Suburbia.....

And we thought tolerance was needed in the bush and camping grounds-well in suburbia you need Tolerance with a capital ‘T’.

Our first night camped on the front lawn of our friend’s house – Keith and Gaynor at Coolum, we were subjected to a 4yr old girl screaming-nothing wrong with her – she screams for attention, (this child also has pet bantams that wake at daybreak), the other neighbour is an autistic adult-extremely low functioning-requiring 24/7 carers- he moans like a cow who has lost her calf to the dingos. Mix this with the neighbour vacuuming their car at 6.30am, the rental across the road who have finally gone to bed after their all -night party-Murray and I were not happy little ‘vegemites’.

Had we spent too long in the bush? Certainly, we had forgotton what surburbia living was like. While camping either in a camp ground/caravan park or free camping-the courtesy ‘rule’ is no noise before 7am or after 10pm.

However the plusses were; we had access to a beautiful pool, a daily newspaper, a Dan Murphy’s store not far away-no restrictions on buying alcohol. Each morning at day break we woke to the sound of lorrikets mixed with modified cars leaving for work, now and again we heard sirens or cars having a prang. The first few days we heard helicopters hovering over Clive Palmers Golf Course-it is a short walk away. Clive shouted 1000 needy people to a free Xmas Day lunch-we didn’t qualify-not sure what your ‘needs’ had to be. (PHOTOs)

Each house in the street was decorated with xmas lights and one even had a laser show beaming across the front of the house each evening. Murray decorated Keith and Gaynor’s house and their xmas tree,-we even discovered that there are special guttering hooks and self-adhesive fairy tree light hooks for flat surfaces.

We didn’t have any Xmas decorations, so I knitted a piece for the power pole next to our van and a xmas loop for the pool fence across the road-this lasted less than 12 hours! (PHOTO)

The humid muggy weather saw us head to the hills-we had a lovely drive to the Emundi markets, Kennilworth-cheese, Maleny.  At Kennilworth we bought a hand knitted nativity scene. (PHOTO)

The Australia Zoo-this was a rip off-, perhaps , we have become blasé having seen it all before. Entry is very fierce-the most we have paid so far on our trip-$47 each via concession, otherwise $59 each. $2 extra pp if you wished to visit the animal hospital. There are various shows during the day-we watched the (15mins),  Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors show-pathetic with staff making stupid wisecracks at each other, and birds flying across the stadium-Cairns Tropical Zoo has the best wild bird show we have seen in Australia. From what we could see there is a large area dedicated to exhibition space on the life of Steve Irwin-even the highway is named after him. Murray enjoyed feeding the elephant and Julia enjoyed hiding among the exhibits. (PHOTOS)

We had a night in Brisbane-purchasing a mystery hotel room through lastminute.com. The mystery hotel was the Mecure at King Edward Square-very central and we were upgraded to a refurbished room-it had a king size beautiful feather down mattress on top of the other mattress and a huge flat screen TV. We don’t have a TV in our van – so TV is a novelty-short lived though, by the time we had sat through endless advertisements, there appeared to be only 2 minutes of news. Breakfast was scrummy. While in Brisbane we visited the city library, state library, museum of contemporary art, tried a yum cha, (not as good as Perth or Auckland), (we are hanging out for a good feed of yum cha), and browsed the mall.

The cardboard seat made from corrugated cardboard caught my eye as well as the Asian quilt. Murray enjoyed the dinosaur sculpture. PHOTOS

Christmas Eve-up at 6.30am to the seafood shop to help Gaynor and Keith pack 2tonne of prawns into 1/2kg bags. (PHOTOS) Their business is for sale-if you are interested please ring Gaynor on 0412211147.