Leaving Port Douglas and exploring Brisbane

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Our last day in Port Douglas greeted us with clear skies and pleasant temperatures, heading toward 80 degrees. Where was this weather during the rest of our stay? We headed down to the pool early and enjoyed one of the salt water pools all to ourselves. After a couple hours of pool time, we headed down to Port Douglas for lunch before heading off to the airport to fly to Brisbane. Fortunately, this went off without incident.

We got into the Hotel Ibis in downtown rather late, so we didn't get a chance to do anything in Brisbane on Tuesday night. We did get out early and found a farmer's market right in downtown. We got some fruits, organic yogurt and baked goods for a great breakfast and started toward the river to catch the city ferry. Brisbane is a lovely city that is situated on a river that shares its name. The city was bustling with early business folks and buzzing with the excitement of the State of Origin rugby game that was going down in the evening. We happened to arrive in Brisbane for the day of one of the biggest rugby games of the year, an annual contest between Queensland and New South Wales. This was the deciding game of the three game match so many people were sporting the maroon and yellow for the Queensland team, even some in business attire had a jersey on over their shirt & tie. We saw very little of the blue NSW colors. A group of six or so gents were drinking at an outdoor table at a bar taking a fair amount of razzing from many passersby. They seemed to revel in being a target and had a response for every jab.

We boarded a City Cat ferry (a faster version of the traditional City Ferry that was still slugging up and down the river). This gave us a nice view of the city from the river. Some newer architecture seemed to be sprouting up among the traditional rectangular high-rises. We got off at New Farm Park and made our way to a crazy park where half of the children in the city appeared to be. The park had a huge wooden play structure that was built around and through two huge fig trees. The fig trees were mazes of branches that extended out 10 meters in some directions. Around the trunk a mass of smaller mini-trunks around it that created climb holds and cubbies to hide in. It was really a fabulously designed structure build around an even more fabulous pair of trees.

We took the ferry back to the site of the 1988 World Expo that had the obligatory huge Ferris Wheel. We walked back over a bridge to the city center and checked out a couple of interesting churches. St. John's Cathedral is a magnificent structure that was built in three stages over a 100 year period and was just completed in 2009.

A later than planned start got us on the road in the midst of a terrible rush hour out of Brisbane. I am convinced that we saw three times more cars within the first 10 kilometers out of Brisbane than we did in all of New Zealand (including Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch). A couple of times we heard concert level sqwuaking of birds from outside. It wasn't until the second time when Ivy spotted that they were colorful parrots or lorikeets. Hundreds of them. No confirmation on what species they actually were. We didn't arrive in Noosa, where we are staying the next three nights, until well after dark. We are looking forward to checking out the beaches, parks and other attractions

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Photos

New Farm Park
A great design of this play structure in, around and through a fig tree.

Another view of St Johns
This is likely to be the last neo-Gothic building to be completed in the world.