Gayndah with family

After 6 restful days in Rainbow Beach (only 3 with Mum and Dad, though) and with half of us completely covered in sand fly bites, we bid farewell to the coast and headed inland to Gayndah. To be honest, Mum, Angus and I were more than happy to see the back of the sand flies! We have managed to avoid them this far, but even our trustworthy “The Locals” spray wasn’t cutting it with these little buggers. We looked like we had chicken pox! Dad, Dunc and Lexie seem to be made less tasty than the rest of us and remained unscathed for most of the time. Bastards!

So off we went, following the road signs instead of Mabel the GPS who likes to take us down every short-cut tiny little road there is! Unfortunately, the road sign also led us down a smaller road than expected and we came “over the ridge” which was fun, but not highway driving at all! At least we knew which way NOT to come on the way back.

It had been 3 years since we’d been to visit, and we all remembered “the big hill” after crossing the low bridge over the river. We had decided to unload the car before crossing the bridge, but after driving through Gympie and over the unexpected hills there, changed our mind. Then somehow we lost track of mum and dad and had to wait for them, so took the opportunity to unload while we waited for them to catch up. It really wasn’t needed though. The hill was nothing! Though being ahead DID give me the chance to block the road and radio thorough an all-clear to use the entire roadway to make the turn into the drive through the narrow gates…

We had a wonderful week with the Ulcoqs! We took over their shed and parked Bertha right alongside, where we could plug in. It was a short 2 min walk up to the house, which Angus made every morning in order to scam himself a yummy cooked egg breakfast EVERY day! I nearly fell over with shock the last day when I got there in time to see him being passed the largest serve. Goodness that boy can eat!

Eating seemed to be a common theme during our time there…

It didn’t take the family long to figure out that a 2min walk is a far more comfortable 30sec quad bike ride though…

I’ll do Christmas Day in a separate entry, but we all had a ball before and after as well. There was cooking and prepping for Christmas Day, fun and games for the kids, dogs for Angus, a pool for all, and (much to Tim’s disgust) an irrigation issue that had to be dealt with. Dad, Dunc and Angus took great joy in pitching in, and this continued after Christmas when there was sewerage to play with too. Bonus!