Brisbane

It has been interesting to see the different birds that come to visit our caravan in each place we stop.  Here we've been receiving visits from a pair of bush turkeys (as well as the doves and butcher birds which seem to be everywhere.)

There is a lovely little shop in Brisbane called The Collective Store, full of amazing hand made creations from around Australia.  I have had some of my paper dolls in this shop for some time, but unfortunately didn't sell enough of them to make it worth my while to keep paying the rent for a shelf and I had arranged with the owner to come and pick the remaining stock up when our journey took us past Brisbane.  Philip needed a some light fittings for the caravan, too.  Brisbane is about an hour and a half from Maroochydore, and rather than towing the caravan through the city, we decided to drive into town for the day.  That way we can by-pass the city when we head for Mt Warning tomorrow.
As we drove over the Gateway Bridge and saw the Brisbane skyline in the distance, Esther asked, "Why do we have to come to this city AGAIN?"  We explained that this was Brisbane, ["You mean the capital city of Queensland?" "That's the one!"] and that we had never been here before. "Well anyway, cities are boring. It's just boring shops and stuff," said Arthur.  The bridge itself, however, was described as "The coolest bridge ever.  It's like being up in the sky!"

It was fun visiting The Collective Store.  I've seen photos on the website, and many of the products are made by "friends" I've had contact with through MadeIt (where I sell my dolls online) so it was interesting to see them in real life and to meet Leonie in person after exchanging many emails.

We have come to rely heavily on the GPS for finding our way around, but the TomTom chose today to have a flat battery and wasn't re-charging, so I actually had to use a map to navigate around Brisbane.  After we had picked up my parcel of paper dolls, we went in search of LED lights for the caravan. The first store we went to didn't have any in stock, and we had to find our way to another branch on the other side of town.  By that time we had two very hungry children in the back, so we found a shopping centre where we had lunch at the food court and also used the opportunity to do some shopping and get Philip a haircut (his first since starting on our travels) before heading home. We were relieved when we later found that the only problem with the TomTom was a faulty cord, easily fixed by replacing it with the spare one.
It was late afternoon when we got back, so we bought some fish and chips for tea and took them onto the beach.  Hannah joined us and we spent an hour or so watching the sun set while the children got wet and chased seagulls.  I didn't have the camera with me to catch the beautiful glow of the last light turning the seagulls' wings to gold!
Tomorrow we head for the hills- across the New South Wales border to Mt Warning.  I'm looking forward to putting our clock forward and pretending we're getting up later!