Thursday, May 29, 2008

Week 1 - 17 - 24 May 08. Wellington - Brisbane.

The Beginning

After a seriously busy lead-up to the trip - 5am Saturday we were finally off to the airport. 6.30 am Saturday it was time to board and we were hunting for Ash who'd found the Whitcoulls TV with cousin Bria. A good flight over, the kids pretty well kept themselves entertained with laser fingers and other new toys. Ruben discovered some people watching Kill Bill and watched over their shoulder for a couple of minutes before Rob discovered what he was up to and pulled him away just before the head chopping scene!

Slightly dazed and confused at the airport, we managed to find our rental car and found our way to the correct off-ramp, only to drive straight back on the onramp to the motorway! We headed for Carindale shopping centre for some lunch and a breather, big mistake in our state - being a Saturday the place was crazy. Took us 20mins to find our car again when we left the centre.

Monday we went and checked outour new camper trailer - still being built at Camel factory - we had a guided tour of the factory and the boys got to play in the display models which they loved. Canvas is made, but we need to wait for the trailer to go through production - ETA end of next week. Looked at 3 likely 4WDs over the week and picked a 2003 Nissan Patrol (burnt silver, for those who need the important info). Done a few kms (96,000) but has all the extras we require (snorkel, lift kit, uhf, roof rack, towbar, good bullbar) and a damn good price (we can drag back some of those $$ we lost converting the NZ Peso to Oz$).


As the kids holiday had so far consisted of shopping (which sucks for all concerned) we took Wednesday off and went to Australia Zoo. Great day, gorgeous weather and heaps to see. Elephants were a hit, koalas and crocodiles too. Saw the 'biggest snake in Australia' (how do they know???) which was a buzz, and the wombats going for a walk with their keepers. The Crocoseum show was pretty cool, with Rob being selected to have doves land on him - the hosts got the four 'lucky' people to wave their arms madly and make ridiculous cawing noises to attract the birds. The birds were released from their cages and disappeared over the rooftops never to be seen again. Hilarious forthose of us watching Rob make a dick of himself!!!

Spent an afternoon at Southbank - awesome place for kids, very relaxing for a central city park. Also very impressed with Kangaroo Point, where we had fish'n'chips on Saturday night. I've heard bad things about Aussie fish and chips but these were as good as back home, and were wrapped in newspaper too. Kangaroo Point has a high rockface on one side (and the river on the other) and we got to watch a few rock-climbers try to make it to the top - most of them ended up abseilling back down again, it looked pretty hard.

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