Day 93 Stormy!

I love a good thunderstorm, normally going up to the living room window, and religiously counting the seconds between the slight lightening of the sky and the distant rumble of thunder over Swindon. Australian storms are different. Australian storms are SCARY! Seriously, the lightening and thunder occurred at the same time, right above 63 forrest street, in particular above my ceiling! I actually ran out of my room to crash into Rachel doing the same. We turned to Brad, expecting the normal smile at us acting scaredy cats and became even more alarmed to find he was turning all the power points off. The sound of the rain was deafening. I thought there was supposed to be a drought out here??? Well, I'll definitely be adding 30 seconds to my 4 minute shower, after this downpour. After the thunder moved on a bit, we braved it out onto the deck with Darcy. The gutter was caving in, forming a mini waterfall over the back entrance to the house. Darcy was trying to compare this storm to others but his words were completely deafened by the rain still pounding down. These Queenslander houses are built for sun, to remain cool and free from scary wildlife; I'm surprised the tin roof over the deck managed to stay up let alone not become a frying pan for the lightening. Apparently it's been the wettest September for 4 years and the wettest year since 1973, as both the Pacific and Indian Oceans decide to dump its load on us. We thought we were escaping the rain, when we left England!

Day 94

We had planned a daytrip to the beach but with more rain forecast, we made the wise decision to avoid standing under all the skyscrapers of the Gold Coast. Instead, we went to chermside shopping centre today and thankfully learnt our lesson about the great circle bus route... it only took us 20 minutes to get back this time, not an embarrassing four hours in the dark... The shopping complex is HUUUGE, so of course we got lost... especially with my will powe disappearing, as I returned to jayjays to buy that dress. $25 down to $10... it would be a crime not to, right?! No justification, I know... but I'm fed up of looking like a tramp especially when I love the Australian fashion! However, I have finally joined the library, after a stressful 20 minutes with a woman with a confusing Spanish Australian accent who woudn't have surprised me if she'd asked for a DNA sample as part of the necessary ID to become a legit bookworm. Rachel's relived that I won't be clogging up her card with my slightly odd novels and cheesy pop CDs. So from my window shopping trip to Chermside, I came back with 7 novels, 1 (cheesy pop) CD, 1 dress and 1 chocolate fudge sundae mmm mmmm :D

Day 95

Woke up really earlier, following a tip from Brad that there would be freebies down at teralba park at 7.30... how the Aussies love a freebie lol. Brad, having already been down to check it out had declared the freebies worthy of a family trip. He drove me and Rachel down and performed his 'customer from hell' act lol. This guy, working for Optus marketing,standing in the cold park at this time of the morning had it bad enough but that was before Brad went on the attack! Gesturing to our trampy clothes and malbourished bodies (hah!), he told a tale of woe, that we were starving students about to backpacking on a budget and therefore needed two freebie bags each. The optus guy looked all startled and genuinely upset that we couldn't afford men's deodorant, uncle toby's travel cereal and green drinks piled us with more. Little did he know that Darcy had been sent down on his bike to get another bag plus two for his imaginary brothers! Sad thing is that Brad's story was truer than he realised!

The rest of the day was dedicated to a Grey's anatomy marathon. First time i had watched this series.... and I didn't stop until my eyes were closing at episode 10. So lazy, I know but each one ended on a cliffhanger! Rachel just sat next door shaking her head apparently, as she could hear me laughing away to myself :P