Brisbane Christmas, 2011

We have had a beautiful Christmas Day this year in Brisbane.  Last year it rained like crazy and we were lucky if we could get outside for more than 10 minutes at a time.  This year we had a long walk from our place to the CBD along a brand new walking path that has just opened up and had a chance to see the normally bustling CBD quiet and lovely.

A beautiful Christmas Day in the sub-tropics

We expected the CBD to be completely dead.  In Canada everything is closed on Christmas Day so we were surprised to see many of the pubs open for business.  The only difference is that on Christmas Day one can't just go in for a drink, there are rules about buying food, and it has to be food that requires a knife and fork, not just a bowl of chips (that is almost verbatim from all the signs we saw).  Still, it was nice to see the city was still busy and open for business.  (By the way, CBD = Central Business District...the same thing as downtown, if you are new to the blog and Australian-speak.)

Brisbane Arcade, built ~1910

As it was so quiet we actually had time to look around and see the buildings that line the mall.  There are some lovely turn-of-the-(last)-century buildings here.  Most of them have been completely redone on the inside but it is nice to see that where possible, the facade has been maintained.  Normally when we are walking down the mall we have our heads on swivels and are on full alert so we don't get run over by gaggles of teenaged girls and people who would rather text and walk than look where they are going.

Once we got back home we had a veritable feast of seafood!  It sounds nice, but unfortunatley we had to spend 45 minutes ripping the heads off prawns and pulling out their poopers, but the meal was delicious, nonetheless. 

Tomorrow we are off to Sydney for a small holiday, then back in Brisbane for New Years.  Merry Christmas!

Sunshine Coast

We just had a fabulous four day weekend on the Sunshine Coast, which is about 2 hours north of Brisbane.  We stayed in Sunshine Beach, a small village that is part of the Noosa area.  This is our second stay in this place and it won't be our last.

Ocean View from our apartment

We had good luck with the weather and didn't get a drop of rain, unlike last year when we were inundated for all three days.  We had a great hike from Sunshine Beach through the national park to Noosa, about 5 km or 2 hours of easy walking.  It was a beautiful walk through forests, along beaches and some nicely kept trails.

Looking back at Sunshine Beach from the Noosa trailhead

The water was a little rough for swimming but it was great fun to run into the waves and get pushed back towards the shore.  Right now further north it is stinger season, when the jellyfish are a real problem for swimmers.  We saw a few little ones but nothing too major.  Their bodies are small but their tails can trial out behind them for almost a metre!  It is the tails that get you, not the the jelly part.  Even long after the jelly has come up on the beach and died, the tails can still sting if they are rehydrated.  These little ones are okay, JT stepped on one by accident and didn't feel a thing.  The big Blue Bottles can be deadly so happily we didn't step on one of those!

Stinger with a very long tail (the long blue stringy thing)

We are now in our last week of work before the Christmas break.  Like everyone else, when it comes to the end of the year we are very ready for a break and cannot wait for our Sydney trip next week.  We just need to remember to relax!

Hang-glider at one with the birds

December

We were a little worried that we were starting another drought, as there were less than 10mm of rain in the entire month of November and it was over 25C every day.  Then December hit.  Here we are on December 12 and already we've had 97mm of rain.  This weather is crazy!  The humidity makes the ambient air temperature feel 5 - 10C hotter, which is no treat when the temperature is already more than 30.  Plus, JB's hair is about the size of a small school bus.

Oddly enough, however, the hotter weather has made us feel more Christmas-y.  We spent more than 40 years having cold, white Christmases and suddenly we don't feel the festive spirit until the temperature spikes and the humidity soars.  The one thing we haven't seen are real Christmas trees or a Christmas tree lot.  There are lots of fake trees and plenty of trees in yards have lights.

The front lights are Santa and a snowman on a seesaw

Icicle lights

We really like the look of the "icicle" lights that people have on the outside of their houses.  Last year we thought it was a little strange but now we really like it.  Not enough to actually put in the effort to decorate our own house, but we like for other people.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...sort of

Christmas Tree in King George Square

This is our second Christmas in Brisbane.  Christmas is still a time of year that we associate with winter, as do most other parts of the world.  Even here, where the temperature is in the low 30s everyday with high humidity, the Christmas carols are all the same and the decorations have a winter theme.  The main Myer store here has fantastic window displays at Christmas every year (Myer is pretty much the same thing as The Bay or any other national department store).  Last year the theme was the Nutcracker and this year it is Santa's Workshop.  The windows are entirely anima-tronic, with constant Christmas music and singing elves. 

Santa's Workshop, Myer window

There are a few differences, of course.  The carollers that one would normally expect to see walking around in groups wearing Victorian-style winter garb are replaced by some rather svelte looking ladies in small red dresses.  There is an atmosphere that goes beyond festive, too.  Today JB saw two acrobats performing next to a group of carollers and two ladies on stilts, dressed like flamingoes!  It was all very impressive, if not overly Christmasy.  There is one Christmas tradition, however, that we did not hesitate to embrace: the Christmas feast!  No turkey, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce, just as many prawns and oysters as you can possibly eat.  Last year the unthinkable happened and we actually got tired of eating all the fresh seafood.  This year we might try to control ourselves a bit better, but we all know that anything covered in melted butter is impossible to resist.  It just makes it easier to come up with a "butter-free 2012" New Year's resolution.  (Like that will ever happen.)

Ballina

What a great week we have had!  We went to the k.d. lang concert on Tuesday night in Brisbane at the outdoor RiverStage venue in the botanic gardens.  It was a perfect night to sit out under the stars and hear k.d. and her beautiful voice.  It was fantastic!  On Friday we drove out to Ballina for a long weekend, so we had a nice short work-week, which is always a bonus.

Ballina is about 2.5 hours south of Brisbane, in New South Wales.  We originally booked Ballina because we couldn't find accomadation in Byron Bay.  What a lucky accident for us that we "settled" for Ballina.  We absolutely loved it!  Unlike Byron Bay, it is not right on the ocean but sits in an estuary with the Richmond River, much like Brisbane does with the Brisbane River.

The Ballina Richmond River walk

When we got there on Friday afternoon we decided to check out the beach, which is about a 7 minute drive from the town centre.  While we were walking to the beach from the parking lot we spotted a few dolphins in the bay (we actually thought they were sharks at first, but that might be from the fact that the movie "Jaws" is on TV here every couple of months).  Once we figured out what we were looking at, it was pretty exciting and we felt much safer about going in the water.  The waves were MASSIVE so we stayed very close to the shore but it was very nice to get out for a swim.

The beach at Ballina

Lighthouse at Byron Bay

On Saturday we went to Byron Bay to see the town and do the Lighthouse walk.  The town was pretty full of kids on "schoolies" (high school grads having an absolute drunken blow-out) so we didn't spend too much time there.  The Lighthouse walk was very impressive.  It takes one to the most easterly point on the Australia mainland, and has an exhausting number of steps.  As we were whining to each other about how hot and tired we were, a lady ran past us on some kind of crazy circuit that involved running up and down stairs when it is +30ºC!  Not for us though, after the walk we went back to Ballina and sat by the river for a lunch and a glass or two of wine to close out the afternoon.  The highlight of the day, however, was JB losing her hat from a gust of wind blowing it off her head and into the river and JT risking his life (not really) to fish it out.   The hat was about 2m down from the boardwalk and floating in the water.  JT had to search through a nearby park until he found a stick long enough to reach.  There was talk of JB standing on JT's legs while he hung down over the water's edge and risked his life to get the hat back...it didn't come to that, but he was willing. What a hero!

JB at Australia's most easterly point

Fancy Town

Even though there is continual talk of the recession here, Brisbane shows very few signs of an economic downturn.  The interest rates have just been lowered and consumer activity is increasing nicely just ahead of the gift-buying season.  There are high end stores here such as Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss and, as of last week, a Chanel store!  They have a hand bag exclusive to the Brisbane store that retails for ~$3,500 and one very special hand bag that retails for $34,000!  We stopped for a look around (looking, not touching and definitely NOT buying!) and saw all the pretty things up for grabs.  Sadly even the thongs are out of our price range, but it was nice to go in.

Brand new Chanel store on Queen St Mall

There have also been a couple of new restaurants opened recently, both with a nice aspect overlooking the river.  They were under construction when we first moved here in September 2010 and probably would have opened in February or March but, as they are right on the river, they were completely decimated by the flooding in January.   It is now ten months later and we have nice new places to sit on a Saturday afternoon and watch the world on the water go by.  It's really great to see all the effort going in to retail and services in city.  No accepting the GFC here!

The Kookaburra Queen, as seen from the deck at The Cove wine bar

We can't believe how quickly the end of the year is approaching.  It is Christmas party season so we are busy with socializing and work functions, plus we are going to a town just south of Byron Bay next week, followed by Noosa two weeks later.  Then we have Christmas Day here and leave for a trip to Sydney over the Christmas/New Year's break.  It might almost feel good to get back to work in January just so we can get some rest!

Spring is fully sprung

We're not sure if this spring is really that different from last year, or if we are just that much more observant now that we have been here for more than a year, but this spring seems so different from the first one that we experienced in 2010. 
Last year we managed to walk in every morning right until the start of December.  We did arrive every day as hot and melting messes, but we didn't want to be the wimpy Canadians who couldn't handle the heat.  This year we started taking the train in every morning about half way through October.  And we don't feel wimpy about it, either.  It is hot when we leave the house and we have no route into the CBD that isn't completely in the sun.  By the time we get to work on any sunny day our skin is prickly from sun exposure, regardless of the temperature.
We know that we have had less rain this year.  2010 was a record rain-fall year, but it was the end of a drought.  The 2010 rainfall to this date was 1042.8mm.  The average rainfall is 934.6mm but this year we are only at 886.6mm.  There was no thought given to opening up the Wivenhoe Dam to let the water levels drop.  This year they have already made the decision to allow for a 12 day run off to maintain the water level at 75% capacity.  We won't get fooled again!

Trees and reflecting pond outside of the museum

It could be because of all the fall, winter and spring rain last year or because everything was so new to us when we arrived in the spring of 2010, but we can't believe how beautiful the flowering trees are at this time of year.  The jacarandas are almost finished but there are the fabulous red-flowering trees all over the place.  These are called "Poinciana" and flower in late spring.  They have a wonderful natural canopy and are very inviting to sit under!

Poinciana tree at Kurilpa Bridge

Melbourne Cup

Horse racing is huge in Australia.  Starting in October we have the spring racing season with the highest profile race, the Melbourne Cup, running on the first Tuesday of November.  All over the country people stop what they are doing to watch the race.  This is a holiday across most of Victoria. 

This is a really special horse race.  It has been run since 1861 and this year had a massive field of 25 horses running on a track that is 3200m long (almost 2 miles), making it one of the longest races in the world!  For comparison to the biggest races in the North America for the Triple Crown,  the Kentucky Derby is 1.25 miles, the Preakness is 1.125 miles and Belmont is 1.5 miles.  Many horses just aren't cut out for such a long race.  With so many horses on the field there is a lot of strategy that goes in to where to let the horse make it's move.  Too soon and he could peter out, too late and he could lose his chance.  This year was the closest finish in history.  It was a photo finish that took two reviews by committees and marshalls before they could agree on the winner: by a quarter of a nose, Dunaden!  In the photo below Dunaden is the nose at the top.

Dunaden by a nose (from a Channel 7 screen grab on smh.com.au)

This was a great result as JB had Dunaden in the office sweeps and won $58!

It is also a massive fashion event, with an on-field fashion show held during the day of the race for both men and women.  The men dress in their best suits and women have frocks of varying lengths and colours, but the major focus is on the hat.   Even people who are not at the race will get dressed up in their racing finest.  JT had a break for the race but JB had an afternoon party at work and did her best Canadian interpretation of racing day fashion.  It must have worked, she was the winner of the fashion show!

JB ready for the race (we really could have picked a better place to pose than the kitchen)

The all important hat

Long live the Queen!

This week Queen Elizabeth II made her 16th visit to Australia as reigning monarch.  Australia has a rather strong republican movement but they were no where in sight this week, as thousands of people gathered for a view of her where ever the Queen went.

The Queen was in Brisbane on Monday for a 4 hour visit.  She met with flood victims and unveiled a new rainforest garden.  People lined up for hours just to catch a glimpse of her and we were able to see the crowds from our office.  Like a good colonial, JB went down to the nearest bridge with some co-workers to watch the Queen's ship dock at Southbank. 

Security Sea-doos ahead of her arrival

The Queen's ship docking

JB was a little too far back to really be able to see her, but there was no doubt when the Queen stepped onto the dock as the crowd went completely wild!  The cheers could be heard well on the other side of the river, so there is no doubting the support she has here.   Later in the week there was a "mooning" incident, so maybe not quite everyone was celebrating her arrival the same way.

There were numerous headlines and stories about this being her farewell visit and how this is the last opportunity to see her.  She is a rather spry 85 and Phillip is an extremely well kept 90.  Her mother lived to be 101, so the Queen could well have another 20 years on the throne.  We hope the next time she's here she reads the articles from this year out loud and proudly declares herself to be still alive.  And then Phillip can clock the guy who mooned them. 

Spring

Bougainvillea walkway

Spring is the air in Brisbane, but we still aren't quite accustomed to all of the signs of the season.  In Canada we have melting snow, trees that seem to turn green overnight and all kinds of flowers and perennials that poke their heads out of the soil once it starts to thaw.  Here, since it doesn't freeze and the native trees don't drop their leaves, we need to work a little harder to see the signs of the season.

All along the Southbank suburb is a walkway borderd by a wire trellis.  Bougainvillea line the trellis and they are in bloom the entire year.  We noticed yesterday, though, that the blooms definitely have more punch than they did a month ago.  The entire walkway is slowly turning magenta and it will be completely flowered in by the end of summer.

Oooohhhhh...pretty

The one sign that seems the most "Canadian" (well, from a temperate zone) to us is seeing the Jacaranda trees go into bloom.  Jacarandas are not native to Australia and they drop their leaves for the winter.  Beginning in early spring they bloom beautiful purple flowers.  These are quite large trees, up to 30m, and they line the river as well as feature as a prominent tree in yards and parks.  Looking out over the city they appear as great purple clouds.  They really are a wonderful sign of spring and a fantastic import from South America and the Carribean.  We can only imagine how much the squirrels would love leaping around in these!

Jacarandas along the Brisbane River

Jacaranda "clouds"

Nature's Fury

We have been inundated by nature these past couple of weeks.  We have had crazy winds that have made it hard to walk, sharks in golf course water hazards (giving hazards a whole new and meaningful definition) and almost 50mm of rain in the past 3 days.   For all of this, nothing compares to the spider that we found in our bedroom the other night.
We had a spate of cool nights recently and have been sleeping with the window open.  Like most Australian homes we don't have screens in the windows, so we only had the window open a crack, but obviously it was enough.  We went upstairs to get ready for bed and there it was, a gigantic golden orb weaver.  It was easily the size of an adult's hand (legs span) and it did not go down without a fight!  We had a can of bug killer that can drop a cockroach in it's tracks, but a 10 second shot barely stopped this monster.  All it did was knock the spider off the wall...and directly onto our bed!  Finally after 10 horrifying minutes of spraying and a well aimed vacuum nozzle, the spider was gone.  It was bad enough to find it in the bedroom but we couldn't help but ask ourselves: how long was it there and it is the only one?  The bug spray now resides on our bedside table.

Adelaide

Adelaide

After spending a week in Cairns and Port Douglas, JB had one day at home before heading off to Adelaide for a three day work conference.  It was a whirl-wind tour, but well worth the trip.

Adelaide is a very pretty city, with wide streets and low buildings.  The office tower on the left hand side of the picture (above) is one of the taller buildings in the city.  It seems like a very small town compared to Brisbane, although it has about 1.2 million people, making it about the size of Calgary.  Unfortunately there was no chance to visit the Barossa or any other wine regions, as the entire three days were taken up with work.  It will be worth paying another visit for a holiday, or at least getting in a weekend before or after a work trip.

River park, outside of the convention centre

Adelaide is unique in Australia as it is the only city that was created as the centre of a "free" state, meaning this is not a city that was founded to be settled by convicts or victims of transport.  It is very well planned and laid out.  The city centre is nicely laid out and everything is within a square mile plan.  There are numerous fine restaurants and it has a great reputation for all things food and wine related.

We spent some of the weekend watching sports, as it was almost impossible to completely avoid.  The Australian Rules Football League and the Rubgy League both have their grand finals this weekend.  This is also the final weekend of regular play in the World Cup of Rugby.  (This is the league in which Mike Tindall, recently wed to Zara Phillips aka grand-daughter of the Queen, plays.)  We joined many other Canadians to watch Team Canada take on the New Zealand All Blacks, arguably the best team in the world.  We may not have won the game, but by far our team has the best beards!

Read all about it here:  http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/09/16/adam-kleebergers-beard-gets-plenty-of-attention-at-the-rugby-world-cup/

FNQ - Part 2 of 2

Our first full day in Port Douglas was spent walking through the serene (at this time of year...it is a raging and violent river during the rainy seaon) Mossman Gorge, with it's lovely waterfalls and pathway through the rainforest.  Then came the first highlight of our trip: a cruise on the Daintree River.  The Daintree River is an estuary, full of snakes, crocodiles and sometimes even sharks!  Where could you find more danger!

Mossman Gorge

The crocodiles are really quite sneaky.  They can stay very still for hours at a time, and you really wouldn't know they are there.

We were lucky to pull up right beside one that was resting on a sandbar (her name is Gump, she is about 10 years old, and is approx 3 metres long), then we chugged around and tried to spot some lurking in the water.  They are VERY hard to spot, even when the guide points them out.  They look very much like semi-submerged logs, and have a tendency to hang out amongst the logs, so it takes a well trained eye to see them right away.  We saw a number of sizes of crocodiles, lots of birds and even a pretty cute tree snake.  It might sound like a creepy trip, but we both enjoyed it immensely and would strongly recommend it to anyone.

Gump the croc on her sandbar, log-looking sneaky croc...just waiting for one of us to fall in the water!

Tree snake, her head is in the middle of the photo

The following day we drove out to Cape Tribulation, where Captain Cook and his crew were stranded for three months, doing repairs to their ship after the Endeavour hit the reef.  There are much worse places to be stranded than this!

Cape Tribulation

On Thursday we took a catamaran trip out to the Low Isles on the inner Great Barrier Reef.  It was a fantastic trip and an easily the second highlight of our trip (although it ties for first place!)  We were really lucky to be on a boat that can take up to 23 passengers, but only 7 were booked that day.  It felt like we were on a private charter.  The water was lovely and we saw all kinds of beautiful soft corals, turtles, brilliantly coloured fish (we found Nemo!) and even some rather cute black-tipped reef sharks.  The sharks hung around the boat after lunch, waiting for the free prawns, left over from lunch.  They know how to get a free meal!  This was a wonderful way to see the reef...it was a brilliant sunny day, JB learned how to snorkel and JT got to steer the boat...the $2.5 million dollar boat! 

Green Turtle out for a swim

Low Isles, where we went snorkelling

Finally we had one last day to see Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas and go for a swim in the sea and then again back at the hotel pool.  We loved this trip so much that we realize we could easily spend all of our vacations travelling around to see Australia.  Our only problem is trying to decide where to go next!

Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas

FNQ (Far North Queensland) (Part 1 of 2)

We are now back from our fabulous week in Far North Queensland.  We spent two days in Cairns and 5 days in Port Douglas, about 45 minutes north of Cairns.  We saw Paronella Park, took the skyrail tram up to Kurunda, walked through the Mossman Gorge, took a Daintree River Cruise, drove up to Cape Tribulation and snorkelled off the inner Great Barrier Reef.  We travelled by just about every means imaginable and really need a weekend of R and R to get ready for the work week.

Cairns Lagoon

We started our trip in Cairns, where we spent one day looking around and one day driving to and from Paronella Park.  Cairns is a city of about 150,000 people.  It is a city that is right on the coast, but that section of the coast is all mudflats, no beach, so they have built up a great park area and lagoon for swimming.  It looked like it was very well used and enjoyed by everyone.

We went to Paronella Park to see the ruins of a modern castle that was started in the 1930s.  It is a pretty neat place to wander around and it really has a "tropical ruin" feel about it (in a good way).  The main castle building looks out over a water fall that was the source of the first water-powered generator in the area.  The Park actually had power before the nearest town of Innisfail!

Main Castle at Paronella Park

There is a guided tour to one end of the park, then the guide leaves you on your own to find your own way back to the entrance.  There a plenty of places to poke around and they also give everyone a bag of fish food the feed the fishes.  We somehow managed to attract a very scary looking eel to our feeding spot!

Scary looking but harmless eel



On Monday we drove to the "skyrail" station to take us to the town of Kurunda.  The skyrail offers some really beautiful vistas of the area and of the rainforest canopy.  There are two stops within the rainforest, so the whole ride up takes about an hour.

Rainforest from the skyrail

We had about 4 hours in Kurunda, which is a pretty small town.  We went for a jungle walk, had a long lunch and looked in every possible shop and gallery the town had to offer.  There is an old train that takes about 90 minutes to get you from Kurunda back to a little transfer point that is about 5 minutes from the skyrail station.

Kurunda Train

View from the train

The train has cars are from the early 1900's to 1930's and run pretty slowly along a winding track.  There is narration that highlights some of the difficulties in building the railway and the hardships that early settlers encountered.  There is plenty to see and, at the end of the train, plenty to be thankful for, since neither one of us can imagine living in that hot of an area without air conditioning or running water!

Cairns

After a very hectic week at work, rushing to get everything done so that we could have a relaxing holiday, we are now in Cairns.  This is our first time in Northern Queensland and it has a very different feel from Brisbane.  This is a very hot and tropic place, and has a resorty-ness to it that gives it a much slower pace. 
Today we drove from Cairns to Paronella Park, about 90 minutes south.  We actually drove through both Edmonton and Innisfail to get there and, like in Alberta, Edmonton is north of Innisfail.  It was a little bit of Canada!
Paronella Park (pictures to be posted once we have a better internet connection) is a really beautiful park in a rainforest setting.  It started in the 1930s when a Spaniard, Jose Paronella, fulfilled his dream of building a Spanish castle in the tropics.  The grounds were set up with a ballroom/movie theatre, swimming hole, boce green, tennis court and walking path.  It was a very early theme park.  After Jose died and his family were no longer able to run it, the park was sold to a third party.  In 1979 a fire went through the castle grounds.  The entire place fell into ruin until the 1990s, when the new owners took over.  They haven't refurbished anything, but they have opened up the park to the public and we can now all walk through castle ruins in the midst of the jungle!  It is a fascinating place!

Another anniversary

This week, on September 6th, marked one year for both of us in our jobs with Santos.  Since we first started, JT has gone from a full team to a one-man team, and has now just started the building process with new team members.  JB has moved from working for the GLNG partnership to a different part of Santos, although still within the world of CSG.  The one thing that we have noticed is that no matter where a person lives, one creates one's own life.  We initially thought that working here would be so different from working in Canada.  It really isn't.  We have different jobs, but they are still within the energy sector, we still look at budgets and wells and do all the stuff we did in Canada.  The weekends are different but the weekdays are the same.  It's nice to have that combination of the familiar during the work week and the new/different on the weekends.  We try to hit the beach and the surrounding areas at least one weekend a month, but even exploring Brisbane is still so new to us.

Eagle St Pier from Kangaroo Point

Another, much sadder, anniversary is the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.  We remember clearly seeing footage, some live, on television and watching the horror unfold.  It is a different kind of feeling here, where people would have woken up the next day and heard about the attacks hours after they occured.  The timing of the attacks is 7 am in Calgary, 9 am in New York, 11pm in Brisbane.  People here would have been asleep when the rest of us in North America were glued to TV screens and computers.  It is as hard for us to explain watching the situation unfold as it is for Aussies to express the horror of waking up to the full news story on the following day.  There was no buffer time, just a full-on terrible story.

We are getting ready for a trip to Cairns and Port Douglas.  On the agenda is the Great Barrier Reef, Cape Tribulation and every tourist trap/hotspot the area has to offer.  We are looking forward to exploring and experiencing an entirely new region of Australia to us!

Riverfire!

Start of Riverfire, above Story Bridge

We really know that we have been here for a year, because we have started having our second time doing things.  Last night we had our second Riverfire. 

Last year we were staying in a Santos sponsored apartment, with beautiful views over the river.  So many people that we met told us that we needed to make sure that we saw Riverfire.  Until we saw the fireworks, we had no idea what people were talking about.  Now we know that it is a spectacular fireworks display and the start of the Brisbane Festival.

Since we saw the fireworks from the western edge of the CBD last year, we decided to go to the eastern side of the CBD, to a restaurant in the old Customs House on Eagle St Pier.  We bought tickets to a viewing platform/patio on the river side of the restaurant, that included cocktails, canapes and three course dinner and wine.  The cocktails and canapes happened before the fireworks, with dinner afterwards.

We were a little worried when we were walking up to the entry way.  There were ladies im beautiful evening gowns and men in tuxes ahead of us in the line.  We were dressed slightly less formally, in casual slacks and jumpers.  Luckily we were on the "schlub" side of the restaurant, with all of the other people who were dressed like us.  There was a very formal affair there on the same evening, so we were not as out of place as we first thought.

Story Bridge Fireworks

The fireworks were amazing; 30 minutes of fabulous, colourful fireworks being set off from the bridge.  We were close enough that we could actually smell the smoke!   The setting was perfect and we will definitely go back.  Too bad that Riverfire happens only once a year!

Year One

On August 24 we had our first year anniversary in Brisbane.  The first year here has absolutely flown by!  We have had so many fantastic experiences since coming here: starting new jobs (September 6 is the first anniversary at work), exploring a new city, seeing the coastal areas and swimming in the ocean, experiencing tropical heat and humidity, getting used to all the weird bugs and making it through the "flood of the century".  We still have so much to see and do in Australia, we feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of what there is to see and do here.  Oddly enough, this also marks the first time in a long time that we have spend an entire year in the same country!  We forget how easy it is to travel to Europe and the US from Canada.

To celebrate our first year, we went back to the same restaurant that we ate at on our first night here.  A year ago we were struggling to stay awake so we walked to Eagle St Pier, which seemed SO far away from where we were staying, and ate at a nice Italian restaurant (Il Centro).  Now we realize how close Eagle St Pier is to everything, and that we really didn't walk very far to get there.  What a difference a year, and not being jet-lagged, makes!

First year photo!

We are also getting more into Aussie sports.  Aussie Rules Football is pretty unique to Australia (hence the name) but cricket and rugby are popular the world over.  Last night we went to the Bledisoe Cup, a rugby union match that is played between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All-Blacks.  This was a HUGE match, not only because of the intense rivalry between the two countries, but because it is the last match they play before the world cup.   (The World Cup of Rugby starts next month in New Zealand.  There was another match on the Gold Coast last night between a second team of Australians and the Canadians...Canada lost 38-14.)

The rugby match was really exciting!  This was our first time in Suncorp Stadium (badly flooded in January) and it is a great venue for a game like this.  It was only 10 minutes to walk there from our house.  The crowd was lively and lubricated, but still well behaved.  The big monitors at either end of the stadium continually flashed signs reminding us to report anti-social behaviour, but we just did not see any.  All the fans were having fun and cheering madly.

Suncorp Stadium

This was a really nice way to spend a warm winter evening.  We left the house wearing jumpers, jackets and hats, figured out that we would die of heat exhaustion on the way if we tried to walk to the Stadium dressed that warmly.  We did a quick retreat to layer-down, and made a mental note to remember that a winter evening in the tropics is still pretty warm.

Haka Dance

The heavily favoured All Blacks started the game by doing a haka dance, which is traditional Maori dance. It is a fairly intimidating thing to see, with an entire team of gigantic men yelling and moving in unison. It may have got under our skin, but the heroic Wallabies shrugged it off. The final score was 25 -20 for the Wallabies!