Australia – Thoughts and our last day of Birding Australia

Dad and I visited the wetlands at Boondall reserve on his last day in Australia. On arrival the information centre was shut and building works were in full and very noisy flow. Dad was, limping a bit but very determined that he would rest his foot on the plane tomorrow. We walked along the path towards the bird hide and suddenly Dad found himself in a cloud of starving mosquitoes. My animal magnetism (if I ever had any), has obviously worn off as they weren’t interested in me at all, thank goodness. Dad’s turn to wear Eau De Deet but, they had already bitten his face neck and shoulders through his shirt.
We got a couple of new birds at the hide and then it began to rain. We moved on to Nudgee beach just down the road but the rain wasn’t going away so we headed for our hotel.

The rain was torrential and driving on Brisbane’s version of spaghetti junction was excruciating, I couldn’t see the lines on the road. There were the most complicated junctions and flyovers. My Satnav was having kittens and when we got to the hotel it was the wrong one! The Satnav couldn’t cope and sent us back to Nudgee Beach, Nudgee Road, Nudgee. Every where and every road ended at Nudgee!

Finally we found our hotel and the receptionist was lovely and knocked £40 dollars off our bill because the going rate had dropped significantly so we felt mollified after our horrible exasperating two mile drive!

We had our last dinner at a Seafood restaurant. Dad had a huge pan of mussels. The waiter provided a bib which he tied around his neck! I told my dad the next stop is the old people’s home!

The comment made him laugh out loud!

I’ve had a fabulous three weeks with my Dad. We’ve had lots of laughs, over 150 different species of birds, 4 snakes, 6 mammals, hundreds of fish and plants, several miles of walking and not one cross word, miraculously!