When out and about recently on a warm, sunny winter day I ran into some very photogenic birds. One alighted on a River Cat and wouldn’t budge. Once settled, it obligingly looked directly at my camera.
Back in the CBD I stopped by the City Botanic Gardens. Walking along the path I heard loud chirping. On investigation, I found a Noisy Miner chick! Being noisy, indeed. It hadn’t quite got the hang of flying yet and kept choosing twigs for which it was too heavy. I photographed it for a while, until Mummy turned up. Who wasn’t at all pleased with me and my camera, and thus proceeded to fight me off with energetic scratches and flapping wings. I got the message and took the final shot of her feeding her chick from further away.
A photo shoot is just the thing when trying to distract oneself from annoying things like a broken dishwasher (disaster!). I went for some city shots today. I took some images with the intention of stitching them together into panoramic pictures. This worked well but the resulting pictures have odd proportions and hence don’t look good if viewed as a thumbnail. This is why I inserted the images directly into the text.
Here’s a panoramic image of Story Bridge. Photoshop Elements is your friend.
Story Bridge, stitched together from eight separate images.
Then I tried the same thing vertically with a skyscraper. 111 Eagle St; they’ve just completed the full height. I was disappointed to learn the height is not 111 stories. A missed opportunity, I feel. That would have been so neat!
Getting the whole skyscraper required two separate images.
I liked the church peeking through between two tall towers.
Church with sky scrapers
While I was in the photography mood I did today’s Daily Shoot as well:
Views along Brisbane River towards the mountains from underneath Story Bridge.
And here’s the fun bit: Some city buildings formed pleasing shapes, just begging to be post-processed into Art with a capital A. This is what Aperture is for!
Today we planned a pleasant afternoon out in the city, given that the weather looked like rain might be on the way sometime soon. A civilised ferry ride to South Bank, maybe a restrained beer or two in several establishments, home. That was the plan. So how did we end up on top of Brisbane’s major tourist attraction?
Ambling aimlessly through South Bank after our ferry ride we found our favourite ice cream shop: Mövenpick. An obligatory ice-cream made the sun come out. Then we ran into a “lifestyle market”. This is the sort of thing I love looking through, without actually buying anything. It was coincidentally right next to a pub, so a beer suggested itself. The weather improved further, including a rainbow, situated right next to the Brisbane Wheel. A thought occurred to Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless: “Want to go up?”
“Erm,” I say. But, the weather is, for the moment, nice. There is no queue. What the hell. We fork over some beer tokens that amazingly are also accepted for non-beer purchases. The amount is clearly aimed at fleecing the tourist market segment. We got a gondola to ourselves, and up we go. The views were awesome over three or four revolutions of the wheel (or, 15 minutes) and we had an excellent time!
On the way back the heavens opened and we watched the expected major squall come in, sitting safely and dry in the Bavarian Beer Cafe. And a nice afternoon was had by all.
Today we went to Daisy Hill again, so that the Obsessive Cyclist could indulge in a mud feast. Meanwhile I went to find some koalas in the Koala Centre. The same two koalas were there as last time, though they had shifted position slightly in the intervening fortnight. Imagine my surprise when one of them actually started moving, looking around and taking an interest in the world! I got a shot just as it was looking at my camera. A few moments later it went to sleep again.
I also found the world’s most awesome sign on the picnic tables scattered around the park: “Don’t feed the kangaroos.” Made me giggle, anyway.
I shall not regale you with further descriptions of mud. A single picture will do the job, I think. Enjoy.
Today is Labour Day. As we discovered to our cost, this means that everything is closed, including supermarkets. This causes a certain problem for dinner arrangements. But on a fine day that could be in summer, who cares? It’s local November and the daytime temperature was 27C and sunny. Â We drove to the Mangrove Boardwalk in Wynnum, 15km east of Brisbane, taking photographic gear. It was awesome!
It’s a three-day weekend, hot on the heels of last week’s five-day weekend. One wonders why fully half of all public holidays fall into April. Well, Labour Day is technically in May but only just.
Anyway… Yesterday was Shopping Day. Shopophobia of Certain People notwithstanding, we drove to what must be Brisbane’s biggest shopping centre, Westfield Chermside, on the northern fringe of the city. This unnatural acquiescence to the suggestion of shopping is explained by recently-acquired knowledge: Brisbane has an Apple Store after all. At Chermside. (In fact it has two, the other is in Robina, close to the Gold Coast. To get there one passes perilously close to the local Ikea. But I digress.)
The Apple Store in Sydney is just about the only thing we were missing up here. Finding one after all caused feelings of happiness and joy, especially in people whose current iMac is three years old. Being remarkably good, we resisted the temptation of an impulse purchase in the form of a 27-inch iMac with a terabyte of disk space and 8GB of RAM. But the seed of a thought is germinating… Let’s see how long it takes to blossom…
So, I made the most of being able to investigate a huge shopping mall, and got away with only a couple of tiny little purchases to help me through the cold winter. Evening temperatures regularly drop below 20C by now so warm clothes are a necessity.
Sunset seen from shopping centre's rooftop carpark
To balance out yesterday, today was Mountain Bike Day. Daisy Hill again. In a guide book I had spotted a trail called “Nirvana”, which was declared to be “famous”. It neglected to say what it was famous for but since it’s quite close we had a look at it. I got about 10 meters in, pushed over a log, walked through some mud, then looked at this steep drop without any kind of guide rail and said “nope, shan’t”.
Steep decline, no safety guides...?
Back we went towards the car — a one-hour ride on hilly, muddy tracks is quite enough for me anyway. I suggested a race: I would take the wide track back while less mud-averse people would take the single track that we’d discovered last week. I won! (Yes, ok, single track is harder snd at least an extra km etc.). When we met up again, this vision in mud greeted me with a huge grin. I’m rather glad I didn’t ride that trail today.
Huge grin, muddy.
Back at the car I swapped my bike for my camera while the Intrepid Mountain Biker set off to achieve Nirvana. Birds were not shy at all.
This little chap kept me company
And if you have ever wondered how muddy it is possible to get riding a mountain bike, this is the answer.
This is how muddy one can get...
I also had an opportunity to craft a picture for today’s Daily Shoot. Green is not hard to find in a forest.
A very friendly kookaburra turned up on our balcony to say hello. In the middle of a torrential downpour  it was a nice dry place. We tried to feed it a piece of cheese but it wasn’t interested. My new prime lens took some excellent shots.
This year Easter Monday coincides with Anzac Day, hence we get the Tuesday off as well. A five-day weekend! Awesome. So we’re making the most of it.
First of all we had a look at Daisy Hill and the Koala Coast. The area is a 20-min drive away and boasts mountain bike trails and, of course, koalas. It was a changeable autumn day with the occasional shower (I mean, downpour). We did some exploring together, running into several kangaroos on the way. Then the Mad Mountain Biker wanted some hills to climb. I put away my bike, grabbed my camera, and went in search of koalas meanwhile.
They weren’t very hard to find — an open enclosure that every self-respecting koala could easily get out of held two of them, one exploring its climbing tree and the other doing what koalas generally do in the middle of the day: Snooze. Â A sleeping koala is an excellent subject for a prime lens.
Technically, there were supposed to be koalas elsewhere around, too, but I didn’t see any. One of the walking trails provided more subjects for artistic interpretation. Then the heavens opened and I ran for the car, mostly to make sure my camera didn’t get wet. The Cyclist had the same idea and we found each other at the car, though I first thought a Mud Monster had designs on our car. A good time was had by all, especially people who like getting very muddy.
For variety, the next day we went west over the Great Dividing Range. All the way over the mountains, stopping at three lookouts: McAfee’s Lookout, Camp Mountain Lookout and Jolly’s Lookout. The views were awesome — see pictures at the end. On the other side of the mountains, Lake Wivenhoe, South-East Queensland’s biggest water catchment and flood prevention area. It’s currently only about 80% full since they keep releasing water, fearing another flood. Apparently everyone has already forgotten about the previous 7-year drought…
Today we returned to Daisy Hill and found a single-track that even I could (mostly) do (the occasional bit of pushing doesn’t count!). It’s a lovely area with many trails for walking, cycling or horse-riding, and we’re looking forward to returning often.
I know you all read this blog only for the piccies, so here you go! Happy Easter, everyone.
