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Weekending - the third beer festival

 This past weekend we went to Queensland to see Leon's family, catch up with Tony and Ingrid and get some sunshine.

The GoldCoast wouldn't be our choice of holiday destination, except for all those things. It's overdeveloped. My mother always called Surfer's Paradise "Sufferer's Paradise", because it's all high buildings and the sun goes behind them and casts shadows on the beach in the afternoon:


Anyway, enough of my whinging. It was lovely to see Leon's family (two of his sisters and one of his brothers live there).


It was fantastic to see the sun,and sit on the back deck with this view.

We even had a pelican come to visit.

Crafted Beer Festival was great. The sun shone, the beer was from different breweries than we get in Victoria, the food was tasty. Tony and Ingrid were their usual cheerful selves. 
To top of the trip on Sunday we went out in the boat. Fiona had casually said we would go look for some whales. We saw so many whales. They were quite close and we were able to hear them blowing water and making noises and flicking their tails. It was quite amazing. This is the only photo I got, and there are no whales in it - that little boat is an ice-cream boat, that goes around selling icecream on the water. 

So it was a very nice, and very long weekend. Here's the last photo I took, from the plane, to bookend the photos of buildings at the beggining!

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