Pharmaceuticals and wild rides of today

with children but by far the worst of them is theme parks. I do not mean to be disrespectful to them, or the Steve Irwin memorial that Australia Zoo has become, but it isn’t the sort of thing an unaccompanied adult would ever choose to do.

We waited more than an hour to experience several minutes of discomfort on a Scooby Doo ride that, thank Jesus, the five-year-old didn’t want to repeat. Despite an admission fee higher than the sovereign debt of a small Pacific island, the icecreams were five Australian dollars and if you wanted to avoid the hour-long waits on rides there was a ‘‘fast-track’’ pass that costs more than an airline fare back to Auckland.

The only thing worse than massive queues were a lack of queues. New Year’s Day, we discovered, was quiet day for Warner Bros Movie World and the monster-child forced me to endure a total of seven consecutive rides on a small, yet intestinally discombobulating ride.

I’d be dishonest if I didn’t mention that I took the opportunity to take a few grownup rides. One, called the Hyper Coaster, I enjoyed despite myself. I’d do it again. In fact, I did, but it’s the sort of thing you do because it’s there. Like eating camel in Libya, which the long-suffering wife and I have done, rather than something you’d ever seek out.

Frankly, even the beach is something that I think you only ever bother to do with kids. Do adults ever take themselves to the beach to swim in the sea? I had a look in the surf and the demographics were adults with kids and teenagers with surfboards.

If you squinted hard (and I had to as I’d lost a pair of glasses to the surf) you could find the occasional unaccompanied grown-up but they were as rare in Brisbane as an aesthetically-challenged