VanDijkTrack

It’s summer now and we have holidays for 3 weeks. We already have visited a few attractions, had some barbecues with local people and enjoyed just hanging around our house with the bush garden and good weather.

At the Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich (West of Brisbane) we could see many old trains, blacksmiths furnaces with demonstrations and last but not least a Thomas the Train exhibition. Thomas the tank engine was present with many of his friends. Even Sir Topham Hatt, The Fat Controller in person, the head of the Railway was walking around and told many stories about the trains.

Thomas the Tank Engine and many of his friends were present, like Donald, one of the two Scottisch locomotives. He has a twin Douglas. Both Donald and Douglas are painted black. In order to tell them apart, Sir Topham Hatt decided to give them separate numbers. Donald is number 9. He loves working and Sir Topham Hatt can rely on him to do just about anything from fixing track, rescuing other engines and even ploughing through snow. Sir Topham Hatt asked D199 to come to the Island of Sodor on a trial. D199 arrived with ideas about making the railway new and modern but had lots of trouble making friends because he felt he was better than the steam trains. D199 pulls the Knapford Express and the Express Coaches. Also George the Grumpie Steamroller was there, not being a friend of the Railway Engines. His motto is “Railways are no good”, pull them up, turn them into roads. He once had an accident with Sir Handel and managed to upset Daisy by threatening to build a road over her rails.

After the world of Thomas and the Fat Controller’s Engines we went a whole day shopping and bought lots of clothes. Clothing is relatively cheap here since you only need a shorts and a t-shirt 😉

We also went a day to Surfers Paradise at the Gold Coast. Friends from The Netherlands came for a few days to Surfers Paradise after having stayed for a while in Sydney. We spent the day together at a terrace, in a beautiful swimming pool at their hotel, the beach and dinner. Also Jorick and Nicole enjoyed it a lot and had their first (surf-)board experience on the waves.

In the same week we joined a meeting of Dutch children in the Queens Park Ipswich. It’s a beautiful park with different gardens, a Japanese styled garden, a large playground and a small zoo. Especially Nicole got frightened by the fake crocodile heads and could not appreciate the joke. 😉

We enjoy our holidays and get used to the heat. When temperature approaches 20 degrees we already perceive it as very cold. It’s all relative. However, wearing only shorts and a shirt each day for months is a strange experience.

When we hear and read about the weather in The Netherlands with all the ice skating fun we also get a bit jealous.

Kind regards,

Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at 12:56 am and is filed under Day trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.