Turns out we were not quite done with Brisbane. We had seen ads for a Disney exhibition at the Queensland Museum, and Sarah really wanted to see it. So we all went! It was a beautiful and captivating exhibition about Disney’s animation movies, the technique, the art, the artists. We were handed out drawing boards at entrance, clearly encouraged to measure our drawings skills against Disney’s artists.

The exhibition was chronological, from the first Mickey Mouse films to the recent digital films. I thought the first part was way more interesting – maybe because of my age? The work on the artistic concepts, the colours, the style, the storyboard, how they worked from the voice recording to the animated movie, all supported by sketches and drawings.

After a quick lunch break along the South Bank, we went to a guided tour of the nearby Art Gallery, taking us through Australian masterpieces of the last 150 years or so, and beautiful aboriginal art from the last 50 years. I understand (but maybe I misunderstood) that Aboriginal Australians only started painting on canvas in the 70s, pretty recently, really. We learnt that, although it looked like abstract art, it’s not – the artist tells a story, a story they own.

We finally left Brisbane, and headed to Burnleigh Head where we meet James, Nathalie’s brother, who lives there. Under a pouring rain, we drove to our next destination, Brunswick Head. We had dinner at Chris Olsen’s, who I hadn’t seen for 20 years. Nothing compared to the 36 years since I had last seen her daughter Nel, who happened to be here as well!

The day started with the highlights of yesterday’s Tour de France stage. It’s routine now. After breakfast, Tim, Alfred and I played some Aussie rules football in the parc across the street.

Our first attraction today was the Coot-Tha lookout, north of Brisbane. A quick stop to enjoy the view, and we went to the nearby Simpson’s waterfall for our lunch break and a short hike to the falls – there wasn’t much water, which puzzled us given the rainfalls just a few day ago.

We then drove to Wellington point, at the very end of a peninsula just east of Brisbane, on the Coral sea. We walked on a narrow, emerged sandbar to King Island, and came back just as the tide was starting to submerge the bar. It’s winter, but 20deg and sunny. Feels like a good summer day in Norway. For locals however, judging from how uncrowded it was at Wellington point, it’s clearly winter.

This ends our stay in Brisbane and the second week of our holidays. Tomorrow we’re heading to Gold Coast and Brunswick Head, a bit further south.

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.