’17 Jul: Queensland

Caverns in the coral.

Even not being that good…

…I’ve still put in So Many!

.

Usually you get big crowds of the same fish but this was a fun collection.

The reef at this place was very deep and scuba divers come out here all the time.

There are many paths like this and I got myself lost-ish in that I had 30 minutes to get to the lighthouse and I took the wrong turn!

The paths are all made of the coral because the whole island is…

…and it’s so interesting.

The airport…

…and our flight back. What an adventure!

July 27

A google view of Brisbane. Isn’t it interesting how rivers choose their route.

There’s going to be a transit strike today, my only full day in Brisbane. So I got out fairly early to catch the still-running bus to Lone Pine, a $50 taxi ride away, 30 minutes by bus.

And speaking of Brisbane, remember Melbrn…similarly, here you say Brisbn.

That bridge, taken from the window of the bus, is a pedestrian passage between the public buildings of South Bank and the Central Business District. I walked over it in the afternoon.

Another bridge. When your city is bisected by a snaking river you’re going to have a lot of bridges.

Here it is, Lone Pine, the world’s oldest koala sanctuary and the #1 tourist attraction in Brisbane.

This is basically a zoo and if you are troubled by zoos you’ll want to roll on by but I will say that this was an amazing zoo.

They had maybe 10 of these collections of eucalyptus trees at eye level and many of the groupings were open, you could touch them if you tried really hard, but you shouldn’t.

They had a couple of sleeping Tasmanian Devils.

There were three animals here that at various times I was looking for in the wild and never got to see – a dingo, a cassowary, and a platypus.

This is a dingo, they had a brother and a sister, and they looked exactly like dogs. This place doesn’t do any breeding but there is an effort elsewhere to maintain pure dingo bloodlines since in nature they mix with wild dogs.

In Daintree our guide kept teasing us with the possibility of seeing a cassowary since many do live there.

This guy was taller than me. When he raised his head he could look down on me. He uses that horn on his head to break through the rainforest and…

…he uses those toes to kill things. He can leap up and tear with those toes, although they are shy and only attack when provoked.

Me trying to take a selfie being unable to see the camera because of the bright light.

Thankfully selfie-sticks are no longer the plague they once were when you could pretty much guarantee you’d get whacked at a crowded view.

A passer-by took this one.

I was ready to shell out for the ‘take your picture with a koala’ attraction but the line was Too Long and I couldn’t stay too late because I wanted to get the bus back. I learned in the morning that the strike wasn’t going to start until 1pm so that was good.

On this lawn were the emus and also kangaroos. There was a place where the kangaroos could get themselves behind a fence for a rest from all the people racing up to them to give them food.

Queensland is the only state in Australia where you can still hold a koala as all the other states have outlawed the practice. I was going to do it anyway but I’m also ok with not doing it since it’s supposed to stress out the koalas.

A handsome gang-gang cockatoo.

A platypus – you know what these guys look like really. They are so FAST in the water…

…and it was dark in the room where they had them.

Also from Daintree, a grey-headed flying fox, the largest bat in Australia.

I made the last bus, yay, and back in town I also came across a catty-corner with an old church and a public building.

On the left, the Albert Street Uniting Church, the first Methodist church in Brisbane, a small version built in 1849 and this building finished in 1889.

And on the right, Brisbane City Hall, built in 1930.

I went over to South Bank to the block of public buildings that included the State Library.

There was a small exhibit called ‘Freedom Then, Freedom Now’ honoring the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum that changed the Australian constitution to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the census for the first time.

GOMA – The Gallery of Modern Art. There was a huge Marvel exhibit that must have taken up the majority of the space (I didn’t pay the extra charge to see it) because there wasn’t much otherwise, or I missed it which is a possibility.

There was also a science museum that was packed with kids enjoying the dinosaurs and gladiators.

South Bank is The Place to be in Brisbane and here is an internet view of one of the sections of the walking path. I didn’t do the whole walk because I got lazy and I’m not happy with my pictures. Bad tourist.

A couple of sights from my walk back to the centrally located Annie’s Shandon Inn where I’m staying (“welcoming guests to the centre of town for over 120 years”), a very funky little old house broken up into modest accommodation where the price was right and where I was comfortable.

This corner is the entrance to King Edward Park, just down the street from Annie’s and around the corner from the train station where, in the morning, I made my way back to Sydney for the last stop of my trip.

If you want to view previous segments you can click on these links:
Sydney June 11-16.
Canberra June 16-20 and Melbourne June 20-23.
Tasmania June 23-July 1.
Broome July 1-8.
Darwin+ and The Red Center July 8-18.