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Pacific Journal Brisbane

 

Harvey ’s Pacific Journal ~ 2007

 

7.  Auckland to Brisbane , Queensland , Australia  Dep 14.30; Arrive 14.55
      Qantas Flight QF126.  Flying time 3.5 hours.  Distance 2,278 km

It’s an uneventful flight, apart from a rather nice fish curry followed by a Magnum ice-cream, and we clear immigration and customs quite quickly.  Australia is the only country we are visiting that insists on visas, and Kuoni organised it before we left.  Not that we had anything to show for it (it’s all electronic) but they let us in so the system must have worked.  So does the ATM, and armed with some Aussie dollars we head for the taxi rank.  Our driver is talkative and points out various landmarks as we head into the city.  He tells us that it’s 38C, the hottest day of the summer, and Sue asks about the drought.  “Worst for 100 years” he tells us.  I ask if it’s a freak occurrence or a sign of global warming.  “Nah” he says “it’s the Government’s fault.”  Judging by the letters we see in the local newspaper it’s a commonly-held belief.    

Hilton International Hotel, Brisbane, Australia
Location:    27:30S   153:10E   (GMT +  13 hours)  A$2.50 = £1
We take the lift up to Reception on the 6th floor, then another lift (key-activated) to our room on the 17th.  We have a drink, and then, late afternoon, go out to explore.  Sue wants to look at the mall on Queen Street and I want to find out about tours for tomorrow.  We are neither of us very successful.  I cross the river and finish up on the South Bank, walking further than I intend.  I see a Nepalese pagoda, a Japanese peace stone, a man-made beach, mangroves, a large gecko, heron, parakeet, but only one tourist leaflet.  Sue calls me before I get back.  It’s such a bad line (or I’ve been gone so long) that I don’t recognise her voice.  (Who else would call me?)  I walk faster, back over the Goodwill Bridge , and my shirt is wet by the time I meet up with Sue in Queen Street .  We have fast Asian food at an open-air café.

Monday 12 March
We put our watches back three hours yesterday, so we both wake early.  Down to the 6th floor for breakfast in the biggest atrium we have ever seen.  We decide to take a sight-seeing river cruise, from the one leaflet I brought back yesterday, which leaves from the other side of the river at 10.30.  We set off and it’s hot already.  As we walk past the big open malls we are blasted by air-conditioned cool air which reaches several metres into the street.  We wait in the shade for the boat to arrive, and when it does we sit under a canopy, but it’s still uncomfortably hot (predicted to rise to mid-30’s again today).  When we set off on MV Neptune there is a breeze.  It’s a hot breeze, but at least the air is moving, and the river is probably the best place to be this morning.  We travel eastwards, down river, past the city skyscrapers and mangroves, under Goodwill Bridge , by Kangaroo Point Cliffs.  The cliffs are remnants of old quarry workings, the stone being used to build Brisbane in the mid-19th century.  We go under Story Bridge , Brisbane ’s more modest answer to the Sydney Harbour Bridge , designed along similar lines by the same man.   Now the river banks are lined with relatively new housing ~ up-market apartments and luxury houses.  Until the 1960’s the waterside was run-down and the river was an industrial area ~ and prone to flooding.  No-one wanted to live there.  Now it’s the most desirable place in Brisbane , and even the old sugar factory and wool warehouses have been converted into apartments.  We go as far as Breakfast Creek before returning to the South Bank. 

We walk through the gardens and have lunch on the grass ~ in the shade, of course.  There are the usual birds scavenging round the picnic tables, except that these scavengers are Ibis.  Sue has had enough of the heat and she takes a taxi back to the hotel.  I go back over the Goodwill Bridge to the botanical gardens, where there is a good collection of palms, gums, figs and blossom trees, although it’s too late in the year for blossom.  My shirt is wet again by the time I get back to the hotel.  Sue is in bed, and when I emerge from the shower she is asleep.  She doesn’t even wake up when the kettle boils.  We wait until the sun has set before we venture out again.  We eat at another pavement café, and I have an Aussie steak.  The menu describes the steaks on offer by reference to the age of the animals and the conditions under which they lived.  It almost makes you feel personally acquainted.  I remember the first steak I had in Australia , when it was traditional on Friday lunch-time for the guys in the Sydney office to go for a barbie at the open-air restaurant round the corner.  In my ignorance I chose a large thick fillet, which I pushed around the grill for ages, always missing out on the hottest spot, and I was last back to the office.  Thankfully, I don’t have to grill my steak here.

Tuesday 13 March
We wake early again, but as we are due to check-out at 10.30 we don’t venture out into the heat, although today there is cloud cover and the forecast is for a maximum of a cool 28 degrees.  Unlike the taxi driver who brought us to the hotel, today’s driver doesn’t say a word as he takes us to the airport.  When we get there he heaves himself out to get our cases and we realise he is huge, every movement looks an effort and I feel I should offer to take our cases out of his trunk. We have a long wait so we check our emails again and I finish my last book (a novel set in New Zealand ).  On the flight I have nothing to read, so I watch a movie.  I choose an Aboriginal film called 10 Canoes.  Other than the fact that the Qantas stewardess uniforms incorporate an Aboriginal motif, this is my first taste of Aboriginal culture on this visit, a far cry from our Maori experience at Bay of Islands .  The film is set in the time before the white men came to Australia , and tells a simple story.  The dialogue is Aboriginal but there is a narrator who speaks accented English.  He hooks me from the very beginning.  “This is my story,” he says, “and the story of my ancestors.  I was like a little fish in a waterhole, and one day my father came by the waterhole and I said: ‘father, I want to be born’.  He said: ‘you will have to choose one of my wives.’  When the time was right, I swam in to my mother’s vagina, and I was born.  When I die, I will return to the waterhole.  I will be like a little fish until it is time to be born again.” 

 

Next leg:

8.  Brisbane to Singapore   

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