Queensland

Our drive up north was pretty fun. We stayed with friends the first night who live in a place called Macksville. They have 4 kids under 9 and had some in laws visiting who have 4 kids under 6! It was a wild and fun house to be in. The 6-year-old niece of our friends was born with a severe case of osteogenesis imperfecta and was such an incredible kid/family to meet. If Colin and I were to have a child with brittle bones, it would be so tempting to wrap her up in bubble wrap and never let her leave the house, but they’re amazing people and let her live normally.

After parting Macksville we continued north to a campground in Mebbin National Park and spent the night. It was a crazy and windey road to get there but well worth it, it was so beautiful and we had the whole place to ourselves.

The following morning we drove to the Gold Coast and walked around surfers paradise for a bit. Colin went on a ride called The Vomatron because he promised my brother that we’d go on it if we saw one. We wanted to make it to Brisbane though so we kept going north. We passed by all of these amazing theme and water parks but it was already late afternoon, so we thought we’d maybe go back the following day.

Once we got to Brisbane we drove around and checked out the sites a bit but there was really nothing we had planned on seeing there, so we drove to Ipswich, which is where Neil & Anita will hopefully be living next year if he gets into that particular campus. We couldn’t find a campground in the area and it was getting late, so we just stayed in a hotel and ate pizza.

The following day we looked into what theme park we wanted to go to but realized they were SO expensive that we just couldn’t justify it that day. We went back to surfers paradise to go swimming but once we got there all these clouds rolled in and it got incredibly windy so we got back in the car and started our descent south. We had planned on camping that night but the site we drove to was an hour+ out of the way and was closed. It had also been pouring on us for a couple of hours so instead we decided to just keep driving, and called our friend’s in Macksville to see if we could stay with them again. They are incredibly hospitable and so we stayed there Saturday night.

We made it back into Sydney on Sunday in order to avoid long weekend traffic and then spent today catching up on laundry, groceries etc.

E.