Sunday 27 August 2006 - Brisbane

It has been an interesting week - just after I posted the last message I discovered that I had 2 scrub ticks as souvenirs of our camping trip. Darryl quickly assisted me to dispose of them, but a week later I can still feel pain under my arm where the poison was injected.

We are both still getting over our 'flu - every day is a bit better. Shane stopped over on Tuesday night and he and Marc flew to New Zealand on Wednesday morning to go snow-boarding at Queenstown. I haven't heard from them, but have been keeping an eye on the web-cam where I think they are, and the weather seems to have been good. Apparently, it has been some of the best snow falls in years, so I guess that the reason I haven't heard is that they are having a really great time. They fly back on this Wednesday, so we will catch up with Shane then.

Vision just rising off the ground

Yesterday I didn't do very much, as I wanted a quiet recovery sort of day, and I tried to go to bed early, but I was so excited as I had to get up at 4am this morning to go BALLOONING!!!!!! I went with the company Balloons Over Brisbane in the white Vision balloon - and it was just fantastic. Luckily the recent fires seem to have died down, so the view was spectacular as we floated above the city.

Our pilot, Ken, me and one of the other passengers

We left from a park in Coorparoo, east past the city and landed in an industrial park at Bald Hills, a distance of approx 25km which took about an hour. There were 4 couples and the pilot in our balloon, but another company also had the Remax balloon leaving from the same park. When we were up high we were travelling at about 30km/hour, and about 7km/hr when lower. When you are low the dogs below just go crazy with the sound of the burner. I was amazed to see how green Brisbane actually is, despite the drought and water restrictions currently in place. Landing was quite a surprise as we ended up with the basket on its side on the ground - it helped to explain the divider in the basket which kept the other people from being right on top of us.

Me with the city in the background