Oh hey there friends. I suppose you’re ready to hear about our
conquering days in Brisbane City and Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Well let me
begin by saying that this city is beautiful and after one day walking around
the city I know why Emily U is in love with this place. It really is the
perfect blend of city and country. It is a beautiful place.
Our first conquering trip, we decided to go to Roma Street
Parklands first. Roma Street Parklands
is a huge park full of Australian plants and flowers, and just generally a
beautifully designed park. It has a lovely flow. I think Amy needs to get her
butt over here and check this out. Billy would blow up his Instagram feed at
this place too.
When you first walk in, it’s a big open field with two
waterfalls. The two waterfalls have a path between them lined with bamboo, into
a bigger area with checkered tiles and more plants, that lead into the
rainforest section of the park. The rainforest area includes Fern Gully, which
is aptly named because it is a gully full of all types of fern. And lots and
lots of water dragons (lizards). Fern Gully bridge is a winding wooden bridge
that has an incline, but is so unnoticeable that you don’t even know you’re
climbing up until you see that where you just were a few minutes ago is an
entire level beneath you. It is crazy cool! So the bridge winds all through the
rainforest area, up to the tallest point of the park, which is a great way to
see the pond and the first bit of Brisbane city.
The rest of the park is sidewalks and flowers, little mosaic
gardens, streams, tree-lined paths, staircases, and more lizards. Here are some
more photos:
My camera died almost as soon as we got into the rainforest
area, so Emily U let me use her camera to take pictures of what I wanted,
because she’d been there before. Her
camera died just before we got to the big flower garden, so Tex Emily took a
lot of pictures for us. I’ll be back in that park though at a later date,
because it is just so great.
It was very hot at this point, but we still decided to walk
over to South Bank. We walked a few blocks in the center of Brisbane CBD (City
Business District – basically the busiest area) and stopped in a 7-11 to cool
off, and ended up getting the most amazing slurpees. They had mango, raspberry,
coke, and virgin margarita. So Emily U and I got raspberry virgin margaritas
and Tex Emily got mango margarita. It was incredibly tasty.
Then we crossed one of the bridges on foot, saw all of the
tall buildings that Brisbane has to offer, saw the Wheel of Brisbane which is
about ½ the size of the London Eye, and then walked down along the side of the
river into South Bank. South Bank is another park area, but it has all of these
pools and man-made beaches. My camera was still dead, so I don’t have any
pictures of South Bank that are mine yet, but here are some of Tex Emily’s:
We got on one of the water things which was basically a
scale model of the Brisbane river and all of its branches. It shot water up in
jets and flowed over the edges. Very very refreshing on this hot day, though I
think all of us wouldn’t have complained much had we “accidentally fallen” into
one of the larger pools, fully clothed.
Then we walked back to the cultural center to catch the bus
home, agreeing to stop in Indro shopping center to get some food from the food
court. Once we got there, it was almost 6 pm, so everything was closed pretty
much except for the American fast food places. I chose McDonalds and took it to
go.
We caught the 444 from Indro shopping centre, and Emily said
that I smelled delicious. (or the fries in my backpack did). We got back to the
house and we were all very relieved to hear that Thor had been back and had
left again. But Cal and Emily figured that he’d be back soon because it was
almost 6 and therefore dinner time. Not that he hadn’t been catching geckos or
birds all day - but hey, I bet there’s some satisfaction in getting your people
to feed you gravy coated mincemeat.
I ate my McDonalds and I can say that the fries are shit. If
you bought McDonalds fries and left them in the fridge for three days. Limp and
greasy. And stale. It was bad. The big mac was alright. It had a good ratio of
special sauce to stuff. It definitely was not as bad as my first big mac in
England. I still remember that one.
We watched an episode of the Syfy show, Warehouse 13. It was quite cheesy, I think a
bad version of the X Files. The lead woman had very puffy and dry lips that I
just could not stop staring at. I think the level of suspense and the level of
writing were that of a prodigious 8th grader. In fact, I think I
would’ve only enjoyed the show had I been in 8th grade, a glorious
time when clichés thrilled me. I mean, the show is about two Secret Service
agents who hunt all these mysterious creatures. (Think X Files meets
Supernatural meets Bones). Tex Emily watched an episode with us the next day
after Lone Pine, and she was equally as unimpressed with it. So I then popped
in Pitch Perfect because Cal and Emily hadn’t seen it and it was a blast. I can
watch that movie over and over.
Anyway. My fan blade broke,
and tape wouldn’t hold it. It was shooting more air out of the edges of the
dome than at me. Which was no bueno. I
can’t be in my room at night with the windows open because the light attracts
bugs and there are no screens. I can’t even have my door open really without
getting bugs, but it would really help with getting a draft from outside if I
had my door open….perhaps not dying of heat stroke is worth the fauna that
would enter my bedroom and never leave. Like my good friend Barth.
The next night, the broken fan blade was still broken, but
then in the middle of the night, probably around 5 am, the fan fell completely
off its perch and the front broke off, I wake up horribly to this ridiculously
loud bang and all this noise, and the front of the fan popping off caused a
different fan blade to crack off entirely. So the fan was useless and broken.
So the next few hours of sleep were very very hot and stuffy. This was the day
that I HAD to go to Indro and HAD to find a new fan. The next place to look for
one was Target, and I found one. It is highlighter yellow and it is very
powerful and very effective. It cost me enough that I want to take it home with
me, but not enough that it would be worth plugging into an adapter just to use
it at home.
The next day Emily U and I went to Indro in the morning just
to go on facebook and check email and fill out a few more job applications. We
left after lunch time, and had a bit of a time crunch between getting back to
the house, getting Tex Emily, and then getting to the other bus stop to meet
Cal to all go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary together. We had about 20 minutes to
do all of these things – hoping the bus wouldn’t come early.
We made it – the bus was not early, nor was it late. It
arrived precisely when it meant to. Like Gandalf.
The bus ride was winding, and the driver was a bit cray, so
I wasn’t feeling too hot when we stopped, but the promise of koalas and
kangaroos made it better. When we got to the ticket counter, I made the decision
to just go ahead and get the yearly pass. It was $32 for one-day admission, or
$60 for a yearlong pass. I plan on going back a couple times, so already it was
worth it to me than paying $32 each time…and also with perks it’s 20% off all
food and merchandise, and whenever we get the professional koala pictures, we
get double whatever the package is for the price of one. So that was worth it.
Emily and Cal have year passes as well, so they got 20% of the $32 for Tex
Emily. I had to pay full price for the year pass though, which is totally fine.
So now I have this cute Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary photo ID.
For a zoo, the place is super cute. There are a lot of
activities with different animals, but we got there too late for most of them
(hence going again! For free!) so we walked around through the first few areas
with different animals and then went to the souvenir shop to get the vouchers
for the professional koala pictures. Once we got the vouchers, we went on line
to get the koala pictures. The koalas at this point in the day were not having
it, especially since all of the people in front of us were crowded around and
chattering away so once I got up there, the handler girl tried to put two
different koalas on me and they just were not happy anymore so the handlers put
all of the koalas away and took out different ones. The third one she tried was
Maximus and he is the one that was chilling on me for a bit.
The cool thing about the place is that your friends are
totally allowed to take pictures of you with the koala for free, and the
professional girl comes over and takes one too and if you paid for it you can
have it, but you can also do it for free. Which is nice, no other place I know
of that sells the photos also lets you take them for free.
Tex Emily got hers done next, and Maximus was fine with her
too. She didn’t have to stand there while the handlers found a koala in a good
mood like I did lol. Lucky her. She was nice enough to take a video of me
getting rejected by koalas.
While the pictures were printing we headed over to the
kangaroo enclosure, which is a huge open field full of kangaroos and a few
wallabys, and they sell bags of pellets to feed them in the souvenir shop.
Kangaroos are awesome, very soft, and pretty chill. By the end of the trip, the
Emilys were calling me the kangaroo whisperer because I made a few kangaroo
friends. Here are some pictures:
After this, Cal decided to go home, so the three of us
conquered the zoo without him. We saw more koalas, Tasmanian devils, dingoes, a
platypus, birds, more lizards roaming, more bush turkeys, and wombats. Wombats
are HUGE I don’t know if you thought they were koala sized like me, but they
are actually more like wild boar sized. But they are sooooo cute! Cute in the
way that they could rip your face off if they wanted to, but they look like
Precious Moments at the same time.
Bush Turkeys were wandering around at their leisure, without
cages.
Cal said earlier, when we asked if people ate them, that the only way to
eat a bush turkey is to cut it up into pieces, wrap the pieces in banana
leaves, dig a hole in the ground and layer it with hot coals, and then put the
banana wrapped pieces in it, cover it with wet burlap, more hot rocks, and then
put one really big rock over the entire hole. Then let them cook in the hole
and once the big rock is softened, eat the rock.
I’m guessing bush turkey is not delicious.
After Cal left, it was getting close to closing time. We
walked around and ended up by the bird cages, and we made friends with a
red-tailed black cockatoo. We talked to him and he squawked in return, and
nodded his head a lot and showed us his feathers. He was a cool bird.
A kookaburra!
Then we went to the last cockatoo cage, with a big white
cockatoo with lime green head and tail feathers. His name was Mr. Cocky and he
was pretty chill. He talked to us a bit too, and then he danced to Gangnam
Style when Tex Emily played it on her phone. We’re gonna get rich off youtube
with the video. Then the place was closing, so we went back to the parking lot
to wait for the bus.
Apparently we were less than 10 minutes late for the last
bus, so we then had to wait about 40 minutes for the next one. But we
entertained ourselves in the bus gazebo.
Emily U got off at the bus stop for the house, but Tex Emily
and I went to Indro to go to this sushi place that we’d checked out the night
before. It was one of the ones with the moving train covered in dishes and then
you pay depending what the color of the plate was that you took. It was by
sheer luck that we chose to go there on a night when every plate no matter what
color only cost $3.50.
It was amazing! Great sushi, great options, very fresh - just a horrible set-up for someone who is
impulsive lol. Like OH THAT LOOKS GOOD MUST GRAB. That was kinda me, sort of.
So now this place is going to be our Tuesday hangout because it is just THAT
good. Emily studied abroad in Japan while Emily and I were in London, so she
was having mad nostalgia there because it was authentic and delicious. She got
a rice cake for dessert and almost cried. I know the feeling – every time I
have Strongbow.
We haven’t done much since Lone Pine except go to Indro for
internet in the library, go to Indro to get bubble tea or go to Indro to run
errands. I know I’m getting the timeline wrong on this blog post – but from now
on, I promise to be better with posting! Especially once we get the wifi back,
I won’t have any excuse.
We’ve been marathon-style watching Game of Thrones, because
I had never seen it before. Anyone who likes fantasy ANYTHING should watch Game
of Thrones. It is a great show. Very well made, very well acted. We’re just
starting season 2 now.
Sorry this has taken so long to write! But at least I got
the pictures up on facebook to sort of ease your complete and utter suspense
over the conquering going on down here.
Until next time!
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