Anniversary

This week marked the one year anniversary since the massive floods that devastated Southeast Queensland.  The initial clean-up happened very quickly and, for home owners with insurance, the recovery has gone moderately well.  There is a still an issue for those who had "flood insurance" but had water damage caused by sewers backing up or by run-off.  Like anywhere, the type of water that causes the damage is extremely important in the claim.

One story that we have been following is that of The Drift, a restaurant that was built on a dock that floated on the Brisbane River.  The story that we have heard is that the owners of the restaurant were inside the building, trying to save as much as possible from being swept away by the river.  The authorities ordered the owners to open the windows and doors of the restaurant, get out, and let the water flow through.  This makes sense because if the restaurant broke loose from the moorings it would have been a huge missle that would have destroyed major bridges.  The owners, however, believe they had a plan in place to save the restaurant from being swept away.  Now, one year later, there is an outstanding insurance claim, thousands of dollars in outstanding debt to suppliers and a restaurant owner who is now getting death threats.  There is no easy answer to what should have been done but it is really sad to see the state of the restaurant now, covered in graffiti and looking like a dump.

The Drift, January 2011

The Drift, January 2012

This summer has been extremely dry so far, but we are starting to see the rainy season now.  Last week we hit 37C and today we had a high of 22C and it rained 44mm.  How can anyone get used to those kinds of swings in the weather!

Open

Kim Clijsters serving

Daniela Hantuchova

This is the second year that we have attended the Brisbane Open Tennis Tournament, one of the warm-up tournaments before the Australian Open.  Back in October they started announcing the line-up.  One the ladies' side one of the first players to commit was Sam Stosur, then Maria Sharapova.  As soon as those two committed, we bought tickets for the Friday night semi-finals.  Then Kim Clijsters committed, followed by Francesca Schiavone, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic and Serena Williams!  We were so certain that we would see a re-match of the US Open Final between Stosur and Williams.  Just before the tourney began Sharapova had to cancel due to injury, then in the second round Stosur lost and Williams had a very bad ankle sprain.  Jankovic and Ivanovic were both beat.  The semis were looking like they would be walk-overs for both Clijsters and Schiavone. 

Kaia Kanepi serving

Francesa Schiavone

What we ended up seeing were two incredibly exciting matches!  The Clijsters - Daniela Hantuchova match went to a tie-break in the first set before Clijsters retired and we were lucky enough to see a big-hitting Estonian, Kaia Kanepi, beat Schiavone in straight sets.  The matches were so much more entertaining than we expected.  It's too bad that we didn't get to see the Williams-Stosur match that we were after, but we are in no way disappointed with the matches that we watched.

These girls hit the ball HARD, especially Kanepi.  It is hard to get a sense on TV of just how hard and fast they are playing.  The fastest serve we saw was about 185km/h from Kanepi.  The ball moves so fast it is hard to even follow it as a spectator.  Even more amazing is how often a serve that fast gets returned!

The crowd was really fun.  We have never seen so many painted faces at a tennis match...all of them painted as the Estonian flag.  The Estonian fans were just so infectious and happy that the crowd ended up being completely behind Kanepi.  She ended up winning the entire tournament the next day and she was so happy we think she hugged every one of those Estonians in the stands!

This was our first week back at work after a very relaxing ten day break.  Like most people, we come back from one vacation only to start thinking about the next one.  We are now booked for a week in Melbourne in February!

Happy 2012!

We can't believe how quickly 2011 went by.  It was our first calendar year in Australia, so we may have lost a little bit of time in trying to adjust to a new way of life.  Luckily for us our new life is based very close to Sydney, and that is where we went on Boxing Day.

This was our third trip to Sydney and was our best trip so far.  We try to do new things and see new areas on every trip, so this time we went to a Picasso exhibit at the NSW Art Gallery (the pieces were on loan from the Picasso Museum in Paris), visited new suburbs, went to Bondi Beach, saw the Botanic Gardens and walked across the Harbour Bridge to the Kirribilli side of the harbour and saw Luna Park.  It was a hectic four days!

Bondi Beach

We went on a beautiful coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Clovelly Beach, about 4 kilometres along the coast line.  We started at Bondi Beach, a well known and very popular beach on the south east (more or less...the harbour has lots of inlets) side of Sydney, about 20 minutes by train and bus from the city centre.  It is a good surfing beach and we happened to be there the day after the beaches were reopened after being closed due to high waves and winds that were the tail end of a tropical storm.  We can't imagine how big the waves would have been the day before when the beach was closed because neither one of us would have considered sticking a toe in the water with the kind of wave action we saw.  The waves were easily more than a metre high and were crashing in on the beach very fast, at a rate of about 1 every 5 seconds.  There were also waves that were more than 2 metres high and the surfers were all over them.  There are a number of areas were there are proper swimming pools along the beach and people would stand on the pool edge to try to stand up when the big waves washed over the sides.  It was quite hilarious to watch all the people get thrown into the pool, then scramble back out to take on the next one.

Waves washing over pool

From Bondi we passed the tiny Tamarama Beach, only about 250m long and then Bronte Beach, where life saving got started back in 1903.  From there we passed through a cemetary (Waverly, probably the most scenic cemetary in the world) then reached Clovelly Beach.  It was one of the most beautiful coastal walks we have ever been on (the debate still rages about whether we liked it better than Cap-de-Ferrat in France) and we will definitely do this walk again.

Waverly Cemetary (upper right hand side of picture)

We finally made it to the Botanic Gardens this trip, after having rainy weather on the designated day on our previous trips.  The gardens are beautiful and full of indigenous and imported plants.  It is a huge park with formally laid out gardens and natural looking wooded areas, gigantic lawns that were once used for bowling and cricket, and benches everywhere to take in the views.

View from the Botanic Gardens

Fantastic entrace to Luna Park

On our final day we decided to walk across the Harbour Bridge.  We didn't want to book a formal tour and go on the Bridge Climb (it seemed too hot for the boiler suits that everyone on the tour has to wear) so we walked across the bridge to the Kirribilli side and checked out Luna Park.  Luna Park was amazing!  It is free to enter and is a fairly small area but is absolutely packed with rides and carnival games.  It is really charming and has a feel of a kid's fantasy world, with clowns, characters in costumes and lots of noise.   We were completely impressed by it and ended up poking around in the park for more than half an hour.

Whimsical (and maybe a little unsettling) carnival gam

The trip to Sydney was a great way to end the year.  We were back in Brisbane for a dinner on New Year's Eve and have a day off before going back to work.  2011 started out on a low (floods!) but certianly ended on a high.  Happy New Year!

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.)