So on the spur of the moment I bought a ticket to Brisbane, with the intention of popping up to Townsville to drop in on Oliver, as well as just wandering around a city I'd only been to once before, 5 years ago. It was good fun. I like the idea of just upping and going (apologies to anybody who wondered where I'd gone).

I bought a fancy new backpack, a hat, a shirt, and some CDs. I saw a real, honest-to-god sign outside some pokies pub saying "BrisVegas" (I'd just naively assumed that this particular, er, term of endearment existed only in the spoken world, and even then used only in spite). I walked across a handful of bridges. I pulled my suitcase back and forth across town, a few times. I stood in the railway station and thought wistfully about taking the Sunlander one day, but only because of the old Slim Dusty song.

I walked around Surfer's Paradise for an afternoon, out of season. It's a very strange place out of season - the shopping strip cries out for the throng of holiday makers, it's not built to look good when the streets aren't bursting with sunburnt faces. The little side-alleys seemed full of Japanese boys either checking out surfboards or checking their e-mail. In all of these places of magical weather, it rained. In Townsville, Oliver reckoned it was the first time it'd rained in months. At Wallaman Falls, you could barely make out the waterfall through the mist, but I didn't mind any of this. I've had 2 weeks where I pulled myself almost completely out of normal realms and just concentrated on wandering around and seeing stuff. I needed this. I might need more, but it's a start.

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