Archive for the 'Brisbane and Queensland' Category
How rails, bikes, and feet beat cars
May 3, 2008Train service in Europe, as many of you know already, is wonderful. By the standards of most American cities, trains run frequently and reliably here in Brisbane and in other Australian cities, but the wait for a train in the Netherlands and Belgium, from which we’ve just returned, must average less than half the normal wait time here.
As Kristi said to friends of ours this morning, “You don’t even have to know train schedules. You just show up at the train station and you can be pretty sure there’ll be a train going where you want to go in a few minutes.”
Such high levels of train service, along with the predominance of bicycle travel in both the countries we visited, make us green with envy or, more exactly, envious of the “green” values manifested by the policy decisions of the Dutch and Belgians.
Given the great bus and subway/tram availability, too, getting around in much of Europe is easier than it is where we’ve spent most of our lives and, it turns out, better for health.
Population density, of course, is necessary for the economic viability of mass transit, but culture-wide expectations matter, too. There are plenty of places in car-dependent America with enough people to make train or trolley service feasible if people understood how much better off they’d be getting to work or school without jumping into their own cars.
Australia is no less car-dependent Read the rest of this entry »
Travel perspective 2: chocolates and pedals
April 27, 2008Here we are in Belgium, and I forgot to mention chocolate. Yesterday I said a person cannot live on beer alone. I said you need cheese, too, which the Netherlands has in great varieties and impressive quality. But I forgot to mention chocolate.
Belgium is famous, of course, for its production of that cocoa-based product, and travelers shocked by exchange-rate inflated restaurant prices here and in the Netherlands (AU$35 for lunch, US$80 for dinner, per person, without wine?!) quickly learn to supplement their diets with chocolate as well as cheese.
Relative to restaurant meals, the luxurious brown, or sometimes white, stuff — said to have health benefits, to be a mood lifter, and even to be an aphrodisiac — is cheap here. You can, of course, pay high prices for it molded into various shapes including shells, small animals, and bare human breasts with prominent nipples. (Chocolate shop windows can be aphrodisiac.)
In Bruges’s tourist area, you can buy assorted chocolates elaborately gift-boxed in any one of 40 shops, but you can get the same good stuff in plain bars in grocery stores for much less. What a diet! So relatively frugal.
Fortunately, given our high-calorie intake, our main mode of getting around in the towns and cities here is walking hour after hour through the sight-laded streets. We’ve even rented bikes a couple of times.
Bicycles are everywhere and amazingly well provided for by the planners of infrastructure, especially in the Netherlands. We rode from a small town called Oss to a smaller town called Heesch on the country’s longest dedicated bike path. It’s marked with a symbol proclaiming bikes to be king.
Bike riders surely rule on Amsterdam’s downtown streets even when Read the rest of this entry »
Comfort foods of home
April 16, 2008People everywhere, even those of us who enjoy travel and find ourselves able to adjust well to living in countries other than the one in which we were born, long for “the comforts of home.”
Being near family and friends is at the top of the list of what we miss. Knowing one’s way around and speaking the most-common language, is up there, too.
But sometimes what we expatriates miss is “comfort food” or, at least, food we’re accustomed to buying and eating.
Friends of ours from Amsterdam were missing “pindakaas” until they found a Dutch food store not far from where they live now in Brisbane. That Dutch word means “peanut cheese,” which is Read the rest of this entry »
Birds and bloodsuckers
April 13, 2008The best places for us to see birds and wild creatures during our hiking trips turns out to where we leave our car, in car parks where the hiking trails begin.On the lookout and with binoculars ready, we hike kilometer after kilometer along trails through eucalypts, in rainforests, and in open spaces, seeing little that hops, runs, slithers, or flies.Then, if we’re to see wildlife at all, we find it back where we left our car an hour or two or three earlier.
Maybe our next book will be entitled “Birds and Beasts of Aussie Car Parks.”
Girraween Park’s main parking area for Castle Rock, for example, was our richest venue for sightings during one day of our Easter Weekend hiking trip. In contented groups close to pavement, kangaroos and/or wallabies grazed contentedly so long as we didn’t get too close.
Bird life was easy to hear and sometimes in our line of sight, in part because of the large trees with open space beneath them where land had been cleared for cars.
One crow-like bird even let us get within six feet or so as he sat at eye-level among the limbs of a pine tree, staring back at us for several minutes. Looking closer, we saw that this bird was dark blue, not black. His yellow eyes let us, with the help of our bird book, identify him as a satin bowerbird.
While he is easy to mistake for a crow, the male satin bowerbird will never be confused with the female of his species. She’s decked out in fancy, decorative feathers that are mostly green, and we were lucky enough to see two of her kind, briefly, later.
On this trip, we did get to see more than 30 bird varieties, including a half dozen that were new to us. We also saw rabbits the size of cottontails (one at a time, on three occasions), skinks, and red ants more than an inch long.
The wildlife that got my attention most dramatically, however, was small, black, and as lively as an inch worm on a warm day.
We’d driven down to the Washpool National Park in New South Wales and hiked into the World Heritage area rain forest there. It is the wettest and most lush rainforest we’ve seen here and we enjoyed its narrow trails.
I was listening to the varied calls of a lyre bird (they’re much easier to hear than to spot with one’s eyes), when I noticed a small black worm on top of one of my fingers.
I flicked it off. Then I saw that it hadn’t left. A second flick didn’t dislodge it either. It was a leech. I had to pull it off.
Before the day was out Kristi and I had spotted Read the rest of this entry »
Finally: the Southern Cross
April 8, 2008A part of our Easter trip to the Granite Belt of southern Queensland was out of this world, literally.
We chose to stay at the Twinstar Guesthouse on the New England Highway in Ballandean because it advertises itself, accurately, as “a cozy B&B with stargazing facilities.”
This relatively inexpensive three-guest-room lodge near Girraween National Park is owned and run by a Japanese couple whose last name we’ve misplaced, Naomi and Eiji.
Eiji, whose name is pronounced much as the last name of the American writer James Agee (long “a” and then “gee” or “age-ee”), has been an amateur astronomer for much of his life and he loves sharing his extensive knowledge.
It was our bad luck to be Twinstar guests during full-moon nights with lots of rapidly-drifting clouds, but we did get some brief and rewarding looks through Eiji’s 46 cm reflecting telescope one evening.
Inside a backyard dome that revolves when Eiji pushes it along its circular track, the telescope collects, he told us, 4500 times more light than the unaided eye, so we were not disappointed.
Even in bright moonlight Eiji’s scope let us see the rings of Saturn; a beautiful cluster of stars known as “the jewel box;” Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, only (only?) 8.6 light years away; and Omega Centauri, which, Aiji told us, is a cluster of one million stars that hang out together about 16,000 light years away.
Best of all, perhaps, was Eiji’s authoritative identification Read the rest of this entry »
It’s about time
April 2, 2008This was supposed to be yesterday’s blog, but something more pressing came up. It would have been perfect for April Fool’s Day, a Y2K sort of story in 2008 … except that it’s all true.
Here is a paragraph from a report by Ryan Emery in “The Australian” for March 31: “Yesterday Western Australia returned to standard time, leaving NSW, the ACT, Victoria and South Australia keeping track with Tasmania … and Queensland and Northern Territory somewhere in the middle.”
That was, more or less, the good news. Before I get to the bad news, I need to offer my US readers a few translations and bits of fact. NSW means New South Wales and it is a state, as are Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia. “The ACT” is the Australian Capitol Territory, where Canberra is located. “Northern Territory” is a federal territory that occupies most of the north end of Australia.
Now, with the geography lesson done (don’t feel bad, I needed it, too), let’s turn to time. Time in Australia.
Australia has Western, Central, and Eastern time zones. Parts of the Northern Territory are in each of the three.
In Tasmania, until this year, daylight savings time ended on the last Sunday in March, which put that island state south of Victoria out of sync with its neighbors.
So, this year, officials in New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania agreed to a new plan — they’d all turn their clocks back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 6. The only problem was that a lot of people and a lot of computer programs didn’t get the message about delaying the shift for one week.
They result was, in some parts of this country, a mini-Y2K.
Personal computers, some hand-held Blackberries, many cell phones, and even some automated telephone company correct-time services gave people Read the rest of this entry »
Earth Hour: Sydney’s brainchild at two
March 30, 2008Earth Hour is being judged as a great success here for saving a bit of energy and showing worldwide concern for environmental issues, in part because the idea began only a year ago in Sydney when 54 per cent of Sydney folks are said to have switched off their lights.
Last night, Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore launched her city’s participation by noting that this “inspired idea” has become a world movement whose “immediate success and … swift adoption around the world shows that people are not only alert to the threat of global warming but they’re engaged and they’re ready and willing to act.”
Here in Brisbane, according to the “Courier Mail,” more than 6000 individuals and 800 businesses signed up in advance to turn off lights from 7 to 8 p.m. last night (Brisbane does not observe daylight savings time) and many thousands more folks here took part.
Along with 190 buildings and more than 100 neon signs registered to switch off, reporter Daryl Passmore said, key Brisbane landmarks that went dark for an hour included the Gateway, Story, Victoria and William Jolly bridges, Conrad International Treasury Casino, City Hall, Castlemaine Fourex Brewery in Milton, Waterfront Place and the Suncorp building’s highly visible downtown clock.
We didn’t see any of that, of course, because Read the rest of this entry »
Climbing Australia’s old baldie
March 27, 2008Getting out of Brisbane on the Friday before Easter was easy since we’re not far from the highway to Ipswich, the first major town on the route Kristi had planned for us.
Soon we were in farming country with rolling hills and trees and grass and clean air. After Ipswich: Warwick. Then, Stanthorpe, a central town in the Granite Belt. On the road again.
Maybe road-trips such as the one we were beginning won’t be possible for much longer, or as common, anyway. We’d been warned that we were heading for popular vacation destinations and that we should expect crowds of people on the national park tours and on wine tours.
Only on one of our several hikes did we see many people. Often we were alone and we could walk for an hour or more without seeing other hikers. Some local folk we talked to complained of slow business and too-few visitors.
No complaints from us. Except that the visitor’s center in Stanthorpe was closed for Good Friday (and lots of businesses were closed right through Monday). The public toilets were open and available, though, and we found a nice, shaded and smooth rock beside a beautiful pond for a picnic lunch.
Then we headed out for the mother of all granite domes, Bald Rock, the largest protrusion of volcanic stone in the southern hemisphere. Years ago, we’d hiked up Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg, Texas, a “batholith” that rises 450 feet (137 meters) above the woods in the Hill Country, and we thought of that as we stood at the bottom looking up at the smooth slope and two wee figures we could just make out at the top.
Twenty minutes later, we met these two coming down as we moved up. All four of us were proceeding slowly and carefully, because Bald Rock is 200 meters (650 feet) high, measured from the forest-level starting point, and if a person slipped and started rolling down the hard granite, there’d be nothing to stop him until he reached the trees.
Fortunately, the granite is pitted like orange peel, and good hiking boots let you feel fairly secure about your footing if you go slowly and pay attention to balance. We decided we wouldn’t want to be climbing Bald Rock in a rain, though, and we were glad to know about a more gentle, longer path down.
From the top there are great views of trees, hills, Mount Norman, Mount McKenzie, and other granite outcroppings such as The Pyramids and Castle Rock.
Bald Rock itself, however, is the main attraction, with its vertical striping caused by mineral deposits, and the presence of egg-shaped boulders of marble, each one or two stories tall, strewn casually around, seemingly ready to start tumbling downward at any moment. Given that they’ve been there many hundreds of years, we took a chance and sat down on the slope below one to rest in its shade.
How much of our appreciation of Bald Rock came from the effort and risk required to reach its top? We’re not sure, but, coming from a law-suit prone country, we found it a bit amazing that the Aussie park service posted no signs stating the obvious (if you slip and fall, you could die) in language written by attorneys for the protection of the government.
And there were no handrails to mar the bald beauty of the Rock. No handrails. No legal jargon. Could be worse.
We climbed Bald Rock without mishap and then had a pleasant meander down. We liked it all. We recommend Bald Rock National Park for your list of places to visit when you come to Queensland.
Easter trip to Texas and New England
March 26, 2008Being salary-dependent and knowing that we might be able to live in Australia only another year or two, Kristi and I take every opportunity to experience its various parts. And varied this country is, in its plant life, its critters, and its geography.
Like most people here, we had four days off for Easter weekend and we took advantage of every waking moment, leaving our driveway at 7:15 a.m. Friday and returning at 8 p.m. Monday.
Our plan was to visit national parks in the Granite Belt about three hours southwest of Brisbane in the vicinity of Stanthorpe, but by the time we got home, we’d also hiked in parts of Washpool National Park and the Main Range National Park.
And get this: we visited New England and drove from one side of Texas to the other. That’s what we’ll be writing about to friends and family, and it’s true.
We were on the New England Highway from Warwick, QLD, to Glen Innes in New South Wales, and, being as close as 60 or 70 miles from a town we’d heard so much about, we couldn’t resist adding in a trip to Texas, Queensland, population 900.
It was one quiet place on Easter Monday, but now we can say we’ve been there!
Not only that, but, thanks to an amateur Japanese astronomer named Aiji, we’ve finally been introduced to Read the rest of this entry »
Now the tough one: AU, money, and you
March 18, 2008Money. Since beginning consideration of your compatibility with Australia, I’ve discussed two of the three traditional areas of concern: degree of neatness and sex. I took the easy one’s first.
Money is the tough one. First, flying to an Aussie destination from the US will cost you couple of thousand at least, maybe much more, for a round-trip ticket, and then you’ll need food (expensive) and lodging (very expensive).
It helps a little, of course, that your US dollar will still get you an Australian dollar and nine cents more, and maybe you are one of the fortunate few who don’t have to worry about such things. A “New York Times” story this past week said there are in the world today 2,000 superyachts (120 to more than 500 feet long, valued in millions) and about 200,000 people could afford to buy one of them.
Are you more interested in the minimum wage than the price of yachts? You could be in luck here. Is the minimum wage still about $5.50 per hour in Texas and up to around $10 in one or more states of the US? I know middle- and low-income earners in the US have been losing ground.
It doesn’t seem so here. Aussies prefer to speak in terms of minimum wage per week and a week is counted as 38 hours of work. The current, Australia-wide minimum wage is $522.12 or $13.74/hour (US$12.60).
The Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) wants to give the lowest-paid workers here a $26/week raise to $548.12/week or $14.42/hour (US$13.23). Unions want more. The Rudd government is expected to decide soon.
No worries, though, if you’re between 18 and 45 years of age, and your training or experience qualifies you for a 457, skilled migrant worker, visa. That lets you stay four years, at least, and according to this morning’s newspapers, you won’t be worrying about the minimum wage.
“The Australian” has a front-page story today by Paul Maley and Matthew Franklin saying Australia’s full-employment economy is currently paying skilled migrants $15,000 more per year than the average Australian earns.
Here are a few facts from that story:
1. In 2006-07, the average skilled migrant’s salary was $71,600 (US$65,682) while the average salary Read the rest of this entry »