St. Stephen's Cathedral...1800 building surrounded by 2000 highrises. One of the things I noticed about historical buildings in Brisbane is that they are not given much clearance so to speak. None of them had large green lawns in front of or around them like they do in Canada. Curious.


Australian flag...

Hibiscus in the front yard.


Dusky Moorhen and chicks. They live mostly in eastern Australia.
Sorry it's been a few days since updating- lovely internet problems on this end. It's almost the weekend though which means more adventures to be had! Here are a few pictures from some of this past week's outings.

Botanical Gardens of Brisbane

Pacific Black Duck .

The tree that is walking away.
Lizard getting ready to run. (Water Dragon I'm told)

Bird of Paradise

The person on the left hand side of the photo is standing at the other end of the tree...gives you a bit of an idea of how big it is.

Banyan Fig tree; absolutely incredible.


I spent a large part of the day walking around the botanical gardens in the city. The gardens are lovely, the wildlife is diverse, and there was no sense of being in a city when walking around.

Fireworks

Excuse the person's head in the corner of this one.

This one is my favorite mostly because of that burst on the right that looks like some kind of coral.
The fireworks were lit on a platform in the middle of the river. The line of light at the bottom of the picture is Victoria Bridge.

Hallo!! Yesterday was Australia Day and, as is evident from the pictures, they put on a fireworks show. It was a really good show though my pictures were...not so great. Avoiding peoples heads in front of me proved to be tricky but here are a couple that turned out!

Out and About

Hallo,
I won't be around for the next couple days as they're scheduled to be packed with activities. Unfortunately I will not be able to update the blog in that time but will be sure to come back with plenty of pictures in a few days! I hope everyone has a good weekend when it comes!


I will be out smelling the flowers....and making sure not to walk into spider webs when doing so next time.

And of course, will be out meeting new people and animals alike.

xoxo, F

Surfer's Paradise, the Gold Coast

The three 4 year olds.

You can see how much lower the beach is this season.




We spent the afternoon and early evening on the Gold Coast beaches; South Port and Surfer's Paradise. The beaches were beautiful, the water was warm, and I couldn't have asked for better weather. Today was reason enough to come to Australia!

Day to day stuff

This web in particular is approximately 7/8 feet tall and 3 feet wide. If you click on the picture to view it larger, the spider is a bit smaller than that.


Hallo Again. Here are a couple pictures from around the area. The flowers pictured smell like an expensive perfume (a good one though) and as for the spider I'm not sure what it smelled like but I don't care too much to find out.

Koala Sanctuary

A crested pigeon.

Turkey. They don't get eaten for thanksgiving like ours do: might have to do with the fact that there is no thanksgiving in Australia.


A "retired" Koala.
A mum being protective and making herself look bigger. Emus sit in the same way this bird does, though it looks amusing on a large scale bird.

This is where the "guess this animal" game starts. I think this is a sort of Honeyeater but I'm not sure which one as of yet.


In case anyone was wondering, I have found Kanga and Roo. Still no sign of winnie the pooh but I hear he's in Canada.
Today I went to the Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane which is also home to kangaroos, wallabies, emus, australian turkeys, pacific black ducks, water dragon lizzards, fruit bats, cockatoos, galahs, sheep, pigs, and chickens. (I know you're all wondering what those last three look like).

Flora and Fauna of Brisbane, Australia

View from the art gallery on South Bank in Brisbane.
Clear blue skies.
These flowers (Bougainvillea) look as though they've got eyes staring out.

A striated Heron.

This lizzard was doing a pretty good job of hiding.
One of the parrots out front this morning.
One of the parrots out front this morning.

I went out for a walk last night and heard many sounds and saw a lot of shapes that were very unfamiliar. I've since learned that the little rodent-like animals walking across the telephone wires were possums! Hopefully I can get a picture of one soon. I don't know what the chances are of me getting a picture of the gargantuan bats, but knowing me, I'll probably try.
In more creature news, I've found two geckos in my bathroom but they were fairly easy to catch.
ttfn F

Los Angeles and Australia

This photo has been photoshoped so that the sky looks blue and there is some green. L.A is a really smoggy city and the hills all looked grey as a result...not very pretty.

Hallo Everyone
I've arrived in Australia (yesterday actually) after a bit of a delay. Our flight leaving L.A was delayed until the next night because of a problem in engine #1. I don't know what the problem was but I'm glad they fixed it! As such we spent the day in L.A going to Hollywood Blvd and taking a drive around Beverly Hills. It's not what it's hyped up to be...I can't say I like the concrete smog city but we had fun anyway!
Apart from being really tired I've got no complaints- it's bright a sunny here with weird/interesting bird calls, flowers in bloom, and is essentially the opposite of Toronto at this point in time.

xoxo,
F

P.S I made Nanaimo bars for the family here as they'd never heard of them...and I soon found out there is no such thing as Graham Crackers or their crumbs here. It's sad that they miss out on S'mores too.

I've marked the areas where I'll be living and using as a "main base" to travel from. I'll add a map of Britain when I know better where exactly I'll be traveling other than the terribly helpful "all over".

Where in the World

I'll start off with a bit of a warning; I'm not very good at blogging in the same sense as I've never been good at writing in a diary. That said, I apologize in advance if the posts aren't terribly frequent (I'm aiming for once a week), or thought provoking!

My Trip in a Nutshell:
January 14th, leave to Australia. Arrive in Brisbane January 16th.
April 2nd, leave Sydney to Seoul, Korea. Arrive in Gunsan night of April 2nd.
April 19th, leave Seoul to fly to London.
The end of my trip is open and I will keep everyone posted on when I come home.

Hope to see most everyone before I leave!
Cheers