Day 11: Gold Coast
My morning walk the previous day had taken me from The Unit, across Marine Parade and the Gold Coast Highway into the almost completely refurbished Broadwater Parklands. Given the Anzac Day factor, once I was safely across the highway I'd headed south, since last time I was in the vicinity fourteen months ago they'd still been working on the site where the Southport Cenotaph was to be relocated, and I guessed that the march to the dawn service indicated that the work was complete.
The plan, at that time, had been to take a gander at progress on the northern side of things the following morning, but when I peered out into Tuesday's predawn gloom it was obvious that we wouldn't be walking anywhere anytime soon.
Bleak, blustery, overcast conditions lasted throughout the day, which also ruled out anything much in the way of shopping that didn't involve the nearby Australia Fair.
I'd packed a box of bottles to take with us on the first part of the trip, figuring we'd be getting across to Ferry Road some time in proceedings, but when the weather ruled that eventuality out it was off to Australia Fair to fetch the ingredients for dinner, and stock up with enough bottles to get us to Orange, where I suspect Steve and Rhonda will be doing rather nicely out of us.
Madam, at least, had arranged to meet a blogging acquaintance for lunch, which gave her some focus, but also meant that I was semi-tied to the property until she returned. She'd set out to do some shopping before that, which was fine with me, but around eleven-thirty a phone call indicated she'd found something that might be suitable cat accommodation, and would I like to offer a second opinion?
Which, at least, got me out of the unit for twenty minutes or so, not that the transit between home base and Australia Fair was one of the world's most enjoyable experiences.
Apart from that, with the washing done, it was a case of ironing, preliminary packing, and a continuation of the previous two days, which wasn't hard to take, but a little more activity would have been infinitely preferable.
Discovering a couple of zucchinis rapidly approaching their use by date changed the steak and spuds dinner plan to steak and zucchini, but at least the spuds will come in handy over the next bit, where we're going to be catering for ourselves (at least that's the presumption) in the back blocks on our way towards Canberra and Orange.