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Published: October 15th 2009
Brisbane
Frangipani in our garden.With the sun still shining we made the most of the warm evenings with a couple of trips to the moonlight cinema to watch some classics - Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Goonies. A slightly bizarre but great experience sitting in a deckchair eating pizza, drinking beer, and getting distracted by the huge bats flying across the screen whilst possums scurry past looking for pizza crumbs.
The purchase of a kick-ass tent that you can actually stand up in (oh, the luxury) meant that we had to try it out, and a trip to North Stradbroke Island "Straddie" just off the Brisbane coast seemed like the perfect opportunity. The 'variable' weather meant that we were at least able to confirm that thankfully the tent was waterproof. We also found out the tent also kept water in when we knocked over our esky, having been made to move by the camp tent nazi (we were less than a foot over the invisible line). We spent the weekend enjoying the beach, able to drive onto the sand and find our own spot in the fourby, and even spotted dolphins and turtles from the cliffs.
March was the month for familiar
North Stradbroke Island
We struggled through the crowds to find a spot. faces. Our University friends Dave and Becky, and their son William came to stay for the weekend, before we headed down to Sydney to visit another ex-brummie Neil and his girlfriend Lauren. We decided that since we'd been to Ramsay Street the year before it was only fair that we become proper pommie tourists once again and visit Summer Bay. The next morning we headed down to the legendary Icebergs restaurant on Bondi Beach for breakfast. In stark contrast to our previous time at Bondi, the beach was almost deserted and looked stunning. Although, the water did start to look less enticing as we realised that the lifeguards were rather concerned with a certain area of the water. A hovering helicopter, and a lifeguard on a jetski who keeps darting around and peering into the water as if something large and shark-shaped is lurking beneath tends to put a bit of a dampener on any aquatic activities.
For Easter we booked a trip to Melbourne. The temperature change was a bit of shock to the system, with jumpers and hats donned for our evening stroll along the Yarra river. This was improved however by the hugely impressive gas towers
that line a section of the river and project huge fireballs into the air, giving anyone in the surrounding suburbs a nice toasty warm blast.
The following evening was spent at one of the most famous and impressive sporting venues in the world - the MCG. A mere 71,000 people joined us to watch the local derby AFL game (Aussie Rules, or fuddy as we have come to know it) between Essendon and Carlton. AFL is the sport of choice in Melbourne - not surprising when you realise that a whopping 10 out of the 16 teams in the league hail from in and around Melbourne. The game was non-stop, fast paced, and really entertaining.....if a little confusing. At a subsequent visit to an AFL game in Brisbane we were comforted to hear as many local accents in the crowd questionning the idiosyncracy's of the finer rules of the game as us. We established that there are quite possibly 18 players on a team (although we couldn't say for sure), that whenever a player is tackled the whole crowd inexplicably shouts 'Ball!', and that it's the only sport where you get a point for missing the goal.
We
North Stradbroke Island
Andy proving he can get a tan in any weather. took the opportunity to explore the area around Melbourne driving down to Wilsons Promontory National Park, a very picturesque landscape with stark reminders of how fragile an ecosystem it is with the scorched earth and trees from the recent bushfires still visible. Finally, we rounded off the long weekend with a trip to the beach in St Kilda, and were taken aback to see a couple of penguins swimming around in the bay. Less cute were the multiple jellyfish.
Our new football team, the now Brisbane Roar, managed a late charge at the end of the season, finishing third in the league. As no self respecting Aussie sport competition is happy with the results of a season long league, this put us in a good position for the title deciding playoffs. In the end we lost in the Preliminary Final (Semi-final by our reckoning) denying us the delights of Asian Champions League football next season. Unfortunately we will have to wait to face the might of Al-Gharafa (the Qatari champions) and Persipura Jayapura (the Indonesian champions).
Laura was not entirely sure how she got roped into playing Ultimate Frisbee for Queensland University of Technology, but she braved her
Brisbane
Dave, Becky and William first game nonetheless. The warm-up alone resulted in a badly bruised forearm, parts of her hand turning a nice shade of purple, and the realisation that she may never get the feeling back in the end of one of her fingers. Once in the game, the phrase 'running around like a headless chicken' sprang to mind. Actually, make that a very unfit chicken who managed to stay on the pitch for a whole point before volunteering for substitution and a lie down. By the end of the game she had a very impressive 100% catch and throw rate. This had been achieved by stumbling upon an empty area of the pitch (the opposition had probably given up bothering to mark her by then), catching the frisbee that was hurtling towards her, nearly tripping over the defenders who had now arrived and seemed intent on invading her personal space, panicking, and throwing it about a metre to a team mate who had come to rescue her. Impressive huh?!
Andy was more sure how he ended up playing futsal (like 5-a-side but with gay rules and a flat ball), having joined team NFI (No and Idea are two of the initials).
Brisbane
Possibly the only photo in history of Laura with a baby. He was reasonably successful in his first season, winning the "world cup" although not quite knowing what country he was representing. Things have not been going so well in recent seasons. Having managed mid table mediocrity in season 2, NFI are currently battling with the mighty Swamp Donkeys to stay in the top division.
Taking advantage of our last bank holiday weekend for the year we headed down to Byron Bay with some friends. After feeling very impressed with ourselves for fluking such a posh apartment last minute we headed down to the beach and were greeted with the sight of a couple of dolphins surfing in the waves just off the beach. Despite a flat battery the next morning, and a very frantic call for a cab, we headed into town for our whale watching trip. Byron Bay is the most easterly point of Australia, which makes it a great place to spot whales as they migrate up the coast. We waded out to our boat (seriously guys, how hard is it to build a jetty??!) and set off across the beautiful bay. We zoomed around for some time with no luck, but just as we were beginning
Palm Beach
It unfortunately appeared to be Alf's day off. to think that we were going to bob around indefinitely with no whales for company, our mate Simon shouted and pointed into the distance. Our captain quizzed Simon as to where he saw something, to which Simon replied in a rather resigned manner that the whales were in fact miles away. When they came back up in the same spot that Simon saw them the first time, the captain suddenly shouted "that's not far, sit down and hold on!". A few very windswept minutes later we tracked down the whales. Two humpback whales in fact. Now, don't get me wrong we like whales - they're great - but on past experience they don't actually
do much. So we were quite surprised to say the least when these two set about launching themselves out of the water (breaching) about twenty times in a row. So impressive not least when we had to move the boat as they came a bit too close!
For Laura's birthday we set off for a surprise weekend up in the hills of Montville. The destination was a cabin up in the rainforest. Just as we were settling into the cabin Laura heard an "oh my
Palm Beach
Wannabe extras. god!" exclamation from Andy in the bathroom. This was swiftly followed by an "errrr.....don't come in here" at which point Laura realised that there must be something hideous, large and eight-legged in there. A very frantic conversation followed with Laura cowering on the bed gesturing wildly at a glass on the side. Andy wasn't particularly pleased to report that the glass simply wasn't big enough to deal with our guest. An even more frantic conversation followed and resulted in what was seemingly our only course of action......Andy threw a towel at it (well, scrunched it up into a ball, hurled it like a baseball and ran away).
Being a rainforest, naturally it rained. The rain was timed for maximum drenching with the downpour starting just as we arrived at the furthest point on our walk down to a beautiful waterfall. However, the weather gave us a good excuse for Andy to start burning things and to set our log fire going. Having spent our last two english winters in Oz it was actually quite nice to get that wintry feeling all nice and cosy indoors with the fire going. So much so that we made it into a mini-christmas
Palm Beach
Summer Bay. by toasting marshamallows on the fire and even watching a christmas film. As it turned to dusk we headed out for the less well known christmas activity of platypus spotting. This we managed with surprising ease as the little fella was swimming around when we arrived. Although we did realise after a bit that the platypus had in fact disappeared and that we were now watching some kind of water rat......it was dark!
Stuff we've learnt:
If you have a "ute", it is absolutely compulsory to drive around with a dog in the back of it.
Playing squash in Australia in the summer is a very bad idea unless you want heat exhaustion.
Gecko's poo lots and as a result are not ideal house guests.
Anything below 20 degrees is cold. Fact. Seriously, we had to buy a new thick duvet.
'State of Origin' is the biggest sporting contest in Australia (Rugby league competition between Queensland and New South Wales)
Maroon, as in the colour of the Queensland rugby team, is inexplicably pronounced marown.
The Queensland team are also known as the Toads (Cane Toads) and the NSW team the Cockies
Palm Beach
Neil & Lauren doing the tourist thing. (Cockroaches)
Andy became an official Queenslander by completing his first trip to and around the shops barefoot.
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george and jan
non-member comment
great photos
like the frangipan hope ours gets to that size good photies and bonza narration dad and jan