Holiday tales

I realise that I didn't exactly elaborate on mum's holiday here, but I just didn't have time during the last post. Brisbane was lovely albeit mainly having torrential thunderstorms that were apparently quite unusual for that time of year. We were treated to some quite spectacular lightning shows though so that's all ok! We were staying at this hostel out of the city centre called Somewhere to stay which was lovely although we both nearly had heartattacks when we noticed the spiders web full of spiders in the car park. It was strung between 2 trees and the spiders were, quite honestly, HUGE! It took all my control and I'm sure quite a lot of mum's too, not to scream :) The people at the hostel were fairly sure that they were harmless ones though :) We spent a couple of days looking round Brisbane city centre and things to do in the city, we went and hugged some koalas, (cool for us, probably scary for them) had a wander round the Botanical Gardens there and generally had a nice relaxing time as I tried to get mum into this time zone as easily as possible. We spent a day driving up to the Glasshouse Mountains as well which I'm sure look wonderful in the sun. I wouldn't know, we couldn't see them because of the rain (and HAIL!!!) most of the time. We had a bit of a drama getting to the airport in Brisbane to fly to Melbourne, we got to the check in desk 5 minutes after it had closed and they grudgingly let us through but I then had to run (and I don't run!) back to the car which we in a moment of madness had parked in the normal carpark rather than taking it back to the car hire place so I had to pay for that then drive all round the sodding terminals to get to the Europcar returns place. Then I had to run (again!) back through security and to my gate where they were waiting for me with mum waving my boarding card at them saying 'She is in the airport and she is coming!'. Fun fun fun. Typically, it was raining when we arrived in Melbourne which, needless to say, did not impress mum that much! She really wanted to go back to the heat of Brisbane :) It continued to rain for the next 4 days. I made her meet TAB which went down well, thankfully! and then we went to Echuca for 2 days where they have steamboats on the river and all sorts of lovely things like that. It was very nice of people to comment, over and over again, that the rain was very very unusual, it never rains in Echuca... Of course, a drive around back country Victoria (a place where you throw a party everytime there's a corner in a road) could not be complete without introducing mum to my second home, Nagambie. It was the State Champs on at the time so was rather a frantic place so we made a rather sensible decision to go back on our way home from Echuca. And no, I did not force my mum to jump from a perfectly good aeroplane, what kind of a daughter do you think I am? :) Anyway, a lovely time was had, definately by me and I certainly hope by mum :) And I'm sure that the koalas will recover soon. Possibly.