The main thing I learned from my tour of Brisbane City Hall is that if things hang around for a long time two things can happen: they start to stink, or they are framed and preserved in perpetuity. Or both.
Category Archives: travel
Adventures in Physics
One afternoon, a long, long, time ago, two young men were making their way back to their residential college at the University of Queensland after attending the sort of bacchanalian soiree that made university worth going to. As they stumbled through the Great Court, they saw a paver had been pulled up. They stopped toContinue reading “Adventures in Physics”
Wild Brisbane
I live in the inner city, however, my house backs onto a gully that leads down to the Brisbane River and that gully is a jungle. My back yard has a large Moreton Bay Fig Tree in it and there’s another enormous one across the road; in fact, that tree is a “Tree of Significance”.Continue reading “Wild Brisbane”
Nature Bathing in Mt. Coot-tha Botanic Gardens
When I mentioned to my SO that I was going nature bathing at Mt. Cooth-tha Botanic Gardens, his first question was, would I be getting naked. The answer was no, and although our guide, Mon, was very encouraging and accepting of whatever responses people had as a result of their experience and of how theyContinue reading “Nature Bathing in Mt. Coot-tha Botanic Gardens”
A Night at the RSL (in Bali)
A couple of weeks ago I found myself transported from Beautiful Brisbane to a Balinese RSL. How did this happen? There is only so much nasi goreng one can eat before one begins to crave the bland cuisine of the mother country (Australia via Ireland). I had been in Bali for a week and aContinue reading “A Night at the RSL (in Bali)”
Taking the Bus
A lot of people in Brisbane like to moan about the public transport. I’m not heavily reliant on it so I’m not impacted by its shortcomings although I know they exist. I also don’t have a disability that makes it harder to negotiate public transport, whereas I know there are significant challenges for those whoContinue reading “Taking the Bus”
Cedar Creek
About forty-five minutes drive north-west of Brisbane is a place where you can get away from it all and immerse yourself not just in nature, but in water so cold it’s easy to imagine it wants you to die. I once spent a whole day at minus thirty in the Canadian Arctic; that air wantedContinue reading “Cedar Creek”
Karaoke!
Think you can’t sing? Well, as I witnessed last Friday night, ability is no barrier to getting up on the small stage and belting out your favourite tunes. Blute’s is a karaoke bar in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. Its website states its “sole aim was to capture an aesthetic reminiscent of quintessential Australian pubs from theContinue reading “Karaoke!”
Dan Arnold: a restaurant?
There are places that serve food, called restaurants, and then there are places like Restaurant Dan Arnold. In this kind of establishment, the dark arts have clearly been employed to coax flavours out of their tiny hiding places and force them to marry, at kitchen-blow-torch-point, sometimes unlikely companions. Such arranged marriages are only successful atContinue reading “Dan Arnold: a restaurant?”
Maeve: Hiding in Plain Sight
I couldn’t say how many times I have walked past the doorway without even noticing it, and it’s never appeared in a Google search of restaurants in South Brisbane, so it was only when a friend asked if I’d been there that I discovered Maeve Wine Bar. I thought it must have been new, butContinue reading “Maeve: Hiding in Plain Sight”
Beautiful Brisbane 