Brisbane, July 2011

July 29^th, Arrived in Brisbane and booked into Brisbane Gateway Holiday Resort for the week-end. After setting up, we headed over to Brian (Val’s Brother), Julies, Nigel and Rebecca’s for Pizza and to see their new house at Mount Cotton. We were very impressed, a very modern, spacious 4 bedroom brick home with a large outdoor entertaining area and a double garage, that is set up to be the man’s place, with TV, 2 comfortable reclining lounge chairs and a bar. Every man’s dream. Sophie was a little shy of us to start but soon warmed to having us help her with her drawings. We had a belated joint exchange of Birthday Presents for Val and Brian. We gave Brian a Jacket and a T-shirt and Brian’s family gave Val an Electric Wok. She was very excited and promised us a Stir Fry on Sunday night to christen the new Wok.

July 30^th, To-day got off to a very bad start. My WiFi modem stopped working so I decided to use the free WiFi connection available at the Resort. All was going well until I decided to look at my Telstra account and it was $692.86. I had changed my phone and wireless internet and this was my first full account with my new set-up. The mobile phone charges were as expected but the internet charge was $605. I was floored, can’t possibly be right, so I went searching through the online account only to find that the area in question had no data available. Only 28 calls at $590.34 and $49 for another mobile, which I assume is my old internet connection that was cut off, so I thought. I have to wait until Monday to sort this problem out with the Telstra Business Centre in Coffs Harbour, where this was all set up. We all went to the Redlands Sporting Club for dinner and a flutter, to celebrate the joint Birthdays. The meals were excellent, the entertainment was great but Val and Nigel were the only winners on the Pokies.

July 31^st, The family arrived around 4pm and we enjoyed a few games of Table Tennis in the Games Room while Sophie was amused at the Play Centre. Val whipped up a chicken, pork and prawn stir fry, which was enjoyed by all. After saying our “good byes” and seeing the family off, I packed up ready to leave for Brunswick Heads in the morning.