This week Brisbane held its Riverfestival.  It’s an annual event where the River City celebrates its river.  There are always a host of events, some of them obviously more entertaining than others.

The highlight for most is Riverfire, which is the city’s largest fireworks display and double F1-11 dump ‘n burn.

This year my son and I set off to view it from around Wilson’s Outlook at New Farm.  I think we’ve found our vantage point for all future Riverfires.  While there was a large crowd, it wasn’t overflowing, and you could easily see the whole thing without people in front obscuring your view.

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Riverfire 2008 picture by Kane

Any large bridge adds a lot of dazzle and opportunities for a fireworks display.  While predictable, the sequential shooting of fireworks from one side to the other looks extremely impressive. And we picked up that the rainfall from the bridge looked amazing too when the crowd in front of us let out some “ooohs” and “aaaaaghs” while there was a bright aura beaming up to us yet no fireworks above.

It was a great night, and always worth the effort of going in.

We like to make the most of the weekends with my son, particularly doing or seeing things I know he’s interested in.  So when the world’s oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship called the MV Doulos was docked at Portside for the public to view and visit, I thought we were onto a winner.  Unfortunately, our attendance was under false pretences.

We heard about the event from the Our Brisbane portal, which just described the MV Doulos briefly and had a link to another site which had more of an account of the boat’s history.

We had a big day in the city, then caught a citycat out to Hamilton to check the ship out.  The ship was definitely a classic.

Once we were aboard the roped off route took us to the boat’s end (or the stern for those in the know). Here they had a massive bookshop.  I thumbed through a few books which seemed to be for kids, and bought a nice colouring-in and activity book about the MV Doulos which the three year old liked.

It was around lunch time when we were aboard, so we also had a hot dog.

One thing I noticed was just how nice all the crew were.  In fact, they seemed almost super nice. They were also from a huge range of different countries, which I thought was interesting.

Once we had seen all we could see, we followed the winding route around the ship towards the exit. And just before we were about to make our way down the ladder back to terra firma, yet another super nice crewmate  greeted us. She has an armful of books, and she gave one to my son, and a different one to me.

I could make out the front page of the kids book which alarmingly put our trip and all those super nice people into context.  The cartoon book was called “The greatest story of all”, and if the title wasn’t enough to give it away, even the graphics on the front page had the tell-tale style about it.

It turns out the MV Doulos is a boat of devout Christian missionaries. In fact, I was totally oblivious to it but a large part of the boat’s mission is its impressive Christian bookshop which it takes to those who haven’t experienced God.

Looking at the Google results now, it’s plainly obvious what the boat was all about.  However the web sites I visited all just said, great old boat on its last trip to Australia.  It was no real skin off our nose, it was still nice to be aboard.  However there was just a slight feeling of being robbed as the boat was here for one reason and I was there for something very different.

I went there wondering what the MV stood for, whether it be merchant or military vessel, etc.  When I first realised what the ship was all about I thought perhaps it may have been Messiah Vampires.

I downgraded our score for the trip to a 5 out of 10 for false-advertising.

Since we weren’t fit to participate in the Jetty 2 Jetty fun run this year, my son and I went to Clontarf to just watch the finish.  It was another beautiful Queensland day, providing some very nice running conditions.

We settled at a point around 50 – 100 metres from the finish.  We saw four or five people from the running club, and cheered on many others as well.

My little guy was quite impressed at the number of little kids taking off at the start of the 3km event.  He mimicked my cheering by yelling out random names at the pretty big crowd which got many giggles.  Later he said he was just doing it to make me laugh.

We then went to a park in nearby Scarborough.  It has a train, so obviously a big hit!  My attempts at getting him to come with me to a cafe before the park were very ambitious.  We went to the park first.  Of course the train was the first thing used. He took to the controls, and barely moved for the next 20 minutes.  That is, except to tell me to occasionally change the signals – which I could never seem to do right.

Another boy came along who also favoured driving the train.  Although unhappy about it, my son accepted that his shift had finished so it was time to move to his second preference job, the train conductor.  The Polar Express movie has a lot to answer for.  My little guy was quoting lines to the other kids, most a little older than his three years.  None of them quite knew what to make of the dialogue.  But one other kid, quite older, thought he should be taking people’s tickets.  When my son spotted this rogue activity I could read in his face, “Not on my watch!”

“No, I’m the conductor” he said very repetitively which didn’t get the result he was after.  It seems the chain of command my son was working within at “the train park” had not been ratified.  I thought it was an opportune time for us to check the train’s carriages.  The other boy seemed to move on also.

Just before the hour mark I made moves for us to leave. It’s strange but he’s quite the opposite of most other kids we see at parks.  He definitely gets quicker the longer he’s there.  In fact we’ve had confirmation from other parents.  One mother commented that we wouldn’t have many photos of him that weren’t a blur.

The thought of leaving wasn’t taken overly well, but it never is.

Two babycinnos, and a serve of pancakes with ice cream and maple syrup seemed to make things a little less disappointing.  But he told me straight that he wasn’t very happy.

My brother has been camping up at Teewah Beach the past week.  Possibly the coldest and wettest week Teewah Beach has seen in the past three years.

It was a beautiful morning so my son and I drove up and spent the day with him. To be more precise, the tides dictated that we were only going to spend 4 or 5 hours with him.  Regardless, we still filled the back of the X-Trail with enough activities that could keep a childcare centre busy for a week or two. We had footballs, beach balls, cricket set, fishing rods, books, comics, cars, Tonka trucks, and much, much more. I’d rather have more things than are wanted, than less.

We took just over two hours to get there, including a short stop on the beach before Red Canyon to show the police presence my driver’s license and pass their Random Breath Test. I naively asked if they do this very often cause it’s the first time I’ve seen them.  He said yes, we’re always here around school holidays. Later I realise he was never going to answer, ‘No, this is the first and last time we’ll ever be here to make sure people aren’t misbehaving’ – even if it had been the truth.

The instructions to find my brother were perfected to the kilometre. It was a well-sheltered spot.  It should be pointed out, the term ‘sheltered’ here is only used relatively since the thickness of the tent’s skin could me measured in nanometres. Camping in winter has a further marketing issue when a sleeping bag only adds a few centimetres of protection.

Sitting back watching the ocean we spotted at least two pods of whales swimming North. They were only a stone’s throw from the breaking waves (NOT that we tested this).

We played a bit of beach cricket, as much as you can when one third of the players is a three year old. A three year old with a fantastic cover drive I should add.

What was also a bit of fun was when the three year old delegated the remaining workers into their tasks to develop an apartment.  If the youngun wasn’t having so much fun doing his job of moving the Tonka truck between the quarry to the construction site, the task may have been a little pointless. The structure was only made from the stuff that’s everywhere around it – sand. But we did manage to dig down deep enough to get to water which helped it climb an extra few inches. We all marvelled at how it grew. Well, we thought we were all marvelling until a split second later a Tonka violently climbed the side, knocked off the penthouse and top two floors, then descended to several laughs.

Unfortunately not too far from where the construction was selected there was obviously the final remains of a pelican. By its rate of decomposition all you could really see were feathers. Of course my son spotted it, and asked what it was.  I tried to shelter him from the truth and just said it was where some feathers had fallen out of a bird.  “Nah, I think it’s just dead – that’s all” was his reply which made me grow up.

Lunch was a beautiful fresh bread sandwich with freshly caught fish. You can’t beat that.

The trip home was a little delayed so we were still on the beach close to high tide. Sometimes this is a cause of concern [insert here picture of poor 4WD stuck at the beach drowned to its roof].  But there was still more than enough room for us. It just made us drive in softer sand, which to a learning 4WDer was a lot more fun anyway.

The poor child fell a sleep very soon after we left the site. But he woke when we stopped to give the brother’s car some cooling down time. I can only think he woke from realising his sleeping head was no longer getting thrashed around in his car seat.

Finally we got back to Brisbane and into a take-away shop near our house just after 7pm. By this time the boy’s eyes were watering from his tiredness and the salt or sand.  And his temperature from his cough had risen a lot. I said poor little boy, you’re not very well are you. He looked at me with these poor blood-shot little eyes that were clearly hard to keep open and said “No, but why does that chicken have a big belly?” – pointing at the Red Rooster logo.

What a little champion. And what a day.