Halloween

Things were a little fishy at dinner.

I got suspicious

 Turns out it's Halloween.  That quaint American custom where groups of parents spend inordinate amount of money on costumes and kids pester neighbours for lollies.

 I (Frank) was delegated the role of watch man.  I wandered the streets while my 4 or was it 5 urchins knocked on doors.

 I have decided though that Halloween is a good thing.  We got to meet neighbours we never knew.  And the kids got sugar based rewards.

I was disappointed that no one threw a bucket of water over them while yelling trick ha ha ah ha yeow.

Actually I am not sure I even know the rules.  Kids knock on door and announce "Trick or Treat" to which the home owner responds "O'h you all look so cute" Then they give kids lollies and kids wander away with a distorted view of their own cuteness.

What I want to know has to do with the trick option.  Do the kids throw rocks on the recalcitrant home owners home or does the home owner throw a bucket of water over the kids or offer them celery and cottage cheese.

BGS Music

Chris plays a big sax in a band.  Hmm I think it's a Tenor Sax.

Flashpoint - 28-OCT-2012

Our monthly children's church - Flashpoint - is on this sunday.
This page is my notes / planning.

But what do the bible readings say?
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 - The end of Job's suffering.  Restoration.  Interestingly Job now has Children and the girls are named in the text and recorded as having received some inheritance.  Both of these go against the norms of the time and may imply that restitution byu God has resulted in a new world view.
Jeremiah 31:7-9 - I think we need to get some context wrt to this reading.  I think it is an exultation to sick or diabled or poor people to give thanks to God.
Hebrews 7:23-28 - Jesus is the great high priest exists forever, no sacrifices required.
Mark 10:46-52 - Blind Bartimeaus recveives his sight.
 Need:Blind -> Ask God (& ignore the naysayers)-> Response:Faith has made you well
 Believing without seeing? or is this God answers need ?
The blind theme could imply that the Jews lack faith in Jesus — and that lack of faith is what prevents them from understanding who Jesus really is and what he has come to do.
To me it seems consistent with the idea that God loves us BUT we must take steps toward him.  We must recognise God and ask God...
(This is different to the Flashpoint theme of 3 years ago)


------------------------------
LAST TIME 3 years ago Order Of Service

FLASHPOINT              25 October 2009

Mark 10:46 - 52  Believing without seeing

Welcome

Songs – The One and Only God                                                        Megan

PRAY – thanks and confession

Songs – Jesus is Greater

            OFFERING &

-          The Blind Man

Science – Coloured writing and cellophane …                                  Frank

      (Write on white paper with colured pen and obscure with lighting gel or cellophane or even perhaps coloured light?)

Story -                                                                                                 Unkle Paulie

Bible Reading – Bartimaeus believed without seeing like we do.  You can be happy about that!                 Megan

New memory verse – John 20:29                                                      Megan

Songs  - Jesus is Greater / The Blind Man                                        Megan

-          Jesus is a Cool Dude

Wrap up and Sending Out Prayer  - intercession

(Father Bless Us As We Go)                                                              Megan

Last month’s memory verses … Psalm 15:1,2         

Stuff – Musical instruments, music, song words, piano

            New Memory verses and prizes

Science exp – writing behind coloured cellophane

Bible

Story book

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MUSIC IDEAS
C2. The Blind Man                                                   (All Together 23)
P1. I Walk By Faith                                                     ( photocopy)
D9. I’ve Got Something                                           (AT149)
  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCIENCE EXPERIMENT IDEAS (brain storm)

Cellophane (GEL) white paper and texta.

Coloued light (from video projector?)  obscures text in same way as the gel.

Big Paper obscures something -> set fire to the paper to reveal something.

Those mottley pictures with a hidden animal / word that you have to go cross eyed to see. (in 3D)

Opening a curtain.

Invisible ink / lemon juice & toaster.

Chis Gets His Cast OFF

In the dieing minutes of the BGS vs Nudgee Under 13 Rugby Match one week before the end of last school term, Chris was tackeled and broke his arm as he hit the ground.  Since then it has been in a Cast.  5 weeks had past so yesterday I phoned Royal Childrens Hospital at Herston Brisbane to find out the procedure to remove it.  Took me a few minutes to find the phone number and I rang the first one that popped up on google which turned out to be the car park.  When I finally made it through to Children's Othopedics, the kind lady informed me that they [the hospital] would call us.  She then kindly asked for the patients details and fed the ever hungy computer which in turn kindly informed her that Chris was expected at 12:30 that day.  (I think it was about 9am when I called).  She looked further and said that she could see on the computer that they [the hospital] had not attempted to call us.

So I texted Chris and phoned him and he did not answer.  I discovered later that he was complying with school rules to have the phone off.  I rang the BGS middle school office who sent a person to alert Chris and he responded to my text.  The middle school office said that I had to come in and sign him out.  I asked if he could just walk down by himself but that would necessitate letters and interviews with more senior staff.  So I stuck with their method and drove in.

Having enjoyed the comfort of the middle school office and signed my life away we drove to Royal Childrens Hospital (RCH) just a few minutes down the road and parked in the large parking station behind the hospital.

Our attempts to enter the hospital were twarted by automatic doors that stayed closed.  A power failure we were informed.  We entered via the coffee shop.  I later mused to myself that in a big public building open 24/7 with security etc etc, one would think that it might be safer for the main doors to move to the open position upon loss of power.  For example if the power failure was the result of a fire.  Anyway maybe closed is better to keep the oxygen out.  Ok back on topic.  We walked in and through to the Childrens Orthopedics.  Luckilly queensland health can continue to operate without the computers and there were still some lights on.  Although I guess the computer will not count the workers as being present during its period of unconsciousness and they [the staff] will not get paid.  (get back on topic).  We took a number and waited.  Knowing that we could be in for a wait, Chris had a book and I brought some work.  Somewhere along the way the power came back on but the computers stayed off.  bet they have a UPS. Eventually our number came up and a kind fellow with what looks like an angle grinder attacked Chris's cast.

Then sent him off for an X-ray.

while we were waiting for the X-ray, the staff apologised that due to the power failure, the X-ray would not work and they were getting an old one up and running. Feeling the threat of competition, the new one conceeded to boot and we were off and running.

 No photographic plates anymore.  Some kind of plate sensor that feeds directly into the computer. 

here is the X-ray on the doctors computer.

He extolled us that for the next 6 weeks not to participate in activities such as horse riding, football, motor bike rising, skate boards, roller skates or rip sticks.  Low impact sport such as Rowing is probably OK.

Hmmm should have asked about dish washing and lawn mowing.

Breakfast

A beautiful sunny day.  Our car is at the Konings.  Aiden and Maddie slept over last night.  They and Jemma wanted to cook Bacon Scrambled eggs and pancakes.

Jemma was keen to do pancakes.  Maddie helped to pour the pancake mix onto the hot plate.

Aiden told me that at home he stirs the scrambled eggs.  So I broke (well didn't break as you can see) 4 eggs into the pan and tossed in a little milk.

Then Aiden stirred it up.

Incidentilly these eggs came from John Ness's chooks.  He gave them to me when I took his trailer back after the boys weekend.

When the eggs were cooked to perfection Aiden advised that he did not eat eggs.  So I did.  And they were beautiful.

Highland Ball

The geriatric party night of the year!

Preparation starts well in advance for the girls anyway.  I did try on my shirt in the morning and established that the collar was a bit tight.  Drove off in search of a replacement.  Dreading the idea of going to Indooroopilly shopping town, I decided to try DFO at Jindalee.  Closer and easier parking.

I entered the building with great trepidation.  No wife or even woman to advise on selection of a shirt.  As luck would have it, the first shop I entered had suitable looking shirts and a range of sizes and a bloke with a tape measure who wrapped it round my neck and announced I was 42.  Knowing my existing too small shirt was 42, I upsized to 43.

Pre party preparation preening.  Megan tinkers with Leigh's hair.

My vice was to drop into the Hilton with David Semple and have a coffee to keep me awake past midnight.

Our group had two tables.

I am hopeful I can get some photos from someone else as my camera is pretty ordinary

I didn't take my glasses but luckily I have a 'business' card magnifying glass in my wallet.  Sean appeared to need to too to read the menu.




The highland ball finished at midnight.  I was hoping we would all go as a group down to the Valley to check out the night clubs.  Never my scene but we did it a couple of years ago and it was interesting.  No traction.  So all the pumpkins were loaded into the Vito and  Fil drove up home.  He dropped us at Calston Street and continued to the Konings where I believe he stayed the night and where I believe the Vito currently is.  I think I will ride my bike over and pick it up.

Windows Moviemaker glitch rendering AVCHD

Megan and the kids at school are making a video to enter in the "Hands Across Australia" thing.

There is a song provided and the kids write a rap that goes in the middle and then take some video and edit up a music clip.  This has to get uploaded to someplace or other.

Footage was filmed using two cameras.
1 Our Sony HDR-CX110E. Records High Definition AVCHD files onto an SD card.
2. The schools Sony that records standard definition onto a SD card.

One of the kids has done the editing - Fantastic!!!.
He used Windows Moviemaker - Could'nt be simpler you say - a simple tool for a simple task.  What could possibly go wrong.......

He showed me that whenever he cut to some of my footage there was a momentary freeze.

I replicated the fault.  Have a look at the 7 second position




THE SOLUTION

Software:
 1.  iWisoft video converter   http://www.iwisoft.com/videoconverter/  videoconverter.exe
 2.  ReNamer  http://www.den4b.com/?x=products&product=renamer   Renames multiple files.
(Also on the computer I used to fix the problem, I had the k-lite codec pack installed.  Not sure if that made a difference but handy to know)


Procedure:
I tried a few different approaches but as luck would have it, Windows moviemaker is willing to load in files with the wrong extension.

So what I did was rerender the offending High Definition AVCHD files as AVI files using DV codec.  Then renamed them back to the original file names.  The software used does all of this in a batch mode.


iWisoft video converter

In iWisoft video converter, I created a new profile based on the AVI one but selecting the codec as DV.  I called this profile AVIDV.

Then I used iWisoft video converter to convert all my files to AVI with the DV codec.


The iWisoft converter also messed about with the file names.
        00000.MTS became 00000_1.avi

Using ReNamer,
 I renamed all the from avi to .mts and deleted the _1 off them.  There were hundreds of files so no way could this have been done manually.

This is a screen grab.  The main window is the lower one and the "Edit Rule" window opened when I clicked the +Add button.  In this rule I am getting rid of the underscore and the number.

One of the really good things is now the main window shows what is about to happen but it does not do it until I click the "Rename" button.

Again this screen grab is of two windows.  The main window is below and in the top window just here on the left, I am changing the extension to .mts (note you do not type the dot)


Again the program shows the preview effect of applying both rules and then I press the "Rename" button to make it happen.












Windows Movimaker
I copied the windows Moviemaker project file (Mymovie.wlmp) to a new location.  So it lost track of the original source footage.

Then I opened WindowsMovimaker and of course, the windows Moviemaker project file (Mymovie.wlmp) was looking for the original files with a .MTS extension.  It highlighted all the files it does not know about.

I double click on one of them and navigated to the new file (the AVI file with the MTS extension) and selected it.  Moviemaker accepted that and managed to maintain the in and out edit points and it went and found the rest of the files in the same directory.

Rant:
The problem seems to be worked around.  But what a pain.  I expect mre from Microsoft.  This is a simple program used by consumers who own consumer camcorders.  You would think that it would all work together.  The internet is full of people complaining about windows moviemaker glitches.

Next time
a) Do not use Windows Moviemaker
b) Use the Serif MovieplusX6 (or ????)

t3

Canoeing down Oxley Creek

The two canoes were still on the roof of the ute from the boys weekend.  The weather was beautiful.  Decided to danoe down Oxley creek.  Numbers grew to include Phoebie, Steven and Cade.  Megan kindly gave up her seat so it was Sarah and Frank and 5 small kids that set off down oxley creek.

dfdfdf

It was a baptism of fire for Sarah having to deal with kids who had yet to lean to paddle let alone help to steer. Sarah was in the red canoe with the three boys. 

I (Frank) took the yellow canoe with Jemma and Phoebie.  The yellow canoe is disproportionaly unstable.  I think the seats are too high or something.

Although we were heading downstream, it took us quite a while.  I think we launched at 12:30.

We rafted up at one stage and shared some lovely sandwiches that Megan had prepared.  During this process, the two kids at the front kept paddling.  By keeping moving, it was much easier to steer a course down the middle of the creek.  When Sarah and I had eaten, we paddled and the two kids at the front ate.

The was a frustrating amount of negativity coming from Dan and really too much from Jemma too.  The visitors were much better behaved.

As we approached Sherwood Road at about 3:30, we spied a pontoon.  Called Megan for rescue and pulled into the pontoon.  This was "Oxley Common" which a leter look at the map seemed to be about 3/4 of the way.

We then carried the canoes up, ate an apple and waited.  Megan arrived in the Vito and Chris (Phoebies Dad) arrived in the ute.  Packed up & drove home.

A lovely day in the sun.


 

Childrens story rich man difficulty getting into heaven Mark 10:35-45

Sean arrived
with garbage bags with dollar sign taped to them. A chair was set up on the dais. To get into heaven you have to crawl through the door (under the chair ) Small and hard to find. Invited a volunteer to try to get into heaven. Jemma stepped up and was given the bags and she tried & (of course) failed. Then Will took up the challenge and like any 12yo boy was determined to prove that it could be done. That he can get into heaven with his money. He tried going under the chair while passing the money round the side and when that was disallowed he tried to contort himself and the bags of money through the door of heaven. Chris. Asked does this mean fat people will have difficulty getting onto heaven. When you try to find God you cant(job) compare with with there is nowhere you can go to escape God. If you have a loss it is sad and you have to face it. If you have to deliberately let go that is really hard. It is hard to choose to let go.

Row 20km

3:45am  - alarm goes off.  Push snooze
3:50am  - Alarm goes off.  Get up.  Get dressed.  Pick up bag convieniently packed the night before.
4:00am  - Drive off
4:20am  - Arrive boad shed.  A few minutes to doze.  Tilt seat back.  Ponder madness???
4:25am - OK get up get going.  Stand around with others.  Carry a couple of oars (ors ores awes) to the pntoon.
5:00am and we are on the water.  Yellow boat and I am in position 7.  A bunch of middle aged guys and our cox - "El".  Who we later discover is doing some kind of drama arts course at uni and was involved in a performance the night before.  One wonders how she made it.
An hour an 10km pass as we row up stream past the Uni, past the green bridge, past the Sommerville shed and Cansdale st (Where I work), past the rock and the green marker.  Further up the river than I have ever rowed before.  Somewhere we passed the tennis centre and then oxley creek.  We can see Indooroopilly bridge.  There is discussion regarding the whereabouts of the start.  A kind man in a tinny drives over and kindly takes our number "6" from the cox and motors up to the bow and takes the light out the holder and replaces it with the number and advises us to row back downstream mid way between the Oxley sailing club and Oxley creek.

6:10 is am.  (There is disagreement on the starting time.) and another man in a tinny says "six go" and we are off.  A head of the yarra time trial.  We have difficulty keeping the boat level so we try rowing with oars on the water on the return.  After an age we pass the green marker and the rocks at Cansdale St.  My lower back is beginning to ache.

We encourage our cox to encourage us.  She is too nice.  Maybe she is worried that we will die.  Anyway she toughens up and we do some effort piecs.  20 hard strokes.  minute on minute off and so on.  That picks us up and interesting the boat runs much better when we are focussed on these pieces.  My back is sore and so is my bum.  I am controlling my breathing.  I do not want to loose it and start gasping.  Blow out as I push back and then in on the return.  We are rating around 23 strokes per minute.

Finally the green bridge is sighted by the cox and some discussion ensues regarding the location of the finish.  Democracy prevails and we agree that the bridge is not the finish.  Nor is the City cat terminal nor the other one.

7:05am
 suddenly someone on shore announces we have finished and then tells us we can stop rowing.  That was a good call.  8.6km (I think). Avoiding the lay down sally thing, I do however arch back and lean forward in an attempt to reduce the pain in my lower back. 

I am all for putting ashore and buying breakfast and a coffee.  Our sister boat that started after us and passed us somewhere along the way has done this.  But democracy prevails and we start rowing for home.  Home is another k or two downstream.

7:30 am
We arrive at the pontoon and as luck would have it, my side (bow side) have their riggers to the shore.  It is our job to get out and hold the boat while the stroke side rowers lean out over the river and release their rowlocks and then exit the boat and take their oars and our up the ramp.  I acomplish my task of exiting the boat by moving my bum off the seat and onto the pontoon.  In order to minimise the pain in my lower back and groin I delay standing as long as possible.

We then lift the boat and take it up the ramp.  Turns out standing is far more comfortable than sitting and when we arrive at a local coffee shop for breakfast, I initially elect to stand.  We then relive the race.  Complain about the rough seas and so on. The other crew join us for a second breakfast and boast that they rowed the first half of the race towing a log and that once it was removed they overtook some boat(s) that had passed them.

Rocktober 2012 Boys weekend

On the weekend 5,6,7 October we (Frank, Chris & Dan) traveled to Paul's estate at Stanthorpe for the annual boys weekend.

In the weeks leading up to it, Dan had inspired the repair of the motor bike.  For details see
http://thomsoneu.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/fix-pro50z-dirt-bike.html

On Friday PM there was a bit of a disaster when the bike fell over and broke the gear changer.  A frantic effort of googling, yellow pages & phone calls lead us to a motor bike place at 3 Spine St Summner Park.  The fellow there produced a new second hand gear changer for $10 and we relaxed somewhat.

We drove in convoy with Bob Manthey in Paul's blue car.  We stopped at the Shell at Aratula for a "Gap Burger".  This was once a huge oversized hamburger with all the trimmings. It appears however that the specification for which has been out-souced, down graded and re assessed.  We received a nice but somewhat normal burger.  Then on through Warwick to Paul's place.

Saturday AM and there was still some work to do on the motor bike.  Bob had a go at push starting it and you can see this on the video.  It did start a couple of times but each time it was worse than before.

Took a break and went on a wonderful bush walk.

Decided to pull the carbie apart (again).  There is some white powder inside it which I assume is some kind of Aluminum Oxide.  Made a coffee and disassembled the carbie.  Then with a scalpel I set about scraping as much of this white stuff off as I could.  Cleaned and reassembled gave the bike new life.  It now seems to be working better than ever.

A big thank you to Paul Koning for organising this weekend.

Travel Insurance

Looks like I need to investigate travel insurance.

 Mastercard - Only for overseas trips

QBE - Annual Multi Trip $650 (No Kids, Aust Only). Covers $5k rental car excess
QBE via Qantas frequent Flyer Annual Multi Trip $550 (No kids)

Allianz - GAve up trying to get a quote on their web site. It kept saying not available.

AAMI - seem to only do international

Southern Cross $453.38. $15 for 1 day in NZ South Pacific. Do not mention Aus???

RACQ - 1 day non member for $5k rental vehicle excess $126.96 wow Frequent traveller (non member) $718

Suncorp 1 day $25.77 ($200 excess for claim) World Wide multi trip $594

Chris's Car

About 3 years ago Chris bought a radio control model car from "Extreme hobbies" I think it was called at Indooroopilly Shopping Town. Now vanished and we have no idea what make or model it is.   We have decided to have a go at getting it going.

The problems were and still are
1.  Would not start
2.  Suspect the front problem

So we went to Hobbie One at Creek Road on Thursday.  Arrived there aroud 4:30 and were advised wait till 5pm when Al who turns out to be a bit of a ledgend was due.  About five to four a stream of people arrived carrying cars in various states of disrepair.  These were presumably the true believers who were "in the know".  The cars were lined up on the counter and Al would go from car to car inspecting, advising and dispatching underlings to dig out some spare part or other from "out the back".

We gained some useful information from Al:-
The fuel system is preasurised.  Obvious when you think about it as there is a hose that comes from the exhaust to the top of the fuel tank and blowing in that hose qucikly showed our fuel system was not pressurised.

We purchased a new fuel tank and hoses and an air filter & fuel.  As you can imagine Al is a good salesman.  The fuel tank was too big and eventually I gave up trying to fit it in. 

A search of the internet showed a previously unkonwn (to me) hobby shop on Beudesert Rd.  Went over in the hope of purchasing a new fuel tank.  They had only one and it was $30.  (I think we paid about $8 at Hobbie one).  So gave up on that approach.

 I went back to trying the fix the seal on the old fuel tank.  I thought the seal had dissolved (so did Al).  But upon closer inspection, the seal turned out to be the same milky colour as the rest of the tank.  It was dismantled and cleaned and re assembled and then using the new hoses checked that it pressurised.

So now we had a clean fuel tank that sealed and new hoses.  Later we dismantled and cleaned most of the carburetta.  But it is still difficult to start.  I am not sure if there is more to clean.  I think we are OK compression wise because
a) when it does start it runs
and
b) if we flood it, then you have to take the glow plug out to get it to turn over.

The fuel tank is not original and was ditched before use as it was too big and touched the exhaust and the flywheel (under the pink air filter).

Front

RHS.  You can see the hose going from the muffler to the fuel tank.

Back

Front Diff.
This seems to have problems. 
a) Siezes sometimes (We think) and stalls the engine.
b) One of the wheels seems to free wheel.

(Ignore the half inserted screw.  This is a field fix from last time the car was used.  We replaced this with a M3x8 CSK screw)

So long to Molong

The final appointment in Canberra was to pay $30 or so to go up the telstra tower and take in the view.  Gee I hope the engineer pressed the right buttons on his calculator as the wind was blowing and in characteristic fashion was dam cold.  Arctic.

Left the Telstra tower and headed toward Molong.  Got as far as the Dickson Shops where Marcus and I went to buy fuel for the car while the rest fueld up at Maccas.  Took me forever to find the bonnet catch which turned out to be hidden under the dash on the passenger side.  Finally left Canberra about 6:45pm












MOLONG

 We arrived 10:30pm at the Molong Motor Inn 02 6366 8099 Jim & Liz.  Same place we stayed last year.  This year we had a family room (sleeps 5) $130 and the room next door which we put Marcus & Chris in for $99.

Our room room was spacious, clean and we think  new split system ac.  We took longer than I would have liked to get up and going so I actually met Jim who is very nice man.

Breakfast was our BYO cerial.

WELLINGTON

Racing along the road toward Wellington and we came across a horific accident.  Two cars upside down and riped to pieces.  Emergency services everywhere.

Then as we arrived at Wellington, we saw the most amazing cemetary.  Flowers on every grave.  Did a U turn and came back to take a photo.


GEURIE
Bought a dozen or so pink lady apples from a roadside stall $6 for 2kg.  I can atest to their good taste.


DUBBO
We commenced a systematic search for coffee and soon realised that the highway does not go down the main street.  Eventually Frank & Marcus bought coffee at some random coffee shop in the main street.  meanwhile the children revolted and Chris walked off in a huff.  Got in the car and drove round the corner to the world famous "Village Bakery" in Darling St.  I got a "Bee Sting" which while good, did not measure up the the one I had bought at the petrol station on the South sie of Holbrook.

TECHNOLOGY
We are driving North of Dubbo.  Amazingly, Vodafone
The macbook air that I am using is shiny aluminum and reflects the sunlight.  I doubt if Mr Jobs tested it in the sunny auusie bush. Equally odd is that Vodafone has coverage but no Telstra.  Also something odd with Crazy Johns which is carried by Vodafone but I can't get Chris's phone to pass data.

10:30am GILGANDRA
The town of windmills and hnece lots of points for everyone.  Makes playing Windmill somewhat easy.  Traded text messages with the Konings as we passed Neptune. They are doing sighteeing while we are on a mission.  The GPS advises that our ETA Brisbane is currently 6:31pm.  We will take longer because we will have a few stops and Marcus is driving.  In NSW, learner drivers are restricted to 80kmh.  Bizzare!  As Fin said "Like mobile spead bumps on the highway" Given the data that shows that L platers are safer than any other driver category by a long shot it is yet another indictment of the way we approach raod safety.



PLUTO
We missed Pluto on the way down.  We figured we had -  and I mean had to find it on the way home.  Google & http://www.solarsystemdrive.com/pluto.html informed us that Pluto was at "Sugar’s Park, Newell Highway, Bellata".  Problem was neither google nor the Navman in the Vito seemed inclined to tell me where that was.  Somewhere along the line I located the longitude and latitude but I could not find a way to enter that information into either google nor the Navman.  Google managed to inform me that there was a "driver reviver" at Bellata and they had a map on their web page and so we were able to coax the Navman into locating Bellata using the "pick from map" feature and there we found Pluto.



View Larger Map

goondiwindi crept closer and finally we were over the river and Marcus could drive at the same speed as the rest of us.  We stopped at a small park and made use of the facility.  Someone probably had a tantrum and we were on our way.  This is tourist driving with purpose.  A mission to be home.

No decision could be made wrt to dinner and we drove toward  Millmerran where I do not believe we stopped although we did drive slowly through a closed petrol station.

6:45
The entry to toowoomba from the south west came with a fantastic view of the moon rising slowly from the horizon into a sky with a little cloud.  One of those views that you just can not photograph.

Petrol was purchased.

The troops suggested that dinner was required.  The petrol station had one solitary sausage roll.  (Not purchased). 

Megan and I had come to the conclusion that Maccas and travel and children just do not mix.  In fact they go in and then half an our later they come out again.  Maccas was therefore off the menu.  We did however spot dominos pizza.  We parked, walked in, ordered a Hawian and a meat lovers and two garlic bread.  We passed on the soft drink deal.  Probably cost the same.  We rearranged the tables so we could all sit in and each had two slices.  Dan had a moment but eventually got over it.

Back in the van and on to Brisbane.  Megan was going to do this leg but she faded and Frank took over.  We finally made it home at about 10:30pm.