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