It has all felt a bit hard work recently. Groundhog Day and wearisome, warm and overbearing in a boat. The marina water is over 30 degrees C so the temperature in the boat is affected by that as well as the surrounding air temperature. That combined with the fact that we feel as though we are living in some concrete trailer park. If I have cabin fever then small wonder G feels it too – he didn’t get to bolt to Sydney to see his friends the week before last. The wind keeps blowing from the north and so there’s nowhere to hide if we should take the boat into the Bay.

Gerhard has also had some of ‘my’ work to do, whilst I’ve dragged the boys through their school work (all whilst we sweat). We bought an air-conditioner, but it’s not as effective as I would like. We did try going for a bit of a look around on Thursday – to the much publicised markets and sights of Maryborough.

Maryborough was an important nineteenth century town. The creator of Mary Poppins heralds from Maryborough and some poor woman dresses up as Mary Poppins everyday and gives guided tours and assists with daily firing of a cannon – it was over 30 degrees at 10 in the morning: I hope she is paid well for her work.

The streets were once the home of silk merchants, merchant banks and opium dens. Settled in 1847 it was once one was one of Australia’s largest and busiest ports.
Whilst it was lovely and there were a lot of lovely people that we met, we weren’t that impressed with the historical town.

From Maryborough ( over-warm and a little deflated) we headed to the sights of Burrum Heads only to find a very pretty river mouth and sandy beach and ……not a lot else other than a caravan park. I then checked the highlights that were listed in my tourist brochure: the skateboard park, the community hall and the library! Ah, not exactly brimming over with culture. Coming from the Cotswolds with your village local built over 600 years ago and a church mentioned in the Doomsday book does mean you set your sights a little high!

On Saturday we found ourselves at the water park again, and this time the boys got to have a go on ‘flip side’ some wacky surfboard ride thing. They were delighted.

At the water park I continue to feel as though I stick out like a sore thumb ….I really must ask Santa for a shed load of tattoos for Christmas! Huge ones down the thigh seem to be the go around here. I also seem to be half the size of most of the female population – but I’m fast rectifying that. I must stop eating and drinking and get up to do some exercise before it gets hot and humid: unfortunately it will require me to be out before 5.30am so it’s not looking good!

We then moved on to visit a shark exhibition. We’ve driven past a few times and have been fascinated. We thought it might be air conditioned so off we went.

We paid the hefty $40 for a rather bizarre shark experience – where this chap has spent his life-time hunting and killing Great White sharks. His whole exhibition is dedicated to his passionate belief and his cause that the shark should not be protected. It was a very strange combination of macabre, biased, highly subjective, gruesome and hysterically funny exhibition.

Vic Hislop’s Shark show is a dedication to the fact that some sharks kill a lot of other animals and so in his opinion should be killed in order to help protect other creatures and the many humans that encounter shark attacks every year. There are walls adorned with gruesome photos and lists of actual or presumed victims of shark attacks, and there are some pretty amateur videos of Vic catching sharks and displaying the contents of the sharks’ stomachs.

Our objective throughout this visit was to spot the spelling or grammatical mistake/s. The exhibition did not let us down: how can you spell the word ‘cartilage’ two different ways in the same sentence??! Oh, and on that note, has no one told the person who built the very nice “Norfolk Appartments” in Maryborough – and has the whole bloody sign beautifully made and everything – that you only have one ‘p’ in apartments? May the dear lord help us… Oscar and Hugo can spell apartments correctly – I’ve checked!
Anyway, as G and I sat discussing our frustrations with the last couple of weeks over our obligatory sundowners, I did say that despite our reservations the boys seem as happy-as-Larry:

• they love trotting around the marina – and knowing people and where everything is;
• Wet-side water park is their home from home;
• they both said how amazing the day going to Maryborough and Burrum Heads was – there were so many exciting things to see and do; and
• yesterday’s highlight was the horrendous shark display ( which incidentally I failed to mention contained 3 frozen sharks and a lot of air freshener which G pointed out was clearly to cover up the reeking ‘rotting fish odour’).

So, you never can tell. What ‘fluffs our duvet’ clearly is not necessarily what makes the boys happy.

We are now on Fraser Island …. And that’s a whole different story which I’ll leave for another day. But we will have a family meeting this evening to give the boys a chance to remind us that what we think is a not very exciting and in fact quite tedious day is not necessarily the case when you are aged 8 and 9!