Fred's Amazing Holiday. Ian Higgins

length of the corridor and spot the ticket man, when he is coming. Better get out Kidnapped. Start reading. Keep a look out.

      I like the hero of Kidnapped. David Balfour is like me. He goes it alone. In Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins is with Squire Trelawney and Dr Livesey most of the time. I like it near the very start of Kidnapped, when David asks the Minister of Essendean, “If you were in my shoes would you go?” The minister says in old fashioned talk, “Of a surety, that would I, and without pause.” They talk funny in olden times, but you can catch on... get the drift, as long as you think about it hard. I wish we still said, “Methinks.” That’s a good old word, fur sure.”

      Better keep an eye out for the ticket collector. Oops. Here he comes. Must speak nicely to the lady.

      “I forgot to go to the MENS, before we left. Just busting. Please could you keep an eye on my bag? I’ll be back soon.”

      “Sure, be happy to. Take your time.”

      Sure will.

      I head up almost collide with the ticket collector. “I beg your pardon. Excuse me, Sir.”

      Got past him... Now I am safe. Click the latch over! Sit for long enough for him to move. Read a bit more of Kidnapped.

      *******************

      Bang, Bang, Bang, Someone has come knocking on my Wee Door. Ha, Ha, Ha...

      Now there’s an angry man’s voice, “Just you in there! Hurry up! You don’t have to stay in there all day!”

      I yell back, “Sorry I am hurrying! Got a big tummy upset!” Pull the chain, and down comes the water, Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh. And I am out the door fast. Make sure I don’t look at the nasty man who’s waiting ... .Just run off down the corridor and back to my seat: the ticket collector nowhere in sight.

      Now I am waiting to see the Glass House Mountains, and there is Crookneck and there is Beerwah. So close! Wow! I love rocks like that!

      Mr Brown says, Captain Cook on the Endeavour, named them the Glass House Mountains, because they reminded him of glass houses in England. Must have been an afternoon, after the rain and the sun was shining on them. To me they look like massive stones stuck there. I have never seen a glass-house, except in a picture in Alice in Wonderland, where the Rabbit falls into one and smashes the glass. Dad says the Glass House Mountains are the hard cores of extinct volcanoes that you call plugs, and that all the ash and loose rocks have been weathered away by wind and rain over millions of years.

      I like volcanoes. In our Richards Topical Encyclopaedia, there is a coloured plate of an active volcano that has been sliced down the middle: so you can see in the diagram what is going on inside the volcano, as well as outside, when a volcano erupts. I like collecting volcanic rocks, pumice, basalt, obsidian, and the hardest to remember, trachytes.

      ...What a shame. We are past the Glass House Mountains already: on the way to Rocky many miles away. Better get back into Kidnapped.

      *******************

      Oh! We are coming into Gympie already. Gympie and Gold, easy to remember: Gee, Gee. Well, we have been galloping along. Gympie. This is where you get tea in the Rooms, but I will just get into my feed bag. Somewhere in here are the sandwiches Mum made for me this morning... seems a long time ago and far away too. Betta get out my note book... put it there, until I gobble up the sandwiches. Then I will write a few notes, “lest we forget.” Then I will hit the hay.

      Mum says I got the brains of a grasshopper, always jumpin’ all over the place. I think she’s got brains like mine too, but I did not say, “Guess who I got the grasshopper brains from?” These sandwiches taste great. Grandpa says that in Don Quixote someone says hunger is the best sauce of all... reckon they are right.