A Catch Up and Brissie with the Beaumonts

Frankie

Once again I’ve managed to skirt some fairly important blogging events and need to make amends for my omissions. Cut back to a few days ago and our afternoon drive to Marlborough for the night. We had to stop at a service station for fuel, use of the facilities and some all essential snack food to keep us going. Fraser took care of both, as he is a very generous sort, and in doing so felt we deserved a treat of TimTams. When he brought the package to the counter he was informed that if he only bought one package it was $4.70 but if he bought two – he could get both for $4.60 - total!! It seemed like something out of an Eddie Murphy sketch – if you buy one sugar-infused bickie-like snack you get one free and 10 cents to boot! No here – take the hole box, feed the kids, your pets – whatever! And they wonder why obesity is on the increase in Australia? Perhaps they should take the same type of deals to veggies or fruits? Thus it was – two packets of TimTams in hand and we were off to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. The latter gained its name from Captain James Fraser who’s ship sank near Fraser Island many moons ago and managed to get himself, his wife and some crew members to the Island. At that time it was inhabited by Aborigines and by the end of the year he had perished due to a spear in his back. His wife Eliza survived and eventually made it back to England to recant her story which apparently became more and more elaborate as the years progressed.  Another shipwreck years prior to Captain James’ unfortunate demise reportedly left two young girls and their mother to fend for themselves on the island. Rumours abounded that these two 'white' girls were living amongst the Aborigines so someone decided to go up and have a look. The girls couldn't explain how they arrived there as may have been too young at the time of the shipwreck and only spoke the Aboriginal dialect. From internet accounts I've been able to dredge, the girls were found to be albino and possibly not related to the surviving family at all. Tragically, he found them so interesting he decided to extract them from the tribe and return to Sydney where they ended up in an institution and eventually died there.

Brisbane has been an interesting part of our adventure in that it has predominantly been an organizational point from where we could empty the caravan, pack our residual keepsakes into boxes, deliver the boxes to the moving company and then put our Kluger and caravan up for auction. With great fortune, our good friends from Narrandera have come to visit their Uncle/ Brother/Brother-In-Law Andrew and been able to scurry off to help us in some of our endeavours. Caravans – despite being relatively small compared to some cousin vehicles inhabiting these parks – can actually store an incredible amount of ‘stuff’ – for lack of a better word. As we were preparing for the trip I think we slowly kept adding to and stuffing in more and more things we felt would be good to have or essential for the trip and after a few months ended up with an incredible amassing of materials. Jen and Tamra’s emptying of the beast seemed never-ending, with box upon box quickly being filled and more cupboards yet to be emptied. By late afternoon we had made some serious headway but still had yet to empty Gertie and give her a good clean. In order to keep the kids from the clutches of the ‘boob’ tube I let them put up our tent and play with some of the toys we’d brought along on our trip. Word to the wise – never let your 9 or 10 year old (or his friend) swing golf clubs unsupervised with other kids around – especially Cole. Cole was having a tough afternoon having somehow fallen down the steps of our cabin and abraded the skin covering his achilles, caught a tennis ball on the chin and finally and only seconds from the tennis ball incident, walked non-chalantly into Tyler’s back-swing, catching the club on the right lateral part of his eye socket – 2-3 cms towards his nose and he might have coped one right in the eye. The wound was only superficial and there was a bit of bruising so fortunately no need to head to the hospital – just a little ice and some jelly bellies to ease/distract him from the pain.
Our second day in Brisbane wasn’t much more exciting than the first as we were essentially relegated to the caravan park for the better part of the day. As Jen had tackled the caravan with gusto the day before and the kids had some schooling to attend to, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed a bucket and set into finishing the inside of the caravan – tossing the remnants of cupboards out the door and giving it a good clean. My respect for those that do cleaning jobs for a living increased insurmountably as after 3 hours of scrubbing and cleaning I was well and truly spent. Piper had been a little under the weather having contracted a touch of croup so hung out with me for the better part of the morning – helping out when she felt up to it and at other times occupying herself with the many sand-buckets we’ve collected on our journey. Prior to the croup you would have thought there was nothing that would have quieted her down. If she wasn’t talking to you or anyone else she would be having some in depth discussion with one or both of her imaginary friends – Udi and Muda. Croup definitely settled her babbling down and tamed a bit of her wild beast, truncating her spirit into one of passivity and ease. We’d basically completed our cleaning/packing by the late afternoon and ventured to the peri-airport area to collect our hire car that would take us to the Gold Coast later in the week. It was an interesting trip in that our SatNav’s guidance essentially took us through a few residential neighbourhoods, on and off various freeways and finally to our rental agency – seemed like an odd collection of streets to get us to a large public utility – the airport. It almost seems as if Brisbane has grown too quickly for its infrastructure, leaving mazes of routes to get to key public facilities and areas of interest. Aside from the confusing traffic layout though, Brissie is definitely heading towards becoming a chic cosmopolitan city – Jen reckons it is sort of a meld between Sydney and Melbourne but I put it between Adelaide and Perth. It’s not totally touristed-out like Sydney and has a little bit of country feel like Adelaide or Perth and lacks the pretentiousness you get with either Sydney or Melbourne – but this is only from first impressions. We did manage to get into the CBD before nightfall and met up with Tamra, Phil and their kids at Parklands in the Southbank district of downtown. It’s virtually all new with plenty of restaurants, cafes, a weekend market, museums, art galleries and a manufactured beach/pool lying just inland from the banks of the river which runs through Brisbane. A short walk and play in the park for the kids to expend some energy, then dinner at Nando’s (short for Fernando’s I’m told) filled up the evening and left the kids ready for bed.
Today I had the task of a) collecting the trailer in which we would pack the remnants of our caravan clean out and deliver them to our movers somewhere on the south side of town and b) dropping off the Kluger and Caravan at the auctioneers at the opposite end of town. Collecting the trailer and loading it proved none to difficult but actually finding the moving company – near impossible. Fiona (our SatNav) seemed convinced I was thwarting her suggestions to take a left where no street actually currently existed. New roadworks had blocked her suggested path much to her ignorance and left me the task of trying to sort it out on my own. Google Maps eventually came to my rescue as well as a new vantage point for Fi and I eventually found my way there. I had to unload the trailer with the assistance of a fellow who spoke through a whole in his neck which added a bit more to the fairy tale of my venture – like some sort of fabled wizard or troll encountered on my quest to lead me closer to the coveted idol (or something like that)… I eventually made it back to the caravan park and loaded Gertie on Bess for one last trek. Aidan helped to navigate with the aid of Google Map, we filled in our paperwork and said our goodbyes. The trappings of consumerism caught us on the way back to our cabin, pulling us into a massive mall on the outskirts of town. From there we eventually met up with Tamra, Phil and their clan and spontaneously decided to catch “Shrek 3D – Forever after” at the local theatre housed inside the mall. We all got to wear some pseudo Buddy Holly 3 D glasses which led to our instant geekification. Aside from the very trying 30 minutes of ads at the outset, the movie filled me with both glee and tears, infused with guffaw-quality gags and sentimentality to make it look like you were peeling onions for the entire show.

There is something quite liberating about extricating yourself from your possessions. Perhaps it was simply the onerousness of the tasks or the timeliness with which they needed to be accomplished, but once we had let go of our boxes of assorted goods and then witnessed Bessie and Gertie disappear into the distance of the auctioneers lot, the air seemed to get fresher and bodies lighter as if a large weight had been lifted. Now it’s just us, our hired Hyundai and another week of adventure with our friends and their kids. It’s hard to believe our 6 month/ 7 year journey is nearing its conclusion but I won’t get too sentimental – not just yet.