Southeast Queensland Monday 3/10/08

Last night’s rain has left Brisbane crystal clear with a mix of sun and cloud this morning. It is pleasant on our mini-balcony with a little fruit and coffee while overlooking the city. Before we hit the road we are going to the South Bank of Brisbane which has been developed in a manner similar to Melbourne. We find a parking place on the street, pay the meter ($3.20 for the one-hour max—jeez) and walk through the paths, parks and streets. Again this is beautifully developed with hotels, a convention center, shops and hospitality businesses mingled with the green spaces and man made lagoons on the river’s edge where parents are tending to little kids. Every spot has a big-time view of the city skyline across the river. It is a perfect example of blending everyone’s urban needs and opportunities. We would like to drag the city council from our old hometown of St. Paul to see what this looks like.

We grab a tuna foccacia and cheese tray from a deli and drive to Kangaroo Point which is around another bend in the river and up on a high bluff overlooking the city. There are picnic tables and as we get our lunch laid out it starts to rain again. Everything is scooped up and as soon as we get in the car the rain stops. We will need to get used to these tropical showers that Queensland is famous for. We eat in the car and take a short walk along the bluffs that are rigged for cliff climbers and sure enough, a couple heads come popping up over the edge of the wall. Better them than us.

There is another bridge back over the river and we pass through many miles of burbs on our way north. We pick up the main motorway and buzz through more showers for 90 minutes before veering off to Noosa for the next two days. This part of Oz is known as the Sunshine Coast. While Australia seems to be all coast to us there are great expanses of shoreline that are undeveloped and actually unpopulated. The "Gold Coast" and "Sunshine Coast" have a fairly consistent year-round climate and are close enough to a major urban area to make for easy travel in and out. When we leave here we will see 800 miles of coastline with nothing until we get to the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands.

We have an apartment here in a nifty little tropical setting with plenty of palms, parrots and pools. We are on a strip of small resort propereties along the Noosa river that dumps into the ocean about a mile down the road where the big hotels and restaurants live. We really need a laundry day and have all the equipment in our apartment so Mary sorts and throws a load in before we go out to explore. We spend an hour getting to know our neighborhood, reading restaurant menus and doing a bit of shopping, and then head back for another round of laundry. As we settle on our balcony between loads it starts to pour again and it will start and stop several more times over the next two hours. We are joined by some chatty birds who must have found food here before and the trees are full of noisy rosellas. We'll see what time they get moving in the morning.

Dinner is uneventful as we stroll rain-free to Maisies that was recommended by Stuart, our Kiwi host. John has the steak and bugs (little lobster-like creatures that are a local specialty) and Mary has a fresh snapper with garlic cauliflower mashed. Outside of the occasional burger, beef hasn't been a staple on this trip and the steak tastes pretty good. We're getting the hang of this BYO thing and have our own Shiraz with dinner. It's still dry out as we walk home. Mary heads to bed with a book and John reads on the couch until he decides it must be midnight - it is 10:05. What a couple of live wires.

Today's local headline: Now "Razor Gang" goes for seniors The Australian (Rudd government continues to leak budget-cutting concepts to see where the most heat will be)