April 9, 2001 - Monday - Brisbane
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| Surfer's Paradise, Queensland, Australia |
After a few loud cries from the cookaberras, we finally rolled out of the bed by 9. The packing and checking out took a while as were the good-byes with some of the friends we made here.
We traveled north to Surfer's Paradise, and of course Joerg jumped into the driver's seat without asking anyone else. He's also getting very picky and detailed about all the money issues and such. We stopped at Surfer's and the two went into the water to play around for a while but the water was still too cold for me to go swimming so I sat on the beach to watch people.
We went to a Pizza Hut all-you-can-gorge lunch buffet for only A$5.95 and gorged ourselves silly on all the junk food. I had a small plate of salad so I don't feel so bad about eating all the crap. We left Surfer's soon afterward and made our way to a caravan park in Brisbane. It's actually a pretty nice park and it's great to be back in the subtropics again.
April 10, 2001 - Tuesday - Brisbane
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| Mangrove Boardwalk north of Manley (Brisbane), Queensland, Australia |
The day started with each one of us intending on going somewhere different so we had to decide how to coordinate the transport. Matt and Joerg dropped me off at Victoria Bridge so I could cross over to the South Bank where the museums are. There was a very nice walk along the Brisbane River on both sides for joggers, walkers and bikers.
The museum is right in the Arts Complex where the theatre and state museum are also housed. The Art Museum contained a good deal of work of Australian artists and they also had a display of artwork of Queensland high school and college kids. They were as excellent as the ones I saw in Sydney.
I headed to Manly after that on the bus and was a little disappointed at the large stretch of mud flat in the harbor. There were plenty of mud crabs and gobies in the shallows of he mud flat but nothing else of interest. The esplanade snakes south along the harbor and I started following it. There were also some wading pools and jetties along the way.
I finally reached Wynnum after an hour or so of walking and came upon a mangrove forest at the end of the walk. The mozzies of the mangrove forest which was probably a different specie because they just zero in on you and land and starts to suck right away unlike some other types of mozzies that just flutters around you as if it's confused.
There was a nice boardwalk through the mangrove swamp where you can get up close to the swamp without getting your feet wet. White Ibis picked their footings carefully while keeping an eye out for anything they can peck or eat. Alas, the boardwalk was a little too short and pretty soon; I came to the end of the loop.
April 11, 2001 - Wednesday - Brisbane
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| Joerg practicing more juggling, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
We're still in Brisbane and today was pretty much just chilled out for the day. Caroline decided to join our group so we will meet her in here. We went to the Planetarium and walked around the botanical garden around Mt. Coot-Tha.
Not much of interest happened today. Joerg was still getting on my nerves. Before we checked in today, he took Matt's wrist strap from the boogie board and put it around his neck and pretended to be a dog by barking and panting from the back seat. Crazy Germans...
We met an Aussie named Russell tonight. He came up from Sydney for a new job here and was staying in the same caravan park because he's waiting for his family to move up here. He turned out to be a very talkative fellow and pretty much stayed with us the entire time that we cooked and ate dinner and played cards.
April 12, 2001 - Thursday - Brisbane
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| Matt still trying to recover from Byron, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
We are STILL in Brisbane. We finally decided to stay in a hostel not far from Fortitude Valley and Matt went to pick up Caroline from the train station. Joerg was clueless and suggested we should get a quad dorm together. Matt and Caroline got a room for themselves.
The hostel was very interesting through. The proprietors are an Aussie and Chinese couple. They were very friendly and gave me some pretty good deals including letting me sleep in their balcony for only A$10 and giving me telephone access so I could download my emails.
I went out to Chinatown for dinner with Caroline and Matt and had a nice chat while eating dinner. They were supposed to go meet up with Ben and Laurie so I left them and checked out the local club again. I chatted with Philip from Holland, working in Sydney and on business in Brisbane. We chatted for a while - he's in the travel promotions industry so he gets a lot of good travel deals, including a 5 star hotel in town. Must be nice, but I think I would still prefer to be camping out on the beach.
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