RiverFire

So Brisbane has a holiday/event called RiverFire once a year where they have a big fire worlds display on the river. Greg (P’s boss) and his wife Diana invited us over for a RiverFire party this past Saturday night. They live in a highrise on the river so the view is amazing. It was a nice party, they made excellent food and we meet a lot of friendly folks from all over. Actually a surprising bit of them were from NC… strange.  Also surprising is that half the men there were named Dan…

Anyway, the fireworks were awesome. It started off with an F111 doing the thing were it lets some fuel out and then lights it on fire w/ the afterburners.. so it looks like a giant comet of fire flying behind the plane. Pretty cool. Then we all sat out on the balcony and watched the show. It was awesome being as high as the fireworks.  My camera work sucked but here are a few:

Afterwards we went down and walked along the riverwalk and had coffee. It was nice

I think the River Festival goes on for a week or something. Today they had a little thing on a pedestrian bridge where they were having a free BBQ. So today we went down and did that and then went and saw “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden”. Its from Morgan Spurlock who did Supersize Me and the 30 Days Show.   He’s the guy we met at the airport below. It was a pretty damn good movie, i’d recommend it.

-Dan

Noosa Head

So this past Friday Julie, Priscilla, and I drove about 1.5 hours north to Noosa Head. Noosa Head is a national park that is known to have a few Koalas hanging around.  Theyre pretty rare and hard to spot, so our mission was to find one!

We rented a car early that morning and after figuring out why the car wouldnt start (we were in the wrong car, ha) we were off.

Basically there are a few trails at the park and you hike along them and see what there is to see. We hiked for almost four hours and saw………

Koala!

He was just chilling up in the tree sleeping. Didn’t even crack an eye lid at us. Here are a lot more pics:

Koala!

It was a nice trip and the beaches were fantastic. The water was pretty cold, but it was crystal clear and nice and blue.  Best of all the place was practically deserted. While there we saw a pod of dolphins right off the shore, the koala, two lizards fighting, and even some kangaroos on the drive home.

Speaking of which, i drove home and it was my first “wrong side of the road” experience. It was pretty bizarre and even at the end of the 1.5 hour drive home, I was having trouble staying in my lane. You’re so used to yourself being in the left side of the car and thus the left side of the lane.. So when swapped you want to drift off left out of your lane.  Its a lot harder than it sounds!

-Dan

Brisbane

Ok, this will be about the city itself.  Here’s the Wiki link for some reference info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane

Ya know what, i just looked at our city pics and they’re all crap so i’m going to have to give a raincheck on those.  I have a meeting tomorrow, but maybe after that i can go take some. I swear we took some nice ones, but i can’t find them.. hrm. Oh well, this will be updated later then.

-Dan

Internet!

Well we finally have the internet hooked up at home so its time to update this thing.

We’ve now been in Brisbane for almost a month and are getting settled in nicely. We have an apartment in “The Valley” (Fortitude Valley) which is an artsy part of town right outside of down town proper. The apartment is basically a big rectangle w/ a door on one end and a balcony (2nd story of 3) on the other. There’s a bedroom toward the door and a living area near the balcony/porch/deck with the kitchen and bathroom in between. Actually, here are some pics:

Kitchen

Living Area

Came with an HDTV!

Shower w/ ghost toilet

I still need to get some pics of the front of the building. The face is a huge painting by the Spanish artist “Miro”. So each balcony has a set of sliding metal doors that are each a part of the painting. Together they form the whole mural as seen from outside.

So the apartment is about a 7min walk from downtown Brisbane and about the same to the nearest CityCat stop. Brisbane is built around the Brisbane River which winds through the city. The CityCats are ferries used to shuttle people up and down and across the river. Here’s a pic:

CityCat in Brisbane

So for example, every day P walks about 7min down the river to the nearest CityCat stop. Then rides the CityCat down the river for about 30min to the University of Queensland stop. Then walks across campus to her office. Its a pretty nice and relaxing way to travel.

This is my first blog post so i better publish this before i get too far along in case it doesn’t work.

-Dan

We’re here!

We left the US on July 28 and arrived in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on the 30th.  We’re not sure where the 29th went but it was probably spent at 30,000 ft somewhere in the Pacific.  We arrived and the first exciting thing that happened was that we were standing at baggage claim when Dan said, “Psst, that’s Morgan Spurlock!”  I said, “ha no way, Morgan Spurlock doesn’t look like that.”  Then the more I looked, the more it looked like him, then I finally saw his profile and realized it really was him.  I tried to think of a cool way to say we recognized him when Dan blurted out “HEY PRISCILLA! KNOW THAT 30 DAYS SHOW?  IT’S REALLY GOOD!”  Morgan turned around and said “heh, yeah I like it too.”  We introduced ourselves and shook his hand.  I took his pic on the sly.

He was really nice and helped me get my gigantic bag off the carousel.

After that we went through customs and promised we didn’t have any food on us and they let us through.  We met Greg, the professor I’m going to be working with and loaded all our stuff into his tiny rental car (whose steering wheel is totally on the wrong side).

He gave us a quick tour of the city then we went to our hotel to drop our baggage.  Then he wanted to show us around his apartment (which has an amazing view from the 26th floor).  It’s almost right in the middle of the city and it’s directly on the river.

The Brisbane River is a river that goes right throught the middle of Brisbane and is how most people in the city get to work.  I catch the CityCat at a stop that’s about 15 minutes from my apartment and have a 35 minutes ride to work.  It’s not a bad way to start the day.

There’s some crazy wildlife here.  There are giant white ibises all over campus, as well as bush turkeys, which make huge mulch “nests” and absolutely destroy any landscaping that the University has attempted.  There are lots of eucalyptus trees but they’re seriously lacking in an koalas.  Haven’t seen any kangaroos yet.  Those don’t enjoy the city very much.  We hope to go to the Queensland Zoo tomorrow which has only Australian wildlife.  Will take lots of pictures.

-P