As good as a change

You haven't heard from me in a while because our holiday in Queensland was far busier than I anticipated and it was a bit of a drag trying to secure good connection to the internet to update this blog. Honestly, there were also many times that I couldn't be bothered tearing myself away from whatever I was doing to set up my laptop and update this blog! I do apologise, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. We had a wonderful time!

But, we're back in Melbourne now, and after finally settling back in to the pattern of work and school, as well as the disrupted domestic pattern, I can pull together a few key threads from our holiday for you (I won't bore you with every detail, but this holiday has already inspired a number of posts that I started but hadn't got around to finishing. These will come soon. I promise there'll be no slideshows, though.)

Besides enjoying spending time with my family, catching up with my parents (whom we stayed with most of our stay up north) and with my sister and her family, we spent a bit of time at the Sunshine Coast. We enjoyed being at the beach as you can see (that's Jacob making a sandcastle at Maroochydore beach in the photo above) but also did a number of non beach things such as visiting the lovely Eumundi Market and Underwater World.

I also caught up on the kind of reading that you can only do on holiday, when you don't feel like you have to 'worthy' reading. (I enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency and book two of the series, Tears of the Giraffe – excellent holiday reading)

We also completed a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle – one of those rather old-fashioned things featuring a scene of Alhambra in Granada (see picture at left). It was a bugger! It took four adults four days and three nights to complete it. But the sense of accomplishment was lovely when we finally nailed it! I think I've caught the jigsaw puzzle bug, now.

What has most struck me about Brisbane (apart from my family who live here), is the trees. These really distinguish Brisbane from Melbourne or any other part of Australia that I've travelled to (though that's not many). Jacarandas, frangipanis, flame of the forest trees, African tulip trees, Moreton Bay figs, a range of other ficus trees, the native trees indigenous to this area, and of course the fruit trees – papaya, mango, lychee, citruses, and more. These really say what Brisbane is to me. I'll have to write more on this later.