Day 91 / 2016 - Brisbane and Surrounds

We have been quite blessed with the weather this year. Last year we seem to experience mostly rainy weather as we travelled up the east coast this year we have seen more sunshine and warmer temperatures we are keeping our fingers crossed that this year will be a bit dryer for us.

We have been here for 3 weeks now and the reason for staying so long is i'm try to get a nice short term job to help top up the travel kitty. Unfortunately the job searching hasn't gone so well. There has been plenty of jobs advertised and I have been applying for about 2 a day but nobody seems to be interested in taking me on or even giving me an interview. I guess I should seek some advice I am evidently not selling myself well enough. There is no feed back from the advertisers so it is hard to gauge where I need to improve my applications.

Our plan is to stay here untill the 19th of April if I can't score an interview by then we have decided to move on north. Greg and Margaret have kindly offered us to sit their home again in Walkamin near Atherton QLD while they are in England for 3 months. They are flying out in May so we will aim to be there around that time. While heading North I can still keep applying for jobs and when we arrive in Cairns I can register as unemployed hoping to get some support to improve my application skills.

Earlier this week we visited Bribie Island listed as the only Island in Morton Bay physically connected to the mainland. Bribie Island is a mix of holiday and residential homes. There is a new residential development called Pacific Harbour which boasts architecturally designed homes and a vibrant boat marina. We had a look and a lot of the houses are there but the marina is still just a bunch of boat pens and a sales office. 

There are many picnic spots and open public areas around the island. We had a picnic lunch on the shore facing the mainland with a view of the glass house mountains in the distance. Bribie Island has a large shopping complex with Target, Woolworths and many specialty stores. There is also a choice of 2 caravan parks if you wish to holiday there. Bribie is easly accessed from the M1 motorway exiting the motorway opposite the Caboolture exit. The island is connected to the mainland via a 2 lane bridge.

On the weekend Caroline and her family joined us for a BBQ at the caravan park. The kids spent time in the pool before we BBQed the meat sitting outside to eat.

We booked the car in for its next service this time at Springwood Nissan just off the M1. I looked into either an independant or Dealer service centre and for a 100,000 log book service it was less than $100.00 difference. As a bonus the dealer gave us a new X-Trail loan car to use while ours was in the shop. They also did a wheel balance and alignment for an additional cost off course which must have been out as this dramatically improved the handling. 

While the car was being serviced we drove down to Gold Coast's Movieworld. We had purchased season passes last year so it didn't cost us anything to get in. Once in, everything is for free except for food, drinks and souvenirs. A lot of the attractions were still the same but they did change the  stunt driver show. This was the show last year that Carley was chosen as an extra. This time they picked 3 extras from the audience to play various parts unfortunately we wern't chosen for any of them. Anne went on a couple of rides including one of the roller coasters and the log ride in the Wild West section.

Returning to Brisbane we picked our car up the report from the dealer said everything was okay and nothing beyond the service needed doing. I don't enjoy spending that much money on services I'd rather spend the money on attractions but to give us the best chance of keeping the car going reliably it is one of those necessary things you need to do.

Next day we decided there were a few maintenance chores we needed to do which involved driving around Brisbane to acquisition some spare parts. We need to source a new dome light for the bathroom, a new spare wheel cover for the van, a pole to support the front porch and some touch up paint for the car. Firstly we tried Camec but we were a little disappointed in their shop. There was hardly anything on display and they didn't have the light we needed. In their defence they were in a temporary shop as their main shop was being refurbished which probably contribute the lack of display. We spent half the day driving to a number of locations around "Brisvegas" to pick up our parts and spending what seems like an eternity at traffic lights. This convinced us we would not look forward to living back in a big city unless we could easily use public transport to get around.

Our season pass also allowed us to get into Sea World so we decided to revisit this theme park again. Arriving at Sea World we were surprised to see a huge line still thing to get in even though it was 1 hour after opening time. Having a season pass although didn't give us priority entry we did get in quicker as we didn't have to go through buying the entry ticket part. Inside we could see there had been a few changes from last year. For starters they had removed the cable Gondola ride. There was also a new enclosure which housed the Polar Bear exhibit. There was also a new exhibit which displayed creatures of the deep as well as another which mythical creatures of the ocean. Anne tackled the roller coaster ride and this time I joined her on the Viking boat ride which at the end goes down this humongous water slide with me screaming all the way. We finished off at the penguin enclosure which houses the Emperor penguins from Antartica in their natural environment including the temperature bbrrr.