Swanning around

Swanning around Brisbane nowadays are we?

It's a question I often get asked since coming back home after two or so years abroad.  Well, today, I quite literally was swanning around Brisbane!  Jade (who you might remember from Yacht Week) bought a giant inflatable swan for her trip to Thailand and we took it out for a test swim at South Bank.

As usual, the manmade beach at South Bank was filled with families and children enjoying this hot summer's day.  So you can imagine that, with Swannie by our side, Jade and I were the coolest kids in the playground.

I took Swannie for a float around first.

Everything was going well until this little punk decided to get all bossy and start pushing me around.

I alerted the Lifeguard, but they didn't seem to care!

Then it was Jade's turn to swan around (in her new bikini too, how nice is it?!).

There were lots of jealous onlookers at the beach.  I gave my advice to the young kids: "Stay in school, go to uni, get a good job as a lawyer/engineer ... and maybe one day you too can buy a giant inflatable swan from the internet like us!".

Remember when you were a kid and your friend got a cool new toy that you desperately wanted as well?  Well, that's exactly how I feel about Jade and her Swannie right now.

After a hard day of tanning and paddling around with Swannie, it was time for ice cream from Cold Rock.

I figured that if we were being big kids today, then I may as well go for my childhood favourite flavour: rainbow.

Choc chip for Jade.

And none for Swannie.  He's a really low maintenance pet like that.

One final note - nobody ever stops and thinks about the logistics of transporting a massive inflatable pool toy.  We looked quite ridiculous walking around all of South Bank like this.

And unless you drive a truck, you're gonna need a good 40 minutes to inflate and deflate it each way.  An electronic pump comes highly recommended for that purpose.

But was it all worth it? Hell yeah!