DavidGriffo.com

My Dad came to visit a few weeks back. While he was here Karin and Naomi took Dad to one of the islands off Brisbane. We also went for a walk through some rain Forrest.

I have just recently downloaded the pictures from Karin’s camera.

click on the image to see more pictures.

There is always somthing to learn from other peoples failures. Today i discovered a web blog that is dedicated to the failure of others in picture form.

check out http://failblog.wordpress.com/

Some of these pictures are sad but hilarious.

This chap is still flying at the ripe age of 78.

I hope that i can keep flying as long as he has.

It would also be nice to have the same Toys!.

The foke’s from Karin’s work found some sort of excuse for a party that ended up at the crown casino.

The pictures say it all. The band at the casino is very good.

I just spent the week flying at the Queensland easter comps in Chinchilla.

I was hoping to find a single seat glider to hire for the week but the CFI for Caboolture suggested i take the club twin glider and fly with students. It was a good suggestion as it gave me some experience of flying cross country in an area i have not flown before and it gave the students confidence flying cross country for the first time.

We did not do to bad. Well we didnt come last. and we got home every day and on some days that was quite and achievemt.

I got to fly the glider with Paul Cant all the way from Caboolture to Chinchilla and then after the comps fly the glider back. This gave me about 5 hours of practice of formation flying . We had intended to come back on the Friday and launched Friday afternoon only to be confronted by a wall of rain and lightning. We turned around back to chinchilla and spend another night there. On Saturday we left Chinchilla about 12 and had a smooth flight home.

I have some pictures of the week and the ferry flights.

Karin and Maureen (Mareen is Paul’s wife) drove up to Chinchilla to meet us there. The four of us then spent two nights together at the local hotel. Paul flew with me on the first day of the comps then on Sunday Paul , Maureen and Karin drove back to Brisbane.

I spent the rest of the week in my tent flying and camping. (arrr can life get any better)

We have finally moved into our own place in Brisbane.We did not have any furniture to move because we had been staying in a fully furnished apartment. So the last couple of weeks we have been visiting Ikea to buy most what we need in the house. We have had some friends (who were moving ) give us some of their furniture as well.After staying in a small apartment this place seems huge. It has 3 bedrooms so everyone has their own room.We are on the 4th floor and we have a nice view of the city from our balcony.We are still very close to the river ferries and Naomi’s work is just down the road at Dockside. 

Where we are living at the moment is very close to the Story bridge. Under the bridge is a famous pub. In fact the bridge was built around the pub because the locals did not want it knocked down when the bridge was built.

Anyway every Australia day they have races at the pub. Cockroach races! They have a band that presents the cockroaches at the beginning of each race then then they are placed under a bucket in the middle of a large mat. The band stops playing and the bucket is raised and off they go. In all directions. The first to run over the edge of the mat is the winner.

I can’t see how anybody can judge which one crosses the line first as they just go every where. When i got there i noticed that there was a spare seat at the front. I soon discovered why it was free. The cockroaches come running around your feet!

All day and after the last race there were live bands playing for everyone to enjoy.

It was a fun day and a great way to celebrate Australia!

This Christmas holidays I wanted to go and explore queensland. Karin was working and Naomi had a job interview so it was going to be a Father and son camping trip.

Before Christmas i thought we might go and explore the islands off the coast near Brisbane but i got some negative reports about it being really busy. So we will explore the islands latter on in the year. The best suggestion was to check out the rain forests. I was given a book of all the national parks in queensland and had been asking everyone what parks they thought were the best to explore. Most agreed i should visit Springbrook National Park. It is so good that it is world heritage listed.

Sam and I left on Boxing day and first went to the gold coast. Sam had not seen the place and it is quite a place to see. The first stop was at the amusement park for a wild ride on a chair that swings you upside down at some fantastic speed.

Next we went up the Q1 building. It is the 20th tallest building in the world and the tallest Residential building in the world.

The lookout is on the 78th floor and the lift got us up in less than 45 seconds.

It is a great place to visit but i dont think that i would want to live there.

Next we traveled on the monorail to the shopping center and got our camping food.

Then we were off to Springbrook. It is a fantastic place. I was gob smacked at the beauty of the place. We visited many water falls but i will defentley be back here to do some multi day hikes through this country.

we camped in Springbrook then went to vist the natual bridge. This is a water fall that has created a cave. Very nice.

After lunch we then went over the border to NSW and climbed mount warning. This was the best fun of the whole camp. All of the other lookouts that we looked at were very spectacular but all you had to do was get out of the car and walk 100 meters to the lookout. To get to the lookout at mount warning you had to climb along a 4 km track to the peak of the mountain. Sam and i got up in 1 hour and 23 minutes and it took us the about the same time to get down.

We camped that night at mount warning and then the next day headed back to brisbane.

All of these places that we saw we promised to come back and check them out with more time.

Lots of people are starting to get worried about what we are doing to our home planet. I have decided that i want to be part of the solution Not contributing to the problem.

Not long ago i was traveling about 100km .to work and back. When we moved to Queensland i wanted to be able to walk to work. Now i walk to work or catch the ferry and bus

I am loving the fact that we are close to everything here. If i do need a car for the weekend i can hire one and we can do this and still be cheaper than owning our own car.

Over the Christmas break i have watched the video “a inconvenient truth”. I would recommend everyone watches it.

We got a scare from Sam again today. Sam was out with his friends and was on a motor bike when he lost control and ran into a fence. It seems that the fence grabbed him by the neck. We took him to the hospital and he was very well looked after. They gave him top priority and did lots of tests all the time telling us how lucky he was not to have done a lot more damage to himself. He spent the night in hospital under observation but has now been given the all clear.