Today was my last day at work for 2008 and I can’t wait to relax with Claire & Hugo over Christmas and New Year.

In the morning, we’re driving from the Gold Coast to Chinchilla to spend Christmas with our respective families and friends. The trip out to Chinchilla could be quite eventful, as it’s the first drive we”ll have taken with Hugo much over an hour.

Belinda has suggested that we leave when Hugo is due for his morning nap and stop in Toowoomba for a break. Due to our distance, the timing of that couldn’t have been much better as we’ll arrive at approximately 11:30AM. After the pit stop is complete, we’ll continue on the second half of the drive. Traffic and driving conditions permitting, we should arrive in Chinchilla no later than 2:45PM – which will give us a little breathing room before we need to feed Hugo again at about 3:00PM.

We’re on a schedule here people, lets hope it unfolds according to plan!

This afternoon Claire, Hugo and I traveled to Brisbane to attend Lucy’s graduation which was held at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. The graduation was from 2:00PM, which meant we’d need to feed Hugo while we were out. Our carefully laid plans became slightly unhinged when we needed to heat up the bottle.

The Brisbane Convention Centre is considered a best of breed facility, which you’d think would mean that they’d have all of the smaller points handled with ease. You can imagine our surprise when we went into the parenting room to fix up Hugo, that they didn’t provide a microwave to heat up a bottle. In lieu of the microwave, they provided a note informing people to go to the cafe inside the centre – a little odd but maybe they had people abusing the microwave. I head over to the cafe and ask them to heat up the bottle in their microwave and was told that they don’t have a microwave. Instead, I’m provided a paper coffee cup with hot water in it – quality.

After managing to get enough heat into the bottle that Hugo would probably drink it, I thought a couple of drinks would be nice. I order a coffee & a strawberry milkshake and they don’t do milkshakes – how many cafes do you know that don’t serve a simple milkshake. Moving on from that, I later ask for some plain potato chips and they have only salt & vinegar and BBQ flavours – a tad limited for such an large conferencing venue. I then notice that they have a Four’N Twenty hot box on the counter – nothing against Four’N Twenty but it seems a tad out of place in this setting.

All this mind you when they have a graduation on, where they conferred approximately 330 graduands. Doing the math on that for a moment would suggest that there was quite comfortably going to be at least 1000 people in the venue and they couldn’t muster a microwave for the obvious families attending, a better range of chips (of all things) and a milk shake from a so called cafe that serves Four n Twenty from a hot box.

The Brisbane Convention Centre itself was well presented, clean and the staff on the floor were polite and helpful. If only they could have got some of the smaller things right, this could have been a very positive review of a top notch facility.

The bi-inaugural Chinchilla Melon Festival was held this year between February 10^th and February 18^th. Chinchilla is a small and vibrant township located approximately 300Km West of Brisbane. Once upon a time it was a typically sleepy country town, however in the last few years Chinchilla has become a hive of activity with power stations and coal & gas exploration common place.

The Chinchilla Melon Festival celebrates all things melon including water melon, rock melon and honey dew. The week of the festival culminates on the Saturday with back to back events taking place from very early in the morning. Patrons are encouraged to take part and experience the whole event starting with a poets breakfast and finishing late in the evening with a free concert.

The Melon Festival is a family oriented event with lots of fun things for the kids to do, some of which include:

• Pip spitting
• Melon bungy
• Melon skiing
• Melon smashing

It is recommended that you bring an older set of clothes for your children if you intend to let them loose for the Chinchilla Melon Festival. Due to the nature of the event, a lot of the activities involve broken and smashing melons; which get quite sticky and makes a bit of a mess. You’re kids will love it, its a whole bunch of fun!

This year everyone was privileged to witness Australia reclaim a Guiness World Record for the most water melons smashed in sixty seconds. You’re probably thinking that you could smash a whole lot of water melons in sixty seconds; well you probably could with your hands but the record is for using your head! The record has been floating back and forward between a bunch of Italians and Australians for the last few years. Fortunately, this time our Australian competitor stamped his authority on the title – beating out the existing record by seven water melons. Amazingly, he was so far in front of the existing record that he actually ran out of water melons to bust on the competition table – so maybe he could have got a handful more in!

If you’re looking for something fun to do with the family in February 2009 (I know it seems like a long way off), you should consider the Chinchilla Melon Festival but remember to book your accommodation early; its a very popular event!