now a thirtysomething from Brisbane
Just some of the wonderful creatures we found whilst exploring the beach/Eelgrass beds on Straddie.
Muddy Shore Anemone
Fragile Sea Star
Soldier Crabs
ohhh I loved these guys. The beach was covered with 1000’s of them and I was able to shepherd them into going where I wanted for a photo or for fun 😀
Mollusc of some sort
Sunday, Mum and I spent the day doing some cultural sight seeing around inner Brisbane. We started off at Southbank before getting on the City Cat down to the Powerhouse to check out the new photography exhibit (not the biggest fan of it) and then back on the City Cat to Bulimba to the Queensland Centre for Photography where my Aunt is currently exhibiting some work.
Then we met up with Georgie for a quick stroll on Oxford St, a browse at Riverbend books and a bite to eat (the above picture, which we split into three parts). Then it was back on the cross river ferry to Tenerife and the bus into the Valley where we browsed in Mod Cons and then finally the bus home.
A very nice day indeed.
I love it everyday – Spaghetti Bolognaise!
Life is an interesting thing. Or perhaps more the internet is an interesting thing or even more precise Facebook. Last Sunday night Mum and I went to see Peter Combe. The very next day I got a message on Facebook saying that Catherine Riddle had added me as a friend.
Catherine and I grew up together. A fair swack of my childhood was spent playing in Catherine’s back yard, swimming in the pool, playing dress-ups in her Mum’s old ballet costumes and generally just having fun. We went to the same primary school but after her dad spent a year on exchange in England and they went up to Charters Towers to live/teach we pretty much lost contact. We have seen each other a few times over the years but I don’t think I have seen Catherine for probably four years now. I nearly fell off my chair when I got the notification on facebook because a few weeks before when I had joined facebook again as it now seemed like all my friends had it now, one of the first people I searched for was Catherine but she wasn’t to be found.
This is us when we are young tykes, Catherine and I had just turned 4 ( our birthdays are 10 days apart) and Matthew was/still is my little brother.
What made it all the more special was that the night before as Mum and I were walking down the steps out of the Zoo after seeing Peter Combe, Mum was commenting on how Margaret (Catherine’s mum) had introduced us to Peter Combe as I was mentioning that a lot of my friends had not been exposed to Peter when they were young and that she was going to send Margaret a letter and her Peter Combe ticket.
Peter Combe was a fantastic night. The Zoo was sold out and it was full of newspaper hats and pure glee amongst the punters who had forgotten just how much we had loved Peter Combe as children and that we would still sing those songs word for word. I can’t wait for him to come back north again as I would be there in a split second. I have gone to a fair amount of concerts and whilst there was no fancy lights or sound effects, I have to say I think it was the only concert I have been to where every single person there had a huge grin on their face all night long.
ok so we got back from Straddie, oh 3 wks ago and I haven’t done a proper post on our w/e “crusing the bay” in sea kayaks and frankly I have photos to show. I plan on spending tonight playing catch up with various blog/photo things.
*****
5 kayaks, 8 people, numerous Turtle sightings, a fire on the beach, assorted sea birds, a flock of 50 or so Black Swans, assorted marine life and 1 Dugong sighting. That in short sums up the weekend of paddling we did.
Seeing the Turtles and Dugong were so cool. I was just paddling on Sunday morning and this Dugong popped its head up just ahead of me. It was sooooo cool!
In a slightly longer form. We paddled from Victoria Point to Macleay Island for morning tea to Blakesleys Anchorage to set up camp and have lunch. Then we relaxed on the beach/in the bush round camp as well as doing a short paddle down to an Eelgrass bed at low tide to explore the marine life. Watched a rather nice sunset (no clouds but still nice), ate a very nice dinner of pasta salad which I had made the night before. Relaxed round the fire for a while. Marvelled at the lack of sandflies/mozzies compared to what we were expecting.
And in an even longer form, the email that Mum sent 😀
I had such a lovely weekend I want to share it. Helen and I went sea-kayaking with an NPAQ trip. We hired a sea kayak with blow up roof racks!! We started from Redland Bay and paddled in across to Garden Is – uninhabited. That stretch was choppy, but the rest of the paddling for the whole w/e was easy. Then across to MacLeay Is. Pulled up onto the beach there and went up to the coffee shop for hot chocolate and caramel slice – a bit different for morning tea on an NPAQ outing. Then through some passage and a longish open stretch across to Stradbroke Is (Blakesly’s Anchorage to be precise). This was where thing started to get interesting. We saw an osprey’s nest in /on a navigation light. I suspect that the light was built to accommodate a nest!! Then we saw about 40 black swans just swimming along. Latter Helen and I were watching a cormorant swimming with a large flapping fish in its mouth when an osprey dived to take the fish! The cormorant dived and won, but actually the fish may have won as the cormorant dropped the fish and flew off when we got too close.
Blakesley’s Anchorage is a nice place to camp – the only facilities provided are rubbish bins, but it is a huge flat area with plenty of
shady trees and no undergrowth. It is the only sandy beach on that part of Stradbroke. After lunch, we went for a walk and found beach curlews and watched a mangrove bittern feed on the mud flats. Helen had fun with the thousands of soldier crabs. Late in the day, Helen and I went for a paddle south and then turned around and came home close in to the mud flats. We saw lots of things: stripped sea-anemones growing out of the sand, some areas had hundreds of mud whelks in a small area, u-tube
worms, sea cucumbers, and a couple of really weird things. One was this long flattish body about 15″ long and 3/16″ wide in a puddle of water. When we got close it would contract down into a hole. We paddled home after the sun had set – nice light but no clouds.On Sunday we all went for a walk east to find Blakesly’s Lagoon that was marked on the map. In the process, we realized that the whole area has been re-vegetated after sand mining – that explained the lack of undergrowth. We were able to walk close to a kilometre inland in either bare feet or river sandals!! Those sandhills should be very thick with undergrowth.
Then we paddled to the northern tip of Macleay Is for morning tea and across to Coochiemudloo for lunch – that place was busy, then the longest leg south to Redland Bay again. this was against the tide but with the wind. Geoff showed us how to rig a tent fly as a sail across 3 kayaks – the wind pushed us along quite nicely.
It was a lovely weekend – nice weather, nice temperature, no wind to talk about, good company – so much so that Helen has a mad scheme to take the barge / boat to Moreton, kayak down the western side of Moreton across to Stradbroke and down the western side of Stradbroke and end up somewhere. Anyone interested? 🙂 We need some open water experience first.
This was Helen’s first trip to Stradbroke!!
Saturday night at the tavern was something similar to how I remember the Ozomatli/The Roots/Fat Freddy’s night at the Bluesfest this year. It was one big party where if you weren’t dancing you were at the bar getting a drink. It didn’t matter if the music wasn’t quite your flavour you still danced because the vibe was infectious. Extended Family and Zoophyte were the last two acts of the night and these inter-staters knew how to keep the party going till some time in the early am when the lights were turned on and last drinks were served. They are both on my list of bands to check out again when they come up north again.
Saturday was really two sessions. There was the general festival in the day time which ended with Jimmy Barnes and the party got started again at the Kings Beach Tavern and ended when the lights came on and last drinks were served in the early morning. The day time was about a wide, wide variety of music, relaxing in the sunshine, chatting and generally just enjoying some pretty decent music.
Saturday day time was about Women in Docs, The Dé Jah Groove boys again, Tripod, sessions at Tanja’s, a variety of music on the Ramada local talent stage including Asa Broomhall, Vanessa Amorosi and Jimmy Barnes in the evening.
