Brisbane

Up until now, I’ve been writing the blog and then choosing some pictures to go with it. I’m going to attempt to put the pictures in FIRST (and I’ve discovered, in reverse order) so that I can tell you what they are - but this may not work! I’m hoping that picture #1 will be of the beautiful Japanese garden we went to on our first day here (more on that later). Picture #2 should be of Brisbane taken from one of the ferries we went on and #3 is, I hope, of the amazing flower arbour on the south bank in Brisbane. The flowers are being trained to grow along trellises and even though it’s fairly new and has a long way to grow, it really is spectacular. You can walk for quite a long way under it and it’s a welcome relief from the sun (did I mention that it’s hot here!) - although I see from the SaskTel website that we’re probably missing the warmest winter for a long while in Saskatoon!


We arrived in Brisbane a couple of days ago - our first attempt at big city driving in the camper van! The further south we come, the better (and bigger) the roads are, so we are now dealing with 4 lanes each way and everyone else knowing exactly where they want to go - a little intimidating! We have been riding the bus down into Brisbane and everyone is very helpful - bus drivers, people on the bus and in the street. I have learned to say “I’m a tourist and I’m lost” and people immediately want to help! We had supper the first night at the Bowls Club just across the road from the campground (someone please tell Freda!!) Everyone was so friendly and welcoming, but like a lot of the clubs at home, the average age was about 70 and all the people had obviously put a huge amount of their time and effort into the club over the years, but no young people are joining - sad to see. We jumped on a tourist bus the next day as John’s friend Don (thanks Don!) had suggested that it’s the best way to get a feel for a big city - and he’s right. The bus takes you past all the “sights” with a commentary so you know what you want to go back to. We decided to spend some time at Mount Coot-tha which has a spectacular view of the city, an amazing botanical garden and a planetarium which we “did” in that order. The botanical gardens were enormous and it was very hot, so we chose to go to the Japanese garden and the bonsai garden - both absolutely beautiful. The Japanese garden was donated (I think I have this right) for Expo in 1988 by Japan and it is an island of peace with a lovely water feature and places you can sit and just relax. There are the most amazing plants and flowers here (Zoe - John has taken a lovely picture of a bird-of-paradise flower for you!) and there are almost NO BUGS! which for us is very welcome. Obviously there are lots of spiders and other creepy crawlies, but you can sleep at night with the window open and not get eaten alive by mosquitoes. We then went to a movie at the planetarium with commentary by Tom Hanks - “Journey Through the Universe”. Pretty basic information but the images were incredible and afterwards, an astronomer took us through the night sky as it would be without light pollution, and pointed out where all the constellations were etc. - very interesting. Our tourist bus ticket also allowed us the ride the ferries, so we jumped on a ferry with no great idea about where we would end up and saw a different side of Brisbane. On the map, it looks as though it’s on the ocean but it’s actually inland on a river and the city runs all kinds of ferries and catamarans which are very handy. The south bank is where all the museums and art galleries etc. are plus lots of little cafes and market stalls on the weekend - everything you could want from having your fortune told (we didn’t) to buying leather belts (we did).

I had hoped to get John to the Test Match Cricket the following day, but Australia did a very efficient job of ousting the West Indies in very short order, so there was no cricket to be had! We did a bit of wandering down town - very nice and quiet as it was Sunday so not many people around,. Today we are hoping to go to a little local zoo where we are told there is a friendly platypus - haven’t seen one yet so that’s our plan. Then we’ll be off down the coast, hoping to avoid the “schoolies” by choosing quiet beaches to stay at. We have the camper van for another 10 days, so we’re also planning to go out to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney before we have to return it. Serendipitously (sp?!) I have just seen on the map that the hostel we are staying at in Sydney is quite close to where we have to return the van, so I hope driving in Sydney will be kept to a minimum!