Day with Uncle Martin

Cheeky!

Splashing around

So today Matt took a day off from our holiday and spent the day working :0( (great thing about working for yourself is that you can take a month's holiday when you want, but also it means that you have to keep servicing your best client - ie work whilst on holiday)

However, Martin is still on holiday so we spent the day with him.  First stop was Chinchilla Weir - a couple of kilometres from the town.  It was a very lovely place, the Condamine River runs through here and they have made a dam, creating a leisure lake: fishing, speedboats, jet skis etc can all be played with here.  Martin had bought Tom a toy speed boat for his time here, so he could play with it at the weir.  We played with the speed boat, but unfortunately it died after about 10 minutes.  Not to worry, Tom was happy enough throwing stones etc.  In fact, he suddenly wanted to splash in the water, and was running up and down.  I took off his shorts and pants as they were getting went.  He continued to splash (quite violently) so I stripped him.  Yep, Tom was skinning dipping in the weir (at his age too!)

Searching for trains

We must have spent the best part of 2 hours there, Tom was just so happy in the water, and it wasn't that cold (warmer than the sea anyway)  I was just hoping he didn't fall over.  Martin found an old towel in the car which helped.  His clothes more or less dried out (the sun wasn't being too forward today) so we re-dressed him and hopped back into town.  We visited the post office (last cards are on their way) and then sat down for lunch - burger, chips and onion rings (really not looking forward to weighing myself on our return back - I  have a horrible feeling the stone I lost has come straight back)

We then went down to Chinchilla Railway Station for a look around.  There isn't much to see as there are only 4 trains a day but they are either silly o'clock in the morning or silly o'clock in the night, meaning we can't do any train spotting.  The station closed a long time ago and is quite rickety.  Never mind, we stood on the platform and pretended.

Helicopter landing

We then did a spot of shopping - just the essentials (ie beer and cake for Daddy), and then strolled into town to pick Mia up from school.  We then headed home to find Matt had only 1 document left to translate, so we headed to the airport as Martin thought we might see some planes (Chinchilla has a large population of FIFOs - Fly In, Fly Outs - people who work here for 2 or 3 weeks, go back home for 1 week / 10 days etc.  They work at the gas works / coal works / mines etc and come in on private planes)  His timing was impeccable, after only about a minute we saw a flight arrive, then another take off, then more.  In all we saw 4 planes arrive, 4 leave and 2 helicopters arrive.  Not a bad bit of spotting - and all from the viewing terrace on the first floor of the airport building.

We then headed home, did a skype call with Matt's parents and then had dinner - Dominos pizza followed by cake (see what I mean about the diet!)  All very yummy though.

Tom went to bed straight after dinner, a very tired boy.