Finally to Brisbane

Jeff was a little disappointed to discover that his immunity to the spider bite was due to the fact that the spider was a non-venomous Golden Orb spider and not because of any super-human resistance.

We completed the final leg of our journey to Brisbane with a gradual shift in weather from torrential rain to occasional showers. After about 10 days of fairly constant rain this was a great relief. With such glorious beaches and warm water we at last began to fully appreciate this area. We arrived in Brisbane after overnight stays in Tweed Heads and Surfers Paradise – the latter in the Marriott hotel at a ridiculous knock-down rate.

Surfers Paradise – and the whole Gold Coast region - is about as close as you get to California life style. Huge high rise buildings, beautiful long beaches, enormous shopping malls. Surfers Paradise boasts the highest building in Australia. Not quite our scene, so we quickly moved on to Brisbane with a call in at Manly (yes there is one in Brisbane as well as in Sydney)

Manly

Brisbane has a wonderful river flowing right through the centre and there are City Cats which are large water taxis to ferry you up and down.

Brisbane from the City Cat

This is a great way to travel and we could travel right in to the heart of the city. We had only one day to explore and focussed on the 'new' Anglican cathedral and the (free) outdoor swimming pools on South Bank.

St. Johns Cathedral was built in Gothic Style but started only about 100 years ago.

St. John's Cathedral

They finished it this year! The main interest for us was that the wood carvings had been done by two generations of Blumsons who must have been part of the diaspora of East Londoners in the 19^th century. It is remarkable to see what the old cathedrals must have looked like when they were (relatively) new.

Brisbane's South Bank is a lovely little park on the river opposite the main shopping mall. It has lovely pools where you can just peel off and swim for free. It woldn't work in England but in Brisbane's climate it is a wonderful way to cool off.

South Bank swimming

Meg teaching a dog (Monty) to swim

Finally, on the 20^th Feb we left Brisbane for Thagoona, just west of Ipswich where we met up with Jeff's second Australian cousin. A special three days followed before we began the long trip back towards Melbourne.

One of the many local residents at Jeff''s cousins

... and another - a Cane Toad

Throughout our travels we have appeared to bring disaster to the places we visit – floods followed our departure from Hanoi and we just left Java before the landslides. Bush fires followed our trail in Victoria and there were more floods in our wake as we passed through NSW. We left Queensland wondering if there might be a plague of locusts to follow, although, as we write this, our fears have proved unfounded.