OOPS. It's May and I'm only now getting round to writing a journal entry about our Brisbane trip. Sorry. I should explain.
You see, we left Australia hoping to do a little travel writing to keep us going, and have been so busy chasing stories and taking pics in the US that we haven't had much time for anything else.
Our schedule has been exhausting - and exhilarating - and it's not really been travelling like I remember. More a blur of travel.
Sadly, the travel writing isn't going well, and so while I am waiting for stories to be published and editors to get back to me (I know they probably won't but nevermind), I can at least enjoy some blogging action.
I should record a bit of what we did in Brisbane. Here goes.
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WADING waist-deep into the chilly water off Moreton Island with a dead fish in each hand was not what we had envisaged at the start of our second week of travels.
It was the evening of the day after we had arrived in Brisbane, and the beach at the edge of Moreton Island was coldly lit by the artificial glare of several high spotlights.
It hadn’t helped that we had joined the back of the last long queue to take part in this bizarre ritual, leaving both of us feeling chilly before we had even dipped a toe into the water.
But this was something we had both looked forward to – feeding wild dolphins at Tangalooma Resort.
The resort maintains that the dolphins are wild animals, as the amount they receive is not enough for them to live on which keeps their hunting instincts active.
One of the dolphins was whizzing around the shallow water under a spotlight as we arrived, practicing a kind of hunting which involved swimming upside down so his white belly was a moving blur under the water.
When we did eventually get into the water, we had to hold the dead fish out of the water so that the dolphin at the end of our queue, Rani, didn’t just grab them out of our hands greedily.
Instead, we had to count to three and then lower one fish below the surface. Rani moved forward and took the fish out of our hand with the end of his long nose.
We both had several chances to do this, before we were backing out of the water and running back to the room to get a hot shower.
A visit to the island had been a goal since we had been visiting Brisbane a while before.
As the nearest major airport from Townsville, we have been used to visiting the city often. We stopped there on our way to Fiji, Samoa and Western Australia, so associate it with holidays and good times.
But there is much more to the city than the airport, and much more of an attraction than association.
Its semi-tropical latitude makes it a great place for outdoor activities and al fresco dinners; near the winding Brisbane River is a good place to do both.
That morning we had turned up at the wharf ready to catch the boat for the 45-minute journey. It was starting to rain when we boarded; by the time we moored at the long wooden jetty on the island it was dry and warm. There were pelicans stood on the beach alongside smaller cormorants, and a wildlife ranger giving a talk to some guests as the arrivals walked past gawping.
Moreton Island is the second largest of Australia’s sand islands, behind the more famous Fraser Island, and the resort offers plenty of activities for beach and water.
We had a load of stuff booked for us, including sand-sledging down 50m-high dune formations, and a quad bike tour around a sand-based track up in the hills behind the resort.
On the second day we had a jet-ski tour of the island, which mainly involved whizzing along behind a couple of Japanese young blokes and trying not to get too cold in the wind and spray.
We caught the late afternoon ferry back to the city; there were pelicans still on the beach, probably waiting for a feed.
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THE other activities on our Brisbane itinerary involved a self-guided art trail along the usually grungy Brunswick St (plus a visit to the Gallery of Modern Art) and a trip to funky West End where there was an interesting mix of boutique stores and restaurants. We ate Vietnamese and had an interesting chat with a bloke running a high-end perfumery selling ancient scents (including a candle with the aroma favoured by Napoleon before he went into battle).
We had an interview with an artist the following day; a smashing bloke called Robert Brownhall who was not pretentious at all but just a nice guy who had put long hours into his work. His paintings hang in the home of Jeffrey Archer, among others.
We also had the chance to take part in a night kayak on the Brisbane River called ‘paddle and prawns’; lit by the Friday night lights of bars and restaurants and the glowing globes of the Story Bridge.
The moon was high, and lit our path once we were under the bridge and heading towards the craggy cliffs marking the edge of New Farm, a young suburb.
Below the cliffs was a path which we would cycle along the next day; the last activity before heading for the airport, and Sydney.
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