Leaping Lizards!

Something happened last week in Brisbane where the temperatures suddenly shot way up from the usual 22-degree days to around 28C to 30C. Suddenly we're walking on the shadowy side of the street and everyone's in sundresses again. It's still supposed to be spring for another few months, and there are lots of flowers blooming in true spring spirit. But the best part about this early summertime is it's brought out the lizard population in the city!

Not far from our apartment is the South Bank Parklands, a great strip of grass, trees, walkways, and cafes (and the artificial beach) running alongside the river for many city blocks. Griffith University stands at one end of the parkland and just beyond the campus is a delightful little patch of jungly duckpond, where birds cruise around and kids play in the playground (and teenagers make out). We're well used to all of that scenery, so imagine our surprise when one day, we saw a big fat iguana-like lizard perched on a rock at the edge of the duckpond. And then a bit of movement catches your eye on another rock, and there's a smaller lizard, running on its hind legs in a near-standing position, just like a tiny velociraptor!

It's a lizard-vs-duck world out there.

The paths throughout the parklands are always packed with joggers and cyclists, and now add to that fearless lizards dashing across the pathways, just to make things a little more interesting. They don't appear very afraid of people, and they certainly aren't afraid of birds that are way bigger than them -- I witnessed a magpie vs. lizard standoff one day and the large and nasty magpie (the ones we're afraid of) was the first one to flee.

An unlikely jogging hazard

"Yeah.... what?!"

The former Gondwanaland park

We're not sure if the lizards were just hibernating during the last few months, or if they were holidaying in the Outback or something. But apparently the jungly duckpond area of the parklands was formerly something like a living educational theme park about Gondwanaland, the big prehistoric land mass that all the continents broke off from many eons ago. After the theme park was shut down, the "dinosaurs" of the miniature Gondwanaland (aka. Gondwana Rainforest Sanctuary) were either set free of perhaps escaped -- at least, that's one theory on why there are so many reptiles hanging around the river. But we also saw quite a few lizards sunning themselves on the rocks next to the cliffs of Kangaroo Point (a suburb near South Bank that rises high above the city atop some gorgeous riverside cliffs). It's lizard heaven here in Brisbane: rocks, sunshine, plenty of bugs...what else could a lizard want?

Lizard near the Kangaroo Point cliffs

We even have a resident lizard who's made his home on our own back patio -- a little skittish skink that lives in the raised root of our palm tree, and comes out for sunshine briefly until he's spotted by curious breakfasters peeping into his home. We named him Louie... and promise to snap a photo of him if we're ever quick enough one day.

Garden skink - a spitting image of our backyard pal Louie!
 (image by ozwildlife)

City of Lights

Lately Brisbane's been aflurry with lights, lasers, and fireworks over the river, all part of the three-week long annual Brisbane Festival. There's been a nightly show called the Santos City of Lights, with lasers shooting from the tops of buildings, lights projected onto streams of water pumped into the air from the river, and and music to go with it. We stopped by on more than one occasion to check it out. It was pretty mesmerizing! And so photogenic.

We joined the big crowd at the river's edge for a spectacular show.

Barges anchored in the river shot jets of water to project light onto.

Some sort of floating, moving light shape. In the background in the left is the Treasury Casino,
 a beautiful old building in the CBD.

The finale of the show featured a jellyfish-like creature "swimming"  above the river. So cool!

From another angle, on another night.

Checking out Brisbane

View to Brisbane city from South Bank

Hello, Brisbane! Yes, we've made the move up north to Brissie, Brisvegas, Brisneyland, whatever you want to call it (we're still wondering exactly why Brisbane has so many damn nicknames!) and we're settling into life in the city.

It's a pretty nice place, with lots of nice people. It definitely doesn't have that work-work-work attitude of Sydney (so we hear), and it's got a great climate -- hence why we keep meeting ex-Melburnians who moved up here after deciding it was a little cold for them down south.

Yarrrrr, possums!

Sadly, it doesn't have the gorgeousness and grandeur of Sydney and its harbour, and it's minus the cafe culture, the fascinating little alleyways and the old buildings of Melbourne too, but as we explore the city bit by bit, we're finding we like it more all the time. There's heaps of beautiful plants everywhere, for one, thanks to the subtropical climate, and we are both madly in love with the typical Queenslander home: generally a big wooden house on stilts (designed to let the air flow underneath cool the inside) with a huge verandah, and often, really cool stained-glass windows for accent, and feels a bit like it would fit in in the Deep South of the U.S. There's also something of a wild feeling to the city -- nearly every wander our residential neighbourhood has found brush turkeys running around. And they're crazy! (And having poultry running loose in the city will forever make us think of Asia.) And the possums.... which are really cute, but I have a wee bit of hatred for after one devoured my basil plant leaf by leaf on our back patio one evening.

We heart Queenslanders!

But it is nice waking up to the sounds of bird calls (reminds us of our camping days!) while living a ten-minute walk from the Brisbane River, which cuts through the centre of the city. And we do love that there are parks everywhere -- how very... English? So perhaps we just haven't been here long enough, but we're finding it very hard to put our fingers on exactly what Brisbane is all about. It's certainly a weird mix of places we've been, and it's unique in that way for sure. Nothing stands out as overly spectacular, but at the same time, it's all very lovely. While we're still stumped as to what to put on a tourist's must-see list of the city, we do like that we're always stumbling upon pretty buildings and scenic vistas, and for that reason, we'll just keep our eyes open and keep on observing our new home.

It's Official.

Brizvegas, here we come!

Yes, it's now official: we are moving away from the beaches of Gold Coast for the greener pastures (?!) of Brisbane.

It was a hard choice, and a busy couple of weeks apartment hunting, but all signs are pointing to a move to the city (which, by the way, is less than 1 hour by car and 2 hours by public transit to Gold Coast). Adrian's soon to be starting an internship with superstar software company Red Hat, in Brisbane, and has got a few of his classes at the South Bank campus in the city, Dayle will soon be finishing up her job in Surfers, and we've got some cool new flatmates -- our old pals Megan & Justin from Melbourne -- who have made it back to Brisbane just in time for us to get a place together! Not to mention, we've been craving a little bit of that city buzz -- the cafes, the non-overpriced, non-tourist restaurants, the museums and art galleries, the markets, and all that good cultural stuff we've been feeling a lack of since moving into Surfers.

So while we'll miss being next to the beach, we'll definitely make it back there from time to time. We're looking forward to hanging out in the city's many parks, and strolling along the river, too. We're also making an effort to do all of our favourite Gold Coast things before our move... which we'll be sure to tell you all about. And if you ever feel like sending us a postcard (or Tim Horton's coffee!) just email us at thebigquestionmark[at]gmail.com and we'll be sure to send you our new address, pronto! Talk to you soon, xx D&A

Culture Sponges

To kick off Adrian's mid-semester break, we figured it was about time to get a little culture. The Gold Coast is beautiful and all, but we're realizing more and more that we're truly city people. And although many people call the Gold Coast a "city", we'll argue that a place without museums, an art scene, live concerts, intriguing bars and cafes (in our opinion at least), a Chinatown, or any old buildings just isn't really a city. Lucky for us, Brisbane, Queensland's capital city, is only about an hour and a half away by train. So we hopped on the train early Easter Saturday, and made a beeline for Brissie's museums and skyscrapers.

Actually, Brisbane isn't entirely new to us — we visited Brisbane 3 or 4 times on our last Australia trip, but only to visit people, dash to the airport, or run exciting errands like filing tax returns. And just the week before Easter (this year), we actually ended up in Brissie by accident, when we took a wrong turn on the highway on the way to a farmers' market with our friend Tim, and ended up downtown. But this day was our first of our real exploring — grabbing a map and soaking it all up, just like sponges.

Brisbane's CBD was totally what we were craving: oooold ornate buildings (OK, not Europe-old, but Australia-old!), stately downtown shopping malls, stores selling cufflinks and high-end men's business clothes, pedestrian streets, and people everywhere! In a flash, we'd found a camera shop selling a Canon battery charger I was having one hell of a time sourcing in Oz, Starbucks frappuccinos, and signed a petition against animal testing. We soon reached the Brisbane River, a wide ribbon of water that loops through the city centre (and can be credited with some of the flood footage you would have seen back in January). Crossing over the bridge to Southbank, the views were pretty awesome, and we tried to imagine what it was like when the river was carrying boats and pontoons swiftly out to sea...

We'd heard great things about the "21st Century: Art in the First Decade" exhibition, which was about to close at the Gallery of Modern Art (aka the GoMA). It was a totally unique exhibit, and so cool to see some work by great present-day artists, as we're usually looking back at artists from previous decades and centuries, even. We only wished we had two days to spend wandering the exhibition, which was a collection of works by present-day artists from all around the world. Highlights included a massive 'cloud' of plastic shopping bags (Pascale Marthine Tayou, Cameroon), a cardboard-box installation, a piece by exiled Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and a performance by an "iPhone Orchestra" (seriously!). A lot of it was really interactive, like a huge table of skyscrapers made of white Lego being constantly rebuilt into new forms; Rivane Neuenschwander’s (of Brazil) I wish your wish had visitors making wishes on paper and swapping their wish for someone else's wish, which was printed on ribbon and hung on a huge wall (somehow we both ended up choosing "I wish to travel through time and space"); a postcard sending project, and all kinds of other cool concepts and ideas. And it was all free! [Sadly, I don't think we would never find an exhibit this good — and free — at the AGO in Toronto!]

We still had a few big things on the to-do list, and kept wandering. Turns out Southbank is a pretty great place to hang out — there were tons of people out at the huge park along the river, which was almost finished from the post-floods fix-up. The Southbank Markets were really cool — full of way better arts/crafts/fashion than you'd see at the Surfers Paradise night markets each week, for sure. And there were so many great spots to stop and have a snack or a beer! We were introduced to Fat Yak ale and we're big fans since...

As it got dark, we found ourselves crossing the river again, this time ending up in the Botanical Gardens, where we met an interesting fellow that gave us a good rundown of what those flood days were like, pointing out scraps of plastic bags and debris still in trees. As we started to get really hungry for dinner, we found ourselves totally lost in a part of the map that looked fairly ordinary — reminding us of our least favourite part about Australian cities: street names often change by the block and there's absolutely no grid or logic to the majority of the urban planning. We ran into a Kiwi couple in the same boat as us, and somehow found our way to Fortitude Valley, where the plan was to have a nice-ish dinner (too hungry- went for Grill'd burgers!) and check out the nightlife (Adrian was promptly turned away from a bar because he was wearing shorts!). But anyway, it was a long and eventful day where we got a good taste of Brisvegas. And little did we know, we'd be back two days later to have some Anzac Day beers — with a lot of sailors! — under the massive Storey Bridge, at the Storey Bridge Hotel. It's certainly no New York, but it'll definitely do for an urban fix while we're living down in Gold Coast!

When possums attack

Howdy, y'all! We're now back to livin' it up in the country (if you can call it that).
Brisbane was great and all, and we'll definitely be back, but for now it's time to hunker down and get the rest of our required six weeks of harvest work done for our second year's visa-- and hopefully we'll never have to pretend we're Paris and Nicole on The Simple Life again.

After Brisbane we decided to take Daisy for a camping night on the way to Stanthorpe. We visited an information centre and they pointed us to The Gorge campground, a strange prviately-run campground near Boonah, QLD. It was a little rugged, but recommended because it was by a creek-- and they really love to swim in anything here. One look at the black, murky water with vines overgrowing the sides and we were like "Forget it! Where's our pool?" But we parked next to it and it was a nice setting to eat cheese and crackers in.

Not long after we had started our snack, a friendly man with beer in hand came over to invite us over to the large cabin across the lane for his group's annual men-vs-women Trivial Pursuit faceoff and apple pie. How could we refuse? We were there for hours in a fierce battle with retired schoolteachers, posties, etc... until the men finally took it (though we were aces at sports, us girls just couldn't get the Arts & Literature questions!)

We get back to our van, which we had left open to get some air into (it was stiflingly hot) and immediately think "Eek, what kind of bugs are going to be sleeping with us tonight!?". Adrian gets in to investigate. Everything seems in place. I'm standing outside the van when I hear a rustling and a cat-sized figure just behind the driver's seat-- A POSSUM! Our first possum sighting (finally) though maybe not in the manner we were hoping. The damn thing wouldn't leave, and there was a baby one on the roof trying to sneak inside as well. With some help from our Trivial Pursuit mates and some fierce possum-shooing tactics, we finally got them back up the tree and surveyed the damage: they apparently had fancy tastes and only went for the French baguette we bought to accompany dinner. Yarrr! They tried to pay us back by scritch-scratching trails along the roof of the van for the rest of the night...

On Sunday we drove the rest of the way to Stanthorpe (the farm town in the mountain we ditched for HK a few weeks ago) and found a much better caravan park than our last-- at Top of the Town, we get a pool, nice patches of grass to park on, showers you DON'T have to put coins in to use (sheesh!), and microwaves and real ovens to use in the camp kitchen. AND we have phone reception (at our old "home", Blue Topaz, the phone bars dropped off randomly on the highway about a 1/2km before the park) AND it's walkable to town. We had just started our laundry and jobs came to us within about two hours after arriving-- and now we pick cherries for a farmer named Beaver. :)

We did our first day out it the orchard yesterday-- and without jinxing anything, it's probably our best harvest job yet-- we get a bit dirty and sticky by the end of the day, but there's no ladders, scratchy branches, or even a hovering supervisor to deal with. Not bad! Today we got rained out, so we even get to catch up on our errands and though it's kind of freezing, but life is pretty all right here. (Though we're thinking Brisbane hotel for Xmas!)

Oh yeah-- And if anyone wants to mail us, send away! We'll be staying at Top of the Town for a while-- here's our address:

10 High Street
Stanthorpe, QLD 4380
AUSTRALIA