That night we were going out for another meal - this time courtesy of my mum and dad - so we had booked a lovely little Tapas place just around the corner. The girl at the till had looked a bit dopey when we made the booking a few days before but that's not unusual in Queensland so we didn't worry too much. We got ourselves dressed up and headed down there. Luckily we had the car because when we arrived the place was completely shut up and dark. Uh-oh. We got back in the car and drove to a place called the Ivory Hotel - where we managed to get ourselves a table and had a delicious meal, even better than the tapas would have been!

Disaster recovered!

Next day it was time to pack up everything to move on again - but this time we were all going together. While we'd been away up north, Dai and Di had decided to move to a new place in Caloundra (about an hour north of Brisbane and our first stop on the drive to Cairns).

We think they probably hoped to get away and leave no trace in Coolangatta before we got back - but we foiled them with our early return! So they had no choice but to let us tag along and put up with us for another few weeks ...