Once again we parked in Terence and Lizelle Smith's driveway in an outlying Brisbane suburb, Shailer Park. (They are very old friends related to our very special friends in South Africa, Gert and Brenda.) They are always so, so kind and welcoming and we ended up staying for 8 days. It was lovely being with them. They had recently completed a trip to Cape York and we could learn, learn, learn from them before our trip north. Terence, and Lizelle, gave us so much advice and helped Chris so much we were overwhelmed. He even arranged for us to spend a day out at a 4 wheel drive park (Levuka, 2 hours out of Brisbane in the mountains - just out the small town of Woodenbong!) where Chris could practise all the driving skills we may need in Cape York....maybe not the creek crossings!!! We had a great day of fun! Lots of cleaning was done after our drive.
Most of our time was spent preparing and obtaining camping and 4 wheel driving gear from the excellent shops nearby. We never ventured into Brisbane this time as we had explored the city on our previous visit.
I was sad not to be able to visit Shirley's daughter, Carey, as she was taking part in power lifting competition in which she came 2nd! I
did have a good chat with her on the phone.
One morning we drove to Sanctuary Cove where we met Paul and Bernie Nitchmann who have just arrived in Aus from SA. They very kindly took us out for a lovely lunch on one of the waterways. We chatted until 5 in the afternoon before we left to drive back home. Sanctuary Cove is beautiful with its golfcourses and boats passing by on all the inland canals.
Again, we were sad to leave Terence, Lizelle and Dylan but they will be coming west in the near future when we can spoil them too. (We enjoyed being Dylan's surrogate grandparents for a few days taking him for ice-cream on the days that we fetched him from school.) He is a very special, little boy!
We rather enjoyed the part of Brisbane that was our home for a week.
