No Charlie its not a DOG its a Kangeroo!: The First Few Days

Well we've arrived and first impression is ....... oh my word its hot.

The flight was split into three eightish hour sections with brief stops in Dubai and Singapore and all in all could not have been easier. Emirates were brilliant and the trolley dollies seemed to genuinely like the kids - Isaac was slightly stunned by the whole experience and couldn't believe his luck: personal tv with 100s of channels, an endless supply of pineapple juice, a special "backpacket" with toys and every few hours an exciting parcel with chocolate pudding in it. Charlie was happy with all the sticker books, toy horses and gurning at the people in the seats behind. The highlight was when Charlie managed to frisbee a red hot food container into the face of an elderly lady sleeping several rows away - she took it very well.

Both the kids were brilliant and made us wonder why we had been so worried about the flight (there is always the return journey...).

On arrival in Brisbane we stepped out of the 'plane into a wall of heat - at 06:30 am!!! We had a slight tangle with customs over some dried fruit but they released Charlie after only a few hours of interrogation. We then had to pick up our hire car and luckily Victor on the Europcar desk spotted Al for the fair-dinkum Aussie that he is and wangled us a deal which was a relief as we were due to have to take a taxi into town to pick up a car. In the mean time Charlie had walked up to the largest most tattoo'd baggage handler in sight, stuck his finger out to within 12 inches of his face and asked in a loud voice "Who dat man?" Luckily Shane (no joke) was a great guy.

We killed most of the morning sorting out the car and then headed off to our Forest Lodge apartment in Indooroopilly. We didn't have very high expectation for the accomodation which was fortunate as it was very basic and the pool had been flooded by the recent tropical storms. We had forgotten how tropical Brisbane is and the heat, humidity and colourful birds were all greater than we remembered - a very distinctive smell of hot damp earth took as both back 14 years immediately.

Day 2 started slightly earlier than we would have liked due to the wildlife outside our bedroom, however once we had quietened the boys the birds soon started up. There was a danger that Isaac would become disillusioned with the whole trip due to the lack of kangeroos in Dubai, Singapore AND Brisbane airports so we decided to deal with this quickly and headed for the local sanctuary, which turned out to be brilliant.

A brief stop at one of the many public playgrounds on route:

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary:

Three of the most familiar Australian species, although we hadn't expected the wombat to look quite so much like Charlie:

Rach demonstrates that although kangeroos are marsupials they are still mammals.....!

The "dogsheep" demonstration was brilliant. Below is the yard dog which is no good at herding but runs along the sheep's backs to "stir 'em up". Highlight was Al demonstrating his extensive knowledge of sheep by asking why some of them had horns!!! Although he did make amends later when one of them escaped by wrestling it to the ground and returning it to the pen all whilst carrying Charlie.

Day 3 was a travelling day south to Brunswick Heads (just north of Byron Bay) but started with a trip to K-Mart; everybody happy - new shorts for Rach, fishing rods for Al and Isaac and a ball for Charlie. Then a four hour drive which turned into a 3 hour drive and then a 2 hour drive as we gradually corrected the timezone on the sat nav - felt like a real bonus!

Brunswick Heads is a bonza place (as Nevil Shute would say) and our beachside cabin really exceeded expectations. The beach is on the river and is beautiful although the water is amazing cold given that it must have been flowing through stinking hot land for x thousand miles...