Binna Buggered

I phoned ahead to French Nicole and arranged to meet up with the happy snappers an hour late up at Binna Burra, and second time lucky we set off again, down into the city and alongside the river along the Riverside Expressway on a bright morning, singing along to various artists.

Eloise fell asleep after a while and soon I found ourselves in a traffic jam leading up to the theme park megaplex of the Gold Coast at Coomera. Eventually I rubbernecked with the rest of them at some poor benighted soul standing stunned by their trashed car in the fast lane with its side and a good portion of its front missing. But on the bright side we were almost instantly up to 110 again and forging ahead.

Soon we were running up that hill (Kate Bush) at sixty miles an hour (New Order) along the autobahn (Kraftwerk) looking at the big sky (Kate Bush again) with the invisible sun (Police) behind us somewhere.

We met up with French Nicole, Val and Geoff and wandered really very slowly around a little rainforest track. Eloise didn't actually have much to do with the slowness of the affair; the others had been at it since 9.30 and had made it around 400 metres around the track.

Still Eloise made it her business to investigate Nicole's baggage (I should point out that, as usual, we were seriously underequipped) and made off with her car keys, which had an amusing mouse attached to the key ring which vibrated when she pulled on a cord which emanated from its rear end. It had to be recovered by stealth.

After she started begging the others for food, I thought maybe it was time to go back to the car and get some lunch, and was surprised that a couple of hours had passed already. I'd spent most of my time keeping half and eye on the little terror and making sure she wasn't getting her mitts on anything dangerous (in the baggage) or getting her feet on anything dangerous (in the undergrowth). The others had been merrily tramping about taking pictures of god knows what.

Halfway back to the car Eloise decided she'd had enough of this really and did one of those lay down on the floor and withdraw co-operation acts.

Still after a couple of sandwiches and an orange and a packet of crisps she seemed to perk up, to the extent that she started to chase away the brush turkeys and magpies that had their beady eyes on our food.

When the others caught up we decided to go up and do a short circuit up by the coffee shop.

I used the pretext of "toilet" (hopefully implying a nappy change) to take the opportunity to relieve the enormous pressure my gastro-intestinal tract was under by this point.

My eyes were starting to bulge a little as we went into the gents to discover the throne occupied.

So we repaired to the disabled toilet to find a note on the door saying "Please knock before entering as the door doesn't close properly."

My eyes bulged further at the thought of me on the throne squeezing out a monster derek whilst Eloise opened the door and legged it down the corridor into the coffee shop. But there was nothing for it.

In the event, there was no event, and nappies were changed and pressure relieved without incident. And yes, it was a monster.

We went up to the walking track, but having been in the coffee shop, and knowing what coffee shops sell, Eloise was no longer interested in rainforests and refused to participate further. At which point we cut our losses and bailed out.

Eloise slept a bit on the way back home but when we got back around 4 o'clock we were both pretty tired. My bottom hurt (from the three hours of driving) and we still had to go and get dog food and offer technical support across the road.

By the time Nicole got back home at 7.30 or so and Eloise was in bed, I was absolutely buggered after my extremely long day.