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It’s been overcast but warm most of the time we’ve been here and we’ve had a very lazy and rellaxing holiday of walks along the beach and a little swimming. Evenings are being spent working our way through the local restaurants with some very nice finds. A Touch of Salt, down by the Ross River, served up a sublime eye fillet with baby carrot and whole baby beetroot. I mistakenly ordered a dreadful Pinot Noir, but the exceptional late harvest Viognier that arrived with my apple pie more than made up for it.

We’re a little bewildered as to what people actually do here - the city mall is half empty, with an entire row of shops vacant due to the planned construction of a new plaza. There are a couple of bars and a scattering of places to eat but compared to Wellington, Townsville is lifeless. We did visit the local aquarium, which features living coral and is the largest of it’s kind.

I took the opportunity to go and visit some gadgets that aren’t easily available in stores in Wellington - the Acer Aspire One, for which a review should appear in Linux Journal soon, and the 10″ EeePC. It’s enormous for an Eee, but with it’s 80GB hard disk and 95% full size keyboard it compares very well against my partner’s 11″ Sony Vaio, and is much the same size and weight.

It’s incredibly relaxing to be able to walk around in shorts and sandals and breathe easily without fighting Wellington’s cold winds. The only real problem we’ve had so far is that the hotel WIFI is dreadful. Not only do the cleaners unplug the AP every morning to vacuum, but the internet connection seems to be running off a 56k modem.

Oh, and don’t ask about the coffee.

We awoke at 0340 to make our 0600 flight to Brisbane, only to find once we’d gotten to the airport that the flight was cancelled. We were lucky enough to be the last two people transferred to a flight to Coolangatta, approximately 100km south of Brisbane. Never heard of the place? I don’t blame you at all. It’s like ending up at Levin rather than Wellington, except that Levin doesn’t have tropical beaches.

AirNZ did look after us very well, providing a reasonably comfortable air-conditioned coach to take us to Brisbane airport where we had a very long wait for our next flight. Poor Oliver wasnt feeling well after we’d been foolish enough to induldge in some pre-packaged sandwiches at Wellington airport so instead of spending the day in Brisbane we found a comfortable pub in the airport with squishy seats and camped there until our evening flight to Townsville.

Unfortunately Oliver accidentally dropped his bag and for a few moments we thought he’d destroyed his camera. Experimentation showed it was actually the lens, and probably just that the mounting ring where it attaches to the camera was slightly wrenched in the fall. Other lenses are working fine, and hopefully we can get the damaged one repaired or replaced in Townsville.

That screw is really not supposed to be sticking out like that.

Our flight to Townsville was pretty uneventful, apart from a child throwing up all over the waiting area just before we were to board. Thankfully said child was not sitting anywhere near us on the flight. Our first day in Townsville all we’ve done is a little shopping and getting our bearings as it’s quite overcast. Sun is forecast for the rest of the week and the swimming and beach lounging part of the holiday should commence tomorrow.