And it’s a ‘warm’ welcome home – figuratively speaking, at least!

I should have blogged this yesterday (Friday) but I’m not entirely sure if I even had a Friday!

We took off from Brisbane at 12.30pm on Thursday (2.30AM, Thursday morning, UK time) and arrived at Manchester, surprisingly on time, at 6.30am Friday morning (UK time, of course)

For anyone thinking of doing the trip to Oz, while it is absolutely 1,000,000% worth it, it is about THE most exhausting thing you can do (labour/childbirth/new baby months aside!!)

We had good plans. To stay awake on the first two 8 hour flights and sleep the third one,arriving in the UK in the morning.

Unfortunately, both our body clocks and our children had different ideas! The second flight took off at the equivalent of about 10pm body-clock time and E was asleep before the wheels had even left the ground. J managed about a further 10 minutes!

Poof! Plans thwarted! The best we could do was (attempt to) join them (unsuccessfully, for the most part) so we could stay awake during the third flight, along with the boys (which really didn’t help with the jet lag!)

We arrived on time to feet of snow and -15 degrees in Manchester. Oh joy! We left behind 30+ degrees and arrived, just under 30 hours later, in -15! Talk about a shock to the system.

We felt it the minute we headed down the walkway from the plane! Fortunately, we were all in trousers at least. Plenty were still in shorts! Although I was wearing a t-shirt and no socks, we had made sure that jackets and cardis were packed handy in the cases so we could dig them out after collecting the luggage. Obviously, short of having packed a ski wardrobe to take to Oz, anything we had was never going to be enough for the conditions!

The drive home was, for the most part, uneventful. We watched the sun rise over the snowy Pennines and the motorways were mostly clear (although apprehensively slow)

The minor roads between Motorways and home were just compacted snow and slow going but we still managed to make good time home (thankful we weren’t driving and our taxi/minibus driver had managed to reach us ok!)

The boys walked in the house and immediately spotted their Santa sacks in the living room so the first hour or so consisted of much mess, wrapping paper and mayhem!

We’d hoped the get to a sort-of bedtime before the boys went to bed but we failed. E was declaring he was ‘bursting with tired’ by 4pm and we just couldn’t keep him awake any longer. J followed after a short tea, at about 5.30 and we were falling asleep on the sofa by 6.30 so went up soon after!

Unfortunately, this meant that E woke, bright and breezy at 2am! It wasn’t long before it became obvious that he was in NO way tired and not going back to sleep so I put a movie on for him to watch and headed back to bed myself (although, after nearly 8 hours sleep, I could have got up myself too!)

A short while later (apparently, 4pm) J got up too and Nik joined the boys at about 6. I managed to grab about another 30-40 minutes before general household noise meant I might as well get up too but I considered nearly 12 hours of reasonably good sleep (something I don’t get much at the best of times!) a result, anyway!

It’s hard work, flying to the other side of the world. With 2 flights down and one to go, I’d have gladly taken the one flight home than the two back to Oz, if anyone had offered me!

Obviously, it was completely worth it (well, the trip was! Not the flying home LOL) but I doubt we’ll ever afford to do it again. I daren’t even total up what we’ve spent overall!

So that’s it! Holiday done. There might be a few more summary/reflective type blogs to follow, if and when I get time but I’ve got SO much work catching up to do and the boys are VERY likely to be off school for a while due to the snow (their school has only been open for one out of four days after going back after the New Year!)

More to come, I’m sure, but I can’t vouch for its content or level of interestingness!

Last full day – making the most of it

Firstly, I’m missing out the first few hours of today due to, let’s just say “unfortunate circumstances” and I begin our day at 11am!

We had decided that today, our final full day, we would do a beach day. The forecast was good (30 degrees and clear) so we read up a little on local beaches. Apparently, for the decent beaches, you have to travel an hour north or south of Brisbane which, given the local “Bridlington Beach” here, is probably accurate so it was either North or down to the Gold Coast.

Neither of us much fancied the commercial, high-rise tourism of the Gold Coast area so we decided to head back to Bribie Island for the day. The place that had given us so much pleasure on those first few day, introducing us to Oz in the most tropical and amazing way. It seemed fitting to spend our final day on the beach that we started at with its perfect floury white sands and gentle surf.

What we didn’t count on, however, was Mr Weatherman getting it wrong (after all, why should Aussie weather forecasters be any different?)

As we left the house around 11am, we were surrounded by cloud, much of it grey, and hoped that the glimmers of blue sky would be in our direction!

We arrived at Bribie around midday to ‘drizzle’ (how very UK! (although it was 27 degrees drizzle!!)) so grabbed some lunch first and wandered around a few local shops. Something we hadn’t done much while staying in Bribie due to jet lag and ‘packing in activities’.

By the time it’d got to about 1pm, it was brightening up a little locally so we headed to the beach. We were already there anyway and kitted up in swim/sun gear so it seemed silly not to (and Bribie still looked beautiful, even in the drizzle!)

We spent a fantastic 3 hours+ on the beach. Paddling in the sea, which was warm despite the overcast weather and body boarding along the surf. The waves were absolutely perfect for it and both boys (well, all 3, in fact) had a great time! I just enjoyed being able to sit and do absolutely nothing for a few hours!

There were some BIG storms over Moreton Island (off the coast of Queensland/Bribie) and occasionally it’d try to rain but the 100 or so beach-goers didn’t care. We all just stayed paddling/sitting and the threats passed each time. We eventually decided that we’d had to make a move and get back for tea so we got showered off (Bribie beach at Woorim even has showers!), got changed and headed home where the boys got changed and we took a drive into Sandgate in search of some ‘proper’ food!

We picked out a couple of the ‘recommended eateries’ from the welcome pack and settled on a nearby pub/restaurant which was pleasant and quiet (it was only 5.30 so still quite early) One (well, four!) nice meal later and we were ready to head home to begin packing.

We’ve NO idea whether we’ll even be able to get to Manchester on Friday morning, mind you. The airport is now fully open and operational again and it’s not anticipating more disruption so fingers crossed that everything will be ok and our trip back will be uneventful.

Meanwhile, we’re bracing ourselves to drop todays 3 from the temperature and plunge ourselves back into the frozen wastelands of England. Oh joys!

Watch out Scooby! MovieWorld, here we come!

Today was destined to be a ‘let’s see what the weather is like’ day but, by 9am, even though it was a bit overcast, we decided “sod it!” and headed out to MovieWorld anyway. It wasn’t forecast to rain (or snow!! Haha!!) so we prepared for the 28 degrees and headed off one hour down the M1 (yes, really!)

MovieWorld, for the uninitiated, is a very much like Disney Hollywood Studios (MGM) in Orlando. It’s movie themed, Warner Bros style (so plenty of Looney Tunes as well as Batman/Superman and the like)

MovieWorld Entrance (at closing time)

After queuing for an hour for tickets at what felt like THE slowest moving line in history (and certainly the slowest of the 15 or so that were serving!)  we headed straight for the Batman Adventure- The Ride 2. A simulated motion ride which we hoped was going to be a bit like Spiderman or, more optimistically (and overly so!) the Simpsons Ride at Universal Islands of Adventure.

In truth, it was like neither. It was rather older and more ‘primitive’ than that but was a good introduction, nonetheless.

From here, we decided to grab an early lunch (hotdogs) and then planned our day around the timed shows.

E tucks into a MovieWorld hot dog

E with Nik.... I mean, Shrek!

We had plans to watch the Hollywood Stunt Driver show, followed by a musical mystery show, in the main street, by the Scooby Doo gang. We killed a bit of time in the Looney Tunes zone before watching the stunt show. Very impressive it was too. A 15 minute show of wheel-spinning, tyre-burning action which everybody (especially E!) LOVED (and we recorded in full so you’re welcome to come round and watch it when (IF!) we get home!)

The Scooby Doo show was pretty good too. Some good character acting and the kids enjoyed it (also recorded, for those who REALLY want to be bored with not only our holiday photos but our videos too!)

After Scooby, it was time for ice cream before the parade.

The parade involved all the park characters and actors marching down the main street. We’d got a reasonable position (outside the Shrek 4D attraction, ready to join its queue after!) and saw everyone we needed/wanted to.

Him, Her, Wonder Woman and Flash!

"Duck Season!"

"Wabbit Season!"

Rooby Rooby Roooooooo

Rawwwrrrrr... I mean, catwoman!

Batman himself

The boys say hi to Batman!

Shrek

All in all we had a pretty great day (occasional (usually elder) child misbehaviour aside!) and the hit of the day was definitely the Road Runner (oh, LOADS of Road Runner themed stuff for fans…AWESOME (beep beep!)) Rollercoaster.

It was aimed at kids really but it was certainly faster and more furious than any kids rollercoaster I’ve seen. E didn’t hesitate to go on it but I did (wuss me!) so Nik went on with him. E LOVED it!! Totally and utterly and so much so that Nik (on a subsequent run – there were several!) recorded him. The resulting video is so funny that we just HAD to share it and you can see it here. The video hasn’t been compressed yet so it’s rather big but we just wanted to upload it. It’s ace!!

J did eventually get persuaded to go on too but only right before the end of the day and, when they all came off (J having loved it!) they couldn’t get on again as they’d closed the ride (boooooooooooo!) Typically too, their ride photos didn’t come out for that run so we didn’t even get a photo of them all on it! There’s video though – we’ll add it to the DVD

All in all we had a pretty great day. The sun was patchy with cloud but that was a good thing really as it gave us some shade during the heat of the day. We left at closing time. I guess that’s the sign of a good day out, eh?

“That’s All Folks!”

Moving on – back to Brisbane

We woke this morning with a feeling of anticipation. Excited about moving on from Geelong to Brisbane yet a little sad that this move means that our adventure is nearing the end soon. 3 more nights in a house near Brisbane before we leave to fly home on Thursday.

We were up and about fairly early, ready to leave the house at 9am. Arrived at Melbourne airport early enough to get seated together and grab a bite to eat before flying at midday. Typically, the weather in Melbourne had picked up and it had developed into a lovely sunny (warm!) morning before we left. We were just hoping our weather fortunes would hold up in Queensland (which is, typically, hotter)

The boys love the airport. They’ve become airport fans since we’ve visited so many on our trip (7 different ones to date!)

The domestic airports are great as you can get so close to the planes while you wait!

The boys at Melbourne Domestic waiting for our Virgin Blue flight

A Funky Quantas Plane

The flight passed uneventfully (and quickly. I can’t get over how fast these 2 hour flights are!) and we arrived in Brisbane at about 1pm (local time. We lost an hour as Brisbane is -1 hr compared to Melbourne)

We collected our hire car – a gold Mitsubishi Magna Estate thing which wasn’t quite as luxurious as the Nissan X-Trail we’d had for 2 weeks in Melbourne but was a fair bit better than the previous car we’d hired from Brisbane – and headed to our new ‘home’ for 3 nights (via McDonalds as, by this point, it was around 2.30pm (and 3.30pm to our stomachs) and we were starving!)

The house is ok. Nothing special really and the area is just ‘ok’. The house is 3 bedrooms at least, which is something as it means the boys, for the first time in 3 weeks, don’t need to share a room! It’s dated but it’ll do. It’s not as if we plan to spend our days here anyway.

The weather was overcast (how DARE it?!) although 27+ degrees so, after stocking up on a few basic groceries, we took a drive out to locate the beaches. I have to admit we were a bit disappointed with what we found. A far cry from the tropical Bribie beaches. Nik said it was a “Bridlington Beach” and, trust me, that’s NO compliment!

We’ll investigate more sometime as we’re definitely planning a beach day before we go home.

It’s gotta be done, eh?

The infamous and elusive Great Ocean Road sign!

Courtesy of Steve! That elusive sign!!

Great Ocean Road 'starts here' sign

Isn’t the last day supposed to be momentous? (or is it disastrous?)

Trust me, from the moment we left the house, ours was definitely the latter!

Our only plans for today, our last day in Geelong, was to visit Lorne, a town along the Great Ocean Road and to get some good photos of the famous “Great Ocean Road” sign. Well, it started off well but soon became apparent that our day was going to be ‘one of those’!

Just before the sign, we took some snaps of the ‘house on a pole’ as we called it (for want of a better description)

Photos just do NOT do this place justice! This ‘house’ (we’re assuming it’s a house, it may be a cafe or suchlike, I suppose) is perched WAY up in the mountains atop a concrete post and connected to any form of land only by a walkway. It’s a truly terrifying-looking place! One of many, it has to be said, but by far the worst!

The Pole House

Actually, I just googled this place and found THIS WEBPAGE. I actually think it looks even MORE terrifying in his shot!

So, we set off from here, heading for the sign. Attempts to photograph it on our main Great Ocean Road(trip) had failed due to, first time, driving through it without knowing it was coming up and, secondly, it being dark on our return trip. We wanted a shot for our album though so off we went.

Number 1 failure of the day. The main parking area/pull off was blocked by 2 coaches and we couldn’t get parked nearby. Space the other side of the sign was also busy probably due to all other cars being unable to park in the main area due to these coaches also!

Ok, fair enough, we’d take the photo on the way back instead…or so we thought!

Lorne was now our target. What could go wrong?

Well, as it turned out, several things! Just 7km from Lorne, on the winding, coastal woodland bends, we were met with static traffic. A queue, no less. It appeared not to be moving at all and the only traffic we saw coming the other way was traffic that had turned around and was headed back so we figured we ought to join it. Not knowing what exactly was blocking our path, we pulled up at a small beach parking area just a little way back and waited a while.

We soon noticed that no traffic was coming from either direction now, however, and figured that there must be a police roadblock somewhere before where we had reached. After a second attempt to get to Lorne and being turned back by a friendly policeman, we decided that perhaps Anglesea would be a better bet (or, at the very least, somewhere to grab some lunch as we’d wasted a couple of hours getting nowhere!)

We’d at least be able to get out Great Ocean Road sign photo on the way back…or so we thought!

As we had suspected, there was a road block in place which explained the absence of any traffic  in the area. Unfortunately, this roadblock was situated DIRECTLY under the sign. No kidding! Not ‘in view’ or ‘nearby’ but two police cars parked immediately under and blocking the sign and any access to it. The adjacent parking area (which had previous been filled with coaches) was being used as a turnaround point for all diverted traffic and so, once again, our plans were thwarted!

The day was going well (not) and it was only lunchtime! Oh well, on to Anglesea and lunch. Oh my, Anglesea was heaving! Thanks to the diverted traffic, the road was chock-a-block. We grabbed lunch and made plans to go ‘elsewhere’ (although we didn’t really know where!)

There was a second diversion further up, stopping traffic from even getting as far as Anglesea. I hate to think what kind of mayhem was caused by the accident (details here ) over the course of the day. A Sunday, at New Year, during summer holidays. It probably couldn’t get any busier!

From Anglesea, we decided to head to Queenscliffe. Why, I’m not entirely sure as it was a bit of a drive from where we were but we thought it seemed like a good idea. After 45 minutes of “where are we going?” and “are we there yet?” we were pretty peeved as we arrived at Queenscliffe. Quite honestly, I was ready for the ground to swallow me up, by this point as the boys were just being defiant (well, J particularly, as his DSi had run out of battery power early in the trip and he was annoying his brother for a go on his, every 5 minutes!)

We soon left Queenscliffe and decided that Barwon Head seemed like a better bet. As we passed through, we’d noticed it looked pretty, with neat shops and a nice beach area and we weren’t disappointed really. What’s more, the sun came out (yay! First sun since our 39 degrees beach afternoon on New Year’s Eve!) as the boys played at the park near the beach. We weren’t dressed for the beach but the boys were happy playing in the park anyway and we were just happy to be sat on our own for a while!

Park at Barwon Head

Barwon Head beach (and bridge)

Beautiful beaches and blue sky

From Barwon, we headed home again rather frazzled from our disrupted day and glad to be home..even though it was our last evening!

Fish and Chips from the local chippie for tea and then the boys (and girl! I’m used to just saying ‘boys’!) settled down to watch a couple of movies while the ‘men’ went off to the pub for a bit and I got the packing sorted. The day ended better than it had gone previously as we anticipated our ‘moving on’ to Brisbane again.

Steve eats all! (trust me when I say this is better than the other shot!)

The Coppocks and The Hands pose together (rare shot!)

Eaten Alive!!! (and a trip down memory lane with Ford)

Quickly running out of time left at Geelong, we decided to visit a few smaller places we’d seen but not done yet. On our trips into Geelong, we’d spotted (and read ads for) the National Wool Museum and Steve had been told it was worth a visit so we took the boys over to find out what it was all about. I was a bit dubious about how interesting a “wool museum” could be but we had read that there was also an ‘Eaten Alive’ exhibit about predators so decided it was worth the trip. At $20 for a family of 4, it wasn’t ‘break-the-bank’ money if it’d turned out to be a bit rubbish!

When we arrived, we found out that, for an extra $10, we could add a family ticket to the nearby Ford Discovery Centre and, not even really knowing what it was, decided it’d pass another couple of hours so, for the sake of about £6, we took that too!

The Eaten Alive exhibit certainly caught the boys’ imaginations! Large scale spiders, snakes and crocs as well as hands-on games and quizzes probably kept them busy in that room alone for about an hour!

Definitely eaten alive!

Crikey!

Not lifesize!!

The rest of the wool museum was…well, about wool! The history of sheep farming and wool production etc etc. Not thrilling stuff but there was some hands on stuff for the kids to play with which, even though they had no idea what it was, amused them for a while.

On to the Ford Discovery Centre which, aside from the Eaten Alive bit, was actually more interesting!

The 2 storey museum tracks the history of Ford in Geelong, displaying models and replicas from times gone by including motorsports. There were some great cars there and upstairs had models with cut-outs showing internal workings and structures as well as hands on exhibits demonstrating various features of the motor car.

Ford Model T

A Ford...umm..racing car, apparently

The boys' favourite (it's a Ford..perhaps I should have paid more attention here!)

2000 Mustang Cobra

All in all we had a pretty good day out which was cool as it was our penultimate day at Geelong… and tomorrow, as they say, is another day…

(oh, as we spotted Elvis on the way home )

Elvis isn't dead! (he's in Geelong, apparently!)

Geelong Waterfront New Years Fair

Ok, I’m late with these updates so apologies. We’ve had to wait til we get to our second Brisbane location  to get internet back but more of that later!

New Years day started later than usual thanks to the kids going to bed late on New Years Eve. No one was really up and about until about 9.30am and we did little really until heading down to Geelong’s Waterfront for their new years fair, a free attraction put on between 12 and 5 down at the Waterfront (well, dur!)

We arrived in ‘iffy’ weather (by Geelong standards!) Much cooler than the previous day (18-20ish) and overcast although it did brighten up a bit mid-late afternoon. It was cool enough that we’d all had to dig out our cardis or jackets though!

What's that grey stuff in the sky???

The fair had the usual mix of crafty type stalls, kids rides (merry-go-round swings, inflatable slide, bouncy castles etc – all free), food stalls and a main stage which was occupied by various DJs, entertainers and acts throughout the afternoon.

Kids get down and 'dirty' on the bouncy castle

Geelong Cats' cat mascot thingie (I think!)

We visited the reptiles tent and got up close and personal with a few creatures. There were a couple of people wandering through the queuing people with snakes (small ones!) and, as we entered, there were lizards which we could touch and hear more about from the handlers.

There were also some larger, enclosed snakes and a couple of saltwater crocs. “Crikey” is a 3 year old ‘saltie’ and was pretty placid as his handler held him, allowed people to ‘stroke’ him and posed for photos.

"Crikey"!

There was also a larger croc who just didn’t look real at all as it never moved a muscle the whole time we saw it! Apparently, this is normal as they rarely move in the wild (except to hunt/eat) but it did make the croc look dead or fake or something! Only the muzzled mouth indicated otherwise!

Is it alive??

The boys bought themselves some new ‘jibbitz’ for their crocs (actually, knock-off jibbitz and the first time I’ve ever seen knock-off ones!), watched some kids doing circus stuff on the stage (which was good!) and we wandered for a few hours before heading home.

That’s about all we did!

Late start, afternoon at the fair and an evening in. Hard life, huh?