We had a lovely city day in Brisbane today. We walked along the north and south banks of the Brisbane River. We had a picnic in the Botanical Garden on the north bank, listening to groovy live music by Russ Walker.

We went across to South Bank, the kids stopped to play in the water. We took the KittyCat boat to Howard Smith warves, enjoyed a drink while watching an AFL game on a big screen.

We took the boat back to the South Bank, stopped for a mandatory picture at the Brisbane sign and went back home.

It was a great day, we walked about 10km in a beautiful city, with perfect weather. I was very surprised how modern the city, and how well they developed it combining skyscrapers, recreation areas, wharves and promenades along the river. I was the perfect uncle today, giving Alfie and Matilda their first chewing gum.

We woke up early and enjoyed a breakfast with products from the farm, while watching the highlights of yesterday’s Tour de France stage. We also went for a short walk around the farm, during sunrise, to exercise a bit before a long day in the car.

After passing the Great Dividing Range (more than 1300m high), we stopped for lunch at Glenn Ines in a nice pub, at the Great Central Hotel. We had a very traditional lunch with roasts/beef pies, and played pool with the kids. The city looks just like Gloucester yesterday, far-west style.

The afternoon was a long drive. We took the touristic Mount Lindesay road. We stopped at the Thunderbolt Hideout, a place where a locally famous outlaw, Fred Ward, hid for years in the 19th century – very far-west again. Tom then stopped at the Bald Rock park, where we climbed a huge granite boulder.

The drive from there was a bit magical, as the sun was setting on a landscape that reminded us of the Lion King movie. We listened to several version of the song, English, Japanese, French etc. I think the english one is the best.

We arrived during the evening in Brisbane, on time to watch the Australia-England rugby game… on TV, even though it’s in Brisbane.

Today we started ouf road trip to Brisbane and Queensland. It’s quite a long drive so we’re stopping for a night half-way, near Armidale.

The weather was beautiful, from the morning on, but we still saw signs of the recent rainfalls, especially in the form of potholes – there were hundreds of them on the road.

We stopped at Gloucester for lunch. A nice little place, looking like a far-west village. Basically one street with narrow one-storey shops with a high façade. We also stopped at Armidale for groceries.

We had booked an Airbnb, a house next to a farm in Thalgarrah. A beautiful, quiet place. Tom and Nat arrived a bit later. We had diner, watched a movie together (Monsters, Inc.).

And suddenly, the rain stopped! Clouds were still around, but we could do outdoor activities. The scuba diving session was cancelled due to limited visibility, so we went to explore the gigantic dunes of the eastern coast of the Tomaree peninsula.

We first went to the dunes at the back of Samurai beach – 10 min walk in an exotic forest – Jurassic Park style, including the soundtrack, then a 20m climb to get to the top of the dune to discover a landscape resembling Tatooine.

We went back to the car and drove to Big Rocky, a more… rocky coastline. We found beautiful shells. The waves were quite strong so we didn’t get too close to the sea.

After lunch, we went to Fingal beach, not too far from Tomaree Head. The beach extends almost all the way to the Shark Island – it is sometimes possible to walk to the island, but not today.

Back home, we watched the Minions movie together, and planned the start of our road-trip – we’re off to Brisbane tomorrow.

Today we ran out of things to do in bad weather. So we just took it easy, and decided to try painting aboriginal inspired art. We went to the library to get inspiration from art books. They had a seed section at this library – you can “borrow” seeds, meaning you take them, grow plants, then harvest the seeds and… bring these back to the library. We also bought canvas and paint for everyone.

We got started with the paintings after lunch. Matilda painted « People Around the Fire », Timo « Newcastle », Hugo « The Immortal Mask », Tom « Nine over Newie », Sarah « Spider », Guillaume « The Roots of Daytime», and Alfie « Sun – Flower ». Nathalie made cinnamon rolls while we were painting – strangely enough, they looked closer to aboriginal art than any of our paintings.

We watched an Australian animated film (Back to the Outback), and played card games. The rain never really stopped today – we’re hoping for nice weather tomorrow as we have planned to go scuba diving – we’ll see.

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Another day with heavy rains and flood warnings everywhere, here but even more in the Sydney area. On the one hand we would have preferred sun, on the other hand it’s experiencing the reality of the climate here. We had anticipated bad weather and had booked a visit of the local Ugg boots factory, Mortel’s.

So we drove there, under a downpour of rain. The news on the radio were all about floods and evacuations.

We got a tour of the factory by the owner himself, Tony Mortel, who peppered the technical explanations of the making of a ugg, with anecdotes and jokes. Fun fact: Ugg comes from “ugly”, according to Tony himself, the son of the boots’ creator.

We had lunch there, or… breakfast really, as they served breakfast the whole day. We tried to get a pic of everyone next to the oversized Ugg sculpture outside, it turned into « run and take the picture as fast as possible », to avoid becoming completely wet.

Tom and Nat then took us to the Regional Art Gallery in Maitland, where we saw mostly modern/contemporary and aboriginal art (Nongirrna Marawili).

Diner was at Mike’s today, shrimp on the barbie!

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