Brisbane Winter Festival

Nicole has been cock-a-hoop with anticipation over re-living her childhood by going ice-skating.

Over the past week there's been an ice rink set up in King George Square beneath the City Hall in Brisbane.

We went down there with Eloise's little chum Jessica and her family. Nicole procured a nice little package where we all went skating and got cups of hot chocolate afterwards. And we got to keep the cups too.

We sampled Brisbane's public infrastructure while we were at it too, parking down by the hospital and climbing on a bus which whisked us into town on the dedicated busway through the purpose-built bus stations, architecturally more like railway stations, which are hidden away out of sight. It's quite an experience if you don't know it's there, and it ran as smoothly as clockwork, to mix metaphors a little.

King George's Square was a-throb with activity. The ice-skating rink was accompanied by various stalls selling gluhwein, hot chocolate, hot dogs, and european winter fayre of various descriptions, mostly Transylvanian.

We got on the rink pretty smartly, having fitted our skates to our feet, and off we went rather uncertainly. Nicole had arranged some seals (or bobbies as they were inexpicably referred to) which were basically glam plastic sledges that a passenger could optionally sit on. Anyway pushing one of those thingies gets your weight distributed for skating and it's much easier.

Before long I, a debutant at ice-skating, was waltzing around the rink at maximum velocity with the sledge like, oh I don't know, Simon Curry? Or was it Chris Dean? on co-ordination-reducing steroids.

And afterwards, Transylvanian pancakes. Yum.

Nicole was grinning ear-to-ear by the end and it was almost inevitable that the experience was to be repeated yesterday with Marion and Hannah.