Industrial Tourism

Great fun

Our last day:0(

Oh well, I guess all good things have to come to an end or you wouldn't know what a good thing is?!  We had another day in Chinchilla - who knew there was so much to do here.

First stop was to Vanessa's parent's house where Ben keeps his motorbike.  He's got a little off road bike, he's a little too short at the moment to ride it - but it was a perfect size for me and Matt.  Matt was mega excited and jumped right on and over to a bit of scrub land for a play.  I wasn't going to have a go, but it looked real fun.  After a little encouragement I found myself on it.  Wow it was good fun.  I don't think I got above 5 miles an hour - but you didn't need to.  Tom got very excited too.  Vanessa's brother Marty has a big. full size off road bike, so Matt put on the gear and gave that a go - it was a bit of a beast, in fact I think he preferred Ben's bike.  It did mean we were able to race - Tom once again was very excited and announced that I was the winner - big smiles all round.

Off road professional

We then headed back to our favourite coffee shop, Jamaica Blue for lunch - the boys had the same as yesterday, but I at least tried something different.  

I won the race

We then went back to the house to get dressed up... in work gear.  Martin had offered to take us for a trip round his power station for the afternoon.  Not really what you expect to do on holiday, but it was really very interesting (and quite tiring, climbing up and down numerous staircases).  It sort of made me wish that I had paid more attention in physics, as there was a lot of technical detail, but I think I got the gist of it, ie you dig up coal, put it on a 4km long conveyor belt grind it up, blow it into a huge kettle, burn it, heat water and make electricity - lots of electricity.  The whole site (to me) was a bundle of confusing pipes, stairways and metal - I had absolutely no idea how they put it all together, but it works and Martin as our guide was very informative and able to explain things in laymens' terms - I even understood some of it.

Dressed for work

In the evening I made a roast chicken dinner for everyone (with Yorkshire puddings as requested by Mia) followed by the Lemon Meringue Pie from yesterday.  Some neighbours then arrived for an evening of Trivial Pursuit (not the regular one - but the globetrotter one) : Australia vs Britain, it was a close one but the Aussies just won - not helped by the fact every time we landed on Australasia we got a question about an obscure Pacific Island.  Anyway, it was a good evening, we then packed quickly and went to bed.