So we hired a boat.
Pete made a load of vege sushi in the morning and we packed up a bottle of red and some sun block and drove to Tweed heads.
The boat hire geezer was a laugh, real Australian bloke, boardies, no shoes, singlet, big wide brimmed hat, tall and tanned to within an inch of his life, broad shouldered, muscular. There was no mincing of his words in a less is more ozzy bloke way.
He showed us a map of the river, jabbing his finger randomly into it saying,
‘don’t go here, or here or here, can go up here, don’t go here, make a right here or you’ll head into open sea, got it?’. Hahaha.
He was the same way explaining how to run the boat,
‘flick this up, pull this, push this lever, make sure she’s down, off you go’.
then he’s off and walking up the floating gangplank before you can say ‘she’ll be right mate’.
Ships captain and his best mate.
It was a lovely day. Just before lunch I jumped in for a splash but only cause I needed to wee and then had such a tough time getting back into the boat even with Pete yoinking my arm half out of my socket to help. We ate sushi, drank wine, took some pics of massive birds, pootled around and lay in the sun.
Pic after my quick dip, the high rise buildings of the Gold Coast in the background.
Red wine teeth.
On Saturday we’d driven inland to the national park and on into NSW to see a ‘natural bridge’. Turned out to be a hole in a rock with a waterfall running through it. Humph, natural bridge eh. But on the way we stopped at a café surrounded by bush, an old Queenslander house (with the deck running all the way round) opened up at the front and packed full of deck tables.
While we were standing at the counter reading the menu I looked down to see an array of jars of formaldehyde with all manner of insects and what not in them. Spiders big and small, hairy and bald, some kind of Weta looking creature the length of my hand and a pickled snake, the label on the jar said ‘Death Adder’ and it had been pickled so it’s eyes glared menacingly at you and it’s forked tongue protruded from it’s lips in a way that made you felt poisoned just by looking at it.
Pete looked at the lady behind the counter and jokingly said, ‘they all caught from round here then’ and laughed and the lady laughed and then dead panned and said, ‘yeah’. I smiled and said, ‘death adder, wonder if that would kill you’.
It was such a nice weekend that I felt like I’d been on holiday.
