It seems very hot and humid to us. There are some dark clouds around and the top of Mt Warning is not visible, our friends are hoping it means there'll be some much needed rain, although the radar shows nothing. A pool immersion and some tea and biscuits later we leave for the airport in good time as we know there are roadworks.
Eric takes his last longing look at the pool.
Only 15min of sitting in traffic outside Murwillambah. Luckily this gives us time for our last cruise along the waterfront to Rainbow Bay and Snapper Rocks.
The beach is busier and the surf is bigger today, but just as messy, and no dolphins.
Drag the ex-surfer away, returning to the airport and its coolness. As there is no complimentary food on the plane we decide to have some lunch before we leave. One orders a late breakfast and the other a pancake stack.
There's enough maple syrup there for me to drown in, and you can barely see the pancakes for the ice-cream!
Is that our plane?
Take off - Gold Coast from the air.
As we circle over the water we see what we think are some whales in the water below - they blow and then we are sure. We can't persuade the pilot to circle around as they did for our trip at Kaikoura and we head inland. Good views back over the coast towards Rainbow Bay, Snapper Rocks, D'Bah and the Tweed River though.
We saw this cloud forming, which looked interesting.
Pretty soon it had turned into this angry looking anvil shaped cloud...
...and we wondered if it was over the National Parks surrounding our friends' farm (position of comma to be validated by DB!).
Is this Clarrie Hall Dam in the distance? Just in case you can't see where we mean - between the two horizontal cloud layers at the top of the engine.
Eric wondered if this was the Starship Enterprise coming towards us.
Clouds really are fascinating.
A forest fire - we find out later it is a controlled burn - can't imagine the people downwind of all that smoke are too impressed.
Melbourne is sunny and 18 degrees, but feels quite warm. Oldest brother meets us at airport and partly loses a bet with himself that we'd both be wearing shorts (one is, one isn't- you'll never guess which is which).