Goodbye Australia
Well, the time has finally come for me to say goodbye to Australia and fly back home to Canada. I've had a great time here and made a few friends along the way too who I'll dearly miss.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this blog over the past year.
Trip to "Straddie" Island
This weekend my friend Ed took me and a few of the girls I live with to
North Stradbroke Island (nicknamed Straddie Island) for the day. It's a small island off the coast of Brisbane. The island is so small in fact, you can fill your prescriptions and get a loaf of bread all in the same place! How handy!
The first I should mention about Straddie Island is that it's not a popular place for tourists. Tourists usually go to Fraser Island or Morton Island, Straddie Island is more of a place where locals go to spend the day or weekend. The island itself consists of a very small population, it's because of this that most students take the ferry into Brisbane everyday to go to school. I suspect that it's only high school students that do this but I didn't see any schools when I was there so I can't be 100% sure.
We first arrived in Dunwich via the ferry. It was still quite early in the morning (around 8:30am) and we got to see all sorts of trucks driving up and down one of the main roads towards the sand mines. Around 9am we hopped on the bus to our first stop, Amity Point where we met a very nice bus driver named Bill. He told us a bit about the place and asked us where we were from, when we told him we were from Canada he said, "Canada? The one with America? That Canada?" Yes... as I said, the people who live on this island don't get many tourists other than locals from the mainland so umm... yea...
After getting off the bus we went for a short walk by the docks where we saw these beautiful large black and white birds sitting on top of the posts; pelicans.
There were also the obligatory (clearly Australian) signs that showed up here and there warning of the dangers that lurk beneath the surface of the water. Mwahahahhaa!
I think this sign looks more like a spider or some other creature than an octopus.
Moving along, we went to the Amity Point Community Centre to check out the cricket game for which I thought was pretty boring. It was a nice little place though, similar to a legion as far as I understood it. We stayed there until around lunchtime when we headed back to the bus stop to wait for the bus.
We had a bit of time before the bus arrived so we did a bit of looking around at the shops and things, there was a small corner-store/bait and tackle shop across the street. I love the video games they had just outside the store, they look so old!! This further confirms my notion that traveling to Australia is like traveling back in time.
We arrived at Point Lookout around lunchtime and went to a lovely fish and chip shop called "Fishes". I had a fish burger which consisted of a fish fillet, breaded and cooked on a bun with lettuce, tomato, mayo, a slice of beetroot and a slice of pinapple (very Australian those last 2 ingredients).
After lunch Ed and I went for a walk while the other girls relaxed back at the restaurant. There were 3 weddings going on that day so there were photographers and people dressed up all over the place. Stradbroke Island actually makes for a very nice photo spot with the green trees, and ocean background as a backdrop.
Upon returning to get the girls we all went for a walk down to the beach, 200 stairs down. We then had to climb back up over to this other hill in order to get to this really cool sand tobogganing place. Considering that it was a Saturday afternoon it wasn't too busy at all! There were a few kids going down the hill on a board. Usually there are bits of cardboard around that people use to slide down the hill but we couldn't find any so we settled for just sitting around at the top of the hill for a couple of hours playing with the sand; it was very soft.
We started to head back just before sunset, we walked along the rest of the beach towards the bus stop which was only a few metres away. On the way back we saw people fishing on the beach as the sun was setting over the horizon.
Paniyiri
It was the Paniyiri Festival (pronounced: pan-ee-year-ee) this weekend! Paniyiri is a Greek word meaning gathering or coming together. I went with my friends Ed and Claire, it was a great afternoon with good food, fun and dance.
We started the day off with a bit of lunch, there were a crazy amount of people at the festival and food places everywhere serving all sorts of delicious treats. Haloumi (fried cheese with mint), kalamari (squid), moussaka (an eggplant dish), melomakarona (a honey and nut covered cookie), and baklava (nut filled flakey pastry) to name a few dishes being served. I especially enjoyed the haloumi and honey puffs.
After a bit of lunch we sat around for a bit to watch the traditional dancers on the main stage. This girl was doing a type of dance where the boys dance one by one in front of the girls in hopes of finding a partner and the girls reciprocate, this girl did her dance with a little jug.
After a while we got up to do some walking around to see what else there was to see. At the top of the hill away from the main food area there was a honey puff eating contest. Honey puffs are small Timbit like pastries covered in honey and served warm. The aim of the contest was to see how many you could eat without using your hands within one minute.
Heading further in and escaping from the crowds we went into the Greek Club building where they were Greek cooking demonstrations and displays featuring these eggs. They're emu eggs that are carefully carved to varying depths to allow more or less light to shine through.
The cooking demonstrations that we got to see demonstrated how to make baklava and melomakarona. The recipes were quite simple to make with ingredients that can be found in almost any grocery store.
Moving back outside we went to see more dances on the main stage and eat more food. One of the more interesting dances of the day was one done by this guy, Arapies tis Kandilas (Danec with a Tumbler) is what I think the dance is called. The principle of the dance without spilling the liquid in the glass while at the same time moving the glass around in various ways [
more photos].
The festival went on until late into the night but we left around 5ish. By then the sun was setting and it was getting dark, the sun sets so early in Brisbane.
Oh the things you find at the grocery store.
Since this is a blog about Australia I've decided to create a new blog about New Zealand just to keep things separate. You can visit it at
Venture to New Zealand. Unfortunately it's going to be a while before I can do any sort of decent updating on that particular trip but hang in there I'll get it done.
Now, moving on to today's topic...
First of all, one interesting place to go when you're in a new country is the grocery store. The point being to see what kind of stuff the locals have, what do they buy? What's popular to eat? And of course, do they have anything that sounds a big funny.
Today while on a trip to the grocery store I bought my very own...
Yes that's right, it's mine and nobody elses! Ha! Seriously though, it's a small watermelon that the store advertised as being able to fit in the fridge, they were pretty cheap too, about $1 each.
I also managed to buy myself a whole bottle of...
Yep, won't Torontonians everywhere be so proud! And look! There's 20% more! So what is it? It's sarsparilla, or in this case, double sarsparailla which is a version of root beer so far as I understand it. The root part coming from the sassafras root for those of you wondering. Though sassafras is no longer being used in most countries due to it's possible carcinogenic properties.
So there you have it. A few gems picked up and shown to you as the spoils of a typical day at the grocery store here in Brisbane, Australia.
Back from New Zealand
Well I'm back from my trip to New Zealand, but it's going to take me some time to get all the photos up. So in the meantime here's a
video montage (9MB) that you can watch of the whole trip featuring the song from a New Zealand band called The Exponents.
Leaving for New Zealand
Well I'm off on another adventure, this time to New Zealand. I'm hoping to see glaciers and some of the scenery behind the Lord of the Rings movies and perhaps the elusive (and very ugly I hear)
weta.
My itinerary is as follows:
April 16Arrive in Christchurch
April 17Lake Ohau
April 18Te Anau
April 19Queenstown
April 20Queenstown
April 21Fox Glacier
April 22Christchurch
April 23Arrive back in Brisbane
Sandgate
Yesterday a bunch of us went to a place called Sandgate which is located a few km northeast of the city. While we were there the Bluewater Festival was going on. There were all sorts of people there with the usual kinds of entertainment you would expect to find at a local festival including a couple of stages for entertainment and kids could ride ponies and camels around for rides.
By the time we got there it was almost lunchtime so we went looking for some food. We ended up at this little booth that the local Rotary club was running and decided to get some German sausages. While we were waiting in line we noticed this...
Yes, that's right, they were using a coffin to keep the drinks... I have no idea why. I can't imagine that this would be a cheaper solution to buying a cooler, nor would be easy to transport to the site. Suggestions anyone?
Anyway, we had lunch on a hill overlooking the pier which was quite nice. Just off to the right (past the edge of this picture) in the distance is Stradbrook Island which I intend to go to in the coming months as a day trip.
Instead of staying at the festival (which was quite small) we decided to go for a walk around the coastline. After walking for about 10 minutes we came across these mudflats which I believe were there because it was low tide. It was odd to see people standing out in the middle of the ocean so far away from the shore yet still standing on land.
I wish there had been more time to explore more of the coastline around Sandgate since it's quite beautiful there. It also got me to thinking how convenient it was that we didn't take a car to get there. Had we not taken public transport we would have had to walk all the way back to where we parked the car instead of just hopping on the train and going straight back.
Karen's Birthday
Thursday was my friend Karen's 24th birthday so in celebration a bunch of us decided to take her out for dinner on Friday night. We decided to go out to
Ahmets, a Turkish restaurant down at Southbank (near downtown Brisbane).
That's a licensed Turkish restaurant, as in licensed to sell alcohol. Not licensed by some Turkish council back in Turkey to sell Turkish food. :D
There were about 15 of us that went, all but 3 live at
ISV. That's practically the entire population of
ISV went, so things were pretty quiet around there. We took up the whole front half of the bus getting to Southbank too!
While we were waiting for our food we got to enjoy some of the live entertainment that is special to this particular restaurant on the Southbank strip of restaurants;
live bellydancing (2MB - Requires DivX). Some of the girls were even adventurous enough to
try it out (3.1MB - Requires DivX)!
The food was pretty good, I shared an appetizer plate of hommus with Patrick and ordered something called Iskender which was shredded chicken (or you could get lamb) served over Turkish bread with a yogurt sauce.
Among some of the other dishes that people ordered were various kababs (or as Chantal would call them, "Chicken on a Stick!"), and falafals. Mark ordered their specialty diet dish...
Just kidding! The lemons were for Chantal's chicken dish. For dessert Karen got a special treat of chocolate ice cream and baklava shaped in the form of a star.
Happy Birthday Karen!
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