Sunday 11th September - Wales vs South Africa

Gaz and I cant believe how friendly the locals are here, even the local mentalists have a happy demeanour. From time to time, we sit on our balcony with an ice cold drink and watch the locals pass by. Our main interest is 'pants man'. Pants man is what it says on the tin....a guy that walks around in his pants. the pants are red and of very poor taste and could almost be mistaken for a tight pair of speedos but no, i assure you, they are pants. He passed by again today, this time dressed in a little more than just pants. We do like this guy. He is very friendly and skips past with an older gentleman...possibley his brother/dad or maybe even his carer. Pants man always shouts up to the balcony 'hello!' with a jolly smile. Today he told us he was going fishing as he hopped merrily down the road which i found quite sweet. Next time Gaz asks me to go fishing, i might point him in the direction of pants man and set them up as fishing buddies.

My riding lesson went well today. Lisa had me ride Buddy again, a 15.1hh horse that she rescued. She seems to think we have a bond going on as he behaves differently with me on his back to most others. We progressed from the little field we were in last week to going through a long narrow field that she let us canter in to suss out if i was able to stop the horse. As I knew where the brakes were, next week Lisa is taking me out into 'the bush' to do some jumping and hopefully spot some wildlife. Gaz has even said he would like to learn to ride and she has an ideal horse for him so watch this space!

In the afternoon i had a great plan that we would go bowling. We pulled in to Hervey Bay Tempin Bowling and i guess the empty car park should have been a good enough warning to turn back and not park the car! We edged through the front door wondering if the place was even open and braved our way through a dark games room to a very quiet and very empty bowling alley. Was this place for real? It was the worst bowling alley i have ever been to and we are not going back there...ever! The machine putting the pins up was VERY dated and on its last legs. The computerised score was great because it added in a few spares which i didnt rightfully deserve and Gaz somewhere along the way accumulated a strike when he still had pins left. One of the pins seemed to fall over before the ball had even been bowled and the wooden lane was uneven, always making the ball want to edge to the right. At 23AUD for us both to have 1 game which took us all of 20 minutes, we finished and left.

In the evening we went to watch Wales Vs South Africa in the RSL but looking around at deaths waiting room, decided this was not the right atmosphere to enjoy a rugby match and headed straight for the door. We drove up to the Hervey Bay Hotel to the sports bar and watched the game in a typical Aussie Pub. Good beer (for Gaz) and good company with locals all wanting to have a little chat with us. I think my welsh rugby shirt was a give away that we were foreigners. We were very disappointed with the end result and im dreading going to work tomorrow as 3 of the dentists are south african but at least i can hold my head up high and say wales played well.