We were late mate!

She's game!

Best Ozzie Parkrun yet at Bunyaville. Lots of climb, all off road in the forest and would qualify as a short fell race back home. We both thoroughly enjoyed it very much and our fell running skills are not forgotten. However if we'd got there ten minutes earlier we'd have been able to start with everyone else. The traffic round here is fairly light at 6.30 in the morning on a Saturday but you can still waste a lot of time going round in circles!! We arrived with the other runners out of sight in the forest but we were able to follow the flags and caught the backmarkers fairly swiftly.  My recorded time was over half an hour but I timed myself at 24.23. Thank goodness I can have another go at it next week. The climbing will hopefully stand us in good stead as we've now seen the initial daunting climb at the Bridge to Brisbane 10K which we're both running in three weeks time. The first K is over the Sir Leo Heilscher bridge which is actually two huge bridges - they built one and it got too congested so they built another identical bridge parallel to it.

At the weekend we got to the final day of the EKKA which used to be known as the Royal Queensland Show. Imagine the Denbigh and Flints Show but much bigger - half a million visitors many of them from 'up-country' jumping on the rides at the huge fairground and snacking on delicacies such as Dagwood Dogs and cheese on a stick. Great entertainment in the main arena (an old stately cricket stadium) with utes with enormous wheels and horse trotting. Plus the best firework display we've ever seen.

Have a glug of this grog!

Fosters is bit of a joke among the Aussies. The Australians don't drink it and we've only seen it in one bar which was a backpackers' pub for British tourists. The big selling brands are Carlton and VB in Melbourne, Swan in Western Australia and Castlemaine XXXX in Brisbane. However last night we found a very hoppy Tasmanian beer called First Harvest brewed once a year with the first hops by  the Cascade Brewery, this was at the Spotted Cow in Toowoomba, Queensland. Cascade is  a curiosity as it's the oldest brewery in Australia, bought out by SAB Miller some years ago it has been more or less left to its own devices and makes a small amount of good ale.

Whilst in Toowoomba we're staying in an apartment that used to be a dentist's surgery - snoozing to the sound of the drill and the groaning ghosts of patients long gone.