Easter in Queensland

Forget chocolate bunnies, Easter 2010 was all about sun, sea and scenery, as Tom and I took our first inter-state holiday in southern Queensland. Home to Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, and the famous Gold Coast beaches, Queensland is a holiday destination for the masses, and it was very obvious why. Our host for the weekend was super-guide Merryl, who I've introduced on the blog several times before, but for those who you haven't read all of the previous editions (and shame on you!), Merryl is Tom's second cousin, and emigrated to Australia from the UK as a teenager. Super-guide is perhaps an understatement, as Merryl planned an unbelievable itinerary of sights that took us not just around the city of Brisbane but also all over southern Queensland. Merryl was not only a great tour guide but an uncomplaining chauffeur, and we zipped around to all of our destinations in her blue Honda Jazz (Dad I know you'll be jealous!).

We flew from Melbourne to Brisbane on Good Friday morning, and our plan for the day was to explore Brisbane. We took a long walk on the stunning southbank of the Brisbane River - it really reminded us of London's Southbank, with similar architecture (think Royal Festival Hall), a wheel almost as good as the London Eye, and several bridges crossing the river into the CBD. What Brisbane had to trump London however, was beautiful park areas and foliage, plus two outdoor swimming areas! It was the southbanks of all southbanks, in my opinion.

Brisbane Southbank

Brisbane Southbank

'Brisbane Eye' (I don't think it's actually called that!)

At the end of our walk awaited a blast from the past - and old friend from Bath university, Lisa Price - who since I last saw her 6 years ago has become Lisa Brownhill, mummy to Rhys and resident of Australia! Needless to say, we had a lot to catch up on, and it was great to meet her husband Richard and gorgeous little boy. Avid readers of my blog will know how baby-deprived I've felt since leaving Dora, Amelie, Ben, Ellie etc behind in the UK so any local babies are much doted upon.

Baby Rhys

L-R: Tom, Katie, Lisa, Rhys, Richard

Back at Merryl's house in the suburb of Daisy Hill, we were at one with nature. The house is on the edge of the forest, and built on a hill, so her first floor dining veranda is at mid-level tree height and provides a fantastic viewing opportunity for the local flora and fauna. Tom loved it, but you all know how I feel about bugs, and as darkness closed in whilst we ate our dinner, I couldn't hide my wandering eyes as I kept an eye on the moths, spiders and little geckos that were running around on the ceiling above us! Merryl tried to tell us about the spiders in the house before Tom immediately interrupted her with, "I don't think Katie needs to know about that at all thank you...!". Flashbacks of our Christmas trip and the huntsman spider encounter were fresh in both our minds, and Tom didn't fancy having that trauma on his hands again!

On the veranda

Dinner on the Veranda

Enjoying Merryl's swimming pool!

On Saturday we started the day with a long drive to the Glasshouse Mountains, and then headed further north to Noosa - a wonderful unspoilt beach resort. The beach was sandy and clean, the sea was warm and inviting - if only I'd had my swimming costume! We enjoyed a good paddle and then strolled along the main shopping street - Tom and I loved it and will definitely be heading back here for a relaxing holiday. Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo is also nearby so we'd like to return to visit his contraversial legacy.

Beautiful unspoilt Noosa beach

Tom and I

There were more beaches ahead of us on Sunday, but this time it was Surfers Paradise – just as beautiful a beach as Noosa, but totally contrasting surroundings. Instead of parklands and little hotels, it was skyscraper city, with dozens upon dozens of high rise apartment blocks to cater to the mass of tourists that flock to Surfers. The Costa del Sol of Australia is perhaps a fitting description, and it is this part of town that earns Brisbane it’s nickname of ‘BrisVegas’. Lots of the theme parks are in the vicinity, but we didn’t have time to visit so have put these in the list for next time. We had find time to swim however – my first proper swim in the Ocean here in Australia! The water was clear and warm and the waves were HUGE! I’d love to have a photographic record of my first Aussie swim, but unfortunately although Tom was left on the beach in charge of the camera, he didn’t take a photo!

Surfer's Paradise aka BrisVegas

Me being silly in Surfers

I thought this was an atmospheric shot

Lifeguard!

The rest of the weekend went by in a flash, so quickly in fact that we’ll definitely try to go back to Queensland and spend more time seeing the beautifully scenery and ticking off some of the zoos, aquariums and theme parks. Brisbane is only a two and a quarter hour flight from Melbourne, so it’s close enough to go for a weekend I think. We weren’t totally devoid of Easter tradition, with yummy Easter bunnies from Merryl, and a very lively debate about religion during Easter drinks with some of her friends!

Coming up over the next few weeks are lots of dinners with friends, Melbourne Comedy Festival, and plenty of sport – Aussie Rules football and Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championships. We’ve also booked some theatre and a weekend away in local-spa town Dayelsford and will be arriving back in the UK 7 weeks today! We are looking forward to catching up with you all....

Here’s some more Queensland photos to close:

View of Brisbane from Mt Cout-tha

T&K, with Brisbane city in background

Surf anyone?! This was on a bus in Noosa.

Noosa beach

Stereotypical Aussie image

This was taken on Brisbane's Southbank, not Merryl's garden!

Kate, this one is for you - the first in hopefully a long list of Australia's 'BIG' landmarks that we will spot!

Button brings victory for the Brits!

If you haven't watched the Australian Grand Prix yet... then the title of this blog has probably already spoilt the result for you. Apologies. It was however, such a phenominal race that I couldn't resist blogging about it as soon as we got home!

Tom and I were really excited about going to our first Forumla 1 grand prix, and with the Australian race taking place within walking distance from our apartment, this was a prime opportunity to attend. We bought general admission tickets for both qualifying and race day, and neither visit disappointed.





Qualifying day was great as there were fewer crowds and we had the opportunity to walk around and soak up the atmosphere, as well as get close to the track to practise our photography of fast moving objects (does it get any faster than this?). We decided that standing up in the crowds for the 2 hour race didn't actually appeal that much, so tried and then failed miserably to get last minute grandstand tickets for the race. Oh well, next year.

Go Hamilton!

We were late arriving on race day due to the arrival one of my UK work colleagues, Sam Tomlinson, in Melbourne. After a quick lunch with Sam and some of the rest of the UK-gang, we rushed to Albert Park and staked our (rather late) claim on a small patch of grass by turn 2. The race went by in a flash and thankfully the rain added to the tension of the race more than it detracted from the comfort of our spectating. Jenson's win was a fantastic end to an awesome weekend of motor sport, and we flooded onto the track with the rest of the crowd to celebrate. I was waving a huge Union Flag and as we gathered with the other Britsh supporters outside Jenson's pit garage, the photographers took advantage of the sea of flags!

Go Button!

Here are some more photos from our fantastic weekend:

Tom celebrating on the track

Thank goodness for eBay - the flag was a great thing to have!

The noise was incredible and ear defenders a must

The British fans were very artistic

This is not me, but I liked the idea

Lewis on the parade of drivers, which I missed because I was in the queue for damn ice creams!!

In the general admission 'pit'.. once was enough

Lunch earlier in the day - L-R - Tom, Rob, Jacqui, Sam

Final celebrations before home time

Melbourne City Romp

This week I'm opening up with some statistics - our blog now receives an average of 5 visits a day, except on a day when we've posted a new entry, when we receive around 50 hits! I'm quite pleased with this, so thanks to everyone for continuing to read. Obviously these statistics don't capture our offline readership, and 'Tom and Katie Down Under' is now truely accessible to all through both printed and audio formats. A big thank you to our diligent parents and their hard working printers for distributing printed version of the blog. Perhaps we should seek sponsorship from Hewlett Packard to cover the ink costs?!

We've had a busy week, Tom with two big projects at work (which were very successful) and me with various social activities (a much better type of busy). On the social side, our friendship pool has expanded by two more people thanks to the arrival of one of my colleagues from London and his girlfriend. I never thought I would celebrate the arrival of two more Brits, and I'm sure you think that we should be mixing with the locals, but it's actually very hard to make new friends in a city of strangers, particularly as an adult. Our closest friends mostly hail from North America, the UK or Ireland (Northern or Republic, we're not fussy), however I did break the cycle on Tuesday evening when I caught up with my Aussie-friend Danielle! Is it cheating that I actually met her in London?

Danielle and I went to watch Mamma Mia the musical, which is a light-hearted story of a young bride conveniently written so as to include all of ABBA's biggest hits. Except Waterloo, which the writers couldn't seem to fit into the story so it was the finale song instead. If you haven't listened to the songs (older generation), seen the musical (middle generation) or watched the movie (younger generation, in which I include children), then you must have been living under a rock for the past two to five years. The show was almost a complete package - it had great music, brightly coloured flared trousers, lots of laugher and a sprinkling of rather attractive half naked young men... but was rather short on a decent plot. I've often wondered how on earth the writers came up with a good story that so many ABBA songs conveniently fit into, and I now realise that they didn't...

Having sworn that we would take a break from fundraising for a few years (mostly to recover some goodwill from our very generous family and friends!), we've been tempted back by an incredibly entertaining Melbourne fundraising event called 'The Melbourne City Romp'. Described as part treasure hunt, part amazing race, the event requires teams of 3 - 6 people to race around Melbourne using clues to look for checkpoints and solving puzzles. After much emailing amongst friends for willing participants, we rounded up a team, which was appropriately named 'Spot the Aus One Out', as from 5 people there was only one Australian.

After a late dinner party on Saturday night, we hauled ourselves out of bed early on Sunday morning to meet our team-mates for a power brunch. Then we spent a gruelling four hours racing around the city! It was great fun and an excellent way to get to know Melbourne better. We received free entry to a lot of the attractions and museums, but the competitive spirit got the better of us so we didn't hang around to browse!

The final results were released today, and we visited 16 checkpoints in 4 hours, earning us 320 points. Topping this up with 14 points for sponsorship money raised, we clocked a total 334 points which placed us 363rd out of 2,400 teams! We were very pleased with this placing, especially as we only raised $14! Discounting the fundraising part of the points tally, we placed 21st - not bad for a bunch of newcomers?!

Katie, Tom, Jacqui, Rob, Erinn - can you spot the Aus one out?

Other recent highlights have included Skyping into Tush's hen weekend, which was fantastic (second to actually being there in person of course), and completing our camera course (watch this space). This weekend it's the Melbourne Grand Prix, and next weekend we are off to Brisbane to visit Tom's second cousin Merryl, so lots more to blog about in the near future. Many thanks to Florence for responding to my question about the official name for Tom and Merryl's family link!

That's me on the computer screen!

Until next time... G'Day!

All Hail!

Today is Labour Day, an annual holiday celebrated all over the world that resulted from the labour union movement and celebrates the economic and social achievements of workers. At the risk of bringing politics into this blog, I’m not exactly a Labour voter, but obviously am happy to support the public holiday regardless. The celebration of Labour Day originated from the ‘Eight Hour day’ movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation and eight hours for rest. Given the hours that British employees work, this might explain why Labour Day is not celebrated in the UK!

In order to take full advantage of the long weekend, Tom and I had long ago booked a trip to Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula. Sorrento is a popular beach destination for Melbournian’s to escape city life, and the rich few have fantastic holiday homes along the beach and in the hills. We were looking forward to a piece of this, and were really disappointed when the weather forecast for the whole weekend was rain and thunder storms! We chose to ignore the quiet sniggering from folks back home, who perhaps thought it quite amusing that we were on the end of a bad weather forecast for once, and ploughed ahead with our plans regardless.

After a leisurely drive along the coast and a stop off for breakfast by the beach, the sun decided to show it’s face - hurrah! Tom and I didn’t hesitate to jump on a boat for a seal and dolphin cruise. We sat on the top deck and sweltered in our trousers and jackets as the sun was beating down on the water. Why on earth did I insist on bringing all this gear with us when half of the other cruisers were in bikinis? Anyway, 15 minutes out into the bay and we were treated to the sight a manmade island full of Australian fur seals. The sight was incredible, but the smell was putrid. I can’t begin to describe the stench, but the fact that some people wanted to swim amongst the smell was beyond me! I had incredible flash backs of watching ‘Doctor Dolittle’ as a child and the Doctor walking around with a seal in a pram and then throwing it off a cliff into the sea. Bizzare.

Next up were the dolphins, which I promise were much better than the photos suggest! It’s very hard to capture the graceful dance of a Dolphin, or as we found, even capture them at all... Here is the single best photo of a bad bunch (of about 60!):

No sooner had we left the dolphins behind but the heavens opened! We had thunder, lightening, and lots of rain. Tom was miserable, I was miserable – but at least we had plenty of layers! We got utterly soaked traipsing from the boat back to the car, and by the time we got into our hotel room I was ready for a hot bath and a lie down. Unfortunately there was only a shower, but before I had a chance to complain we turned on the news to see that the city of Melbourne had been hit by a freak hail storm with hail stones the size of golf balls! The city was flooded and many cars had been dented or had windows broken by the hail. All of a sudden Tom and I stopped caring about the rain in Sorrento, and were very very glad to be out of the city at least.

We were really lucky the next day and managed to fit in some scenic walks and a trip to the local hot springs, which was not a patch on Bath, but I’m not sure why I thought it might be. The sun made a very well timed appearance for lunch at a beautiful winery, and thankfully the rain managed to restrict itself to times when we were in the safety of our car. This morning was even better, and we caught some beautiful early sunshine during a beach walk, which gave Tom a chance to put into practise some new skills learnt on our photography course.

Contrary to my appearance in this photo, I'm not pregnant or fat!

The next public holiday will be Easter, only one month away! We have a trip to Brisbane planned, so I will update you all then, if not before....

Obligatory sunset photo to close!

Australia Day

Next weekend will mark the four month anniversary of our arrival in Australia, and we can’t believe how fast it’s gone. After one month of temporary accommodation, another month of visitors and a third month of hectic work, month number four has been all about settling into our new life. Both Tom and I have been working hard to establish ourselves in our new jobs, which has taken Tom to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, and me to Melbourne’s industrial eastern suburbs (yay!). We’ve clocked up 5,000 km on our car, registered a boiling 45 degrees on the thermometer and made a start on filling out phone book with numbers that don’t start ‘+44’ for the UK.

It was very hot getting in the car after work!

January 26th was Australia Day, which according to Wikipedia.com is the official national day of Australia (really? Gosh I would never have guessed!). Tom and I embraced this holiday whole-heartedly, not because we were well versed in it’s historical meaning, but because we got a much needed day off work. At bit of Googling now has told me that it commemorates the proclamation of British sovereignty over the Eastern Seaboard of Australia, which really makes me think that it should be a public holiday in Britain too! Either way, we celebrated in true Australian style by (1) eating lamb and (2) going to the beach. We even combined the two by eating lamb on the beach, and flew some Australian flags for good measure. It was a beautiful sunny day and we joined our Canadian friends Rich and Tamara for the occasion. Tamara brought temporary tattoos of the Australian flag which we all displayed with pride – I think Tom’s has only just worn off!

Tom and Katie on the beach for Australia Day

The Brits and the Canadian's.. flying the Aussie flag!

Katie

Also at the end of January was the Australian Open tennis championship – and Melbourne was buzzing with excitement for the event. Tom and I were both keen to experience a grand slam other than Wimbledon, and the Australian Open didn’t disappoint. Really it was just a blue version of what we know and love in the UK, perhaps with a slightly more rowdy crowd - I lost count of the times I said, “This would never be allowed at Wimbledon!”. We had tickets to an evening session at Rod Laver Arena (the Centre Court equivalent) but arrived early to soak up the atmosphere on the outside courts. After meeting Richard and Tamara to watch a doubles match featuring a very attractive Russian lady (something tells me the boys collaborated on that decision) we went to find our very expensive seats in the Rod Laver. It turns out however that ALL of the seats are expensive and ours were in the back row! Unfortunately we didn’t get to watch Andy Murray play, but we did follow him closely throughout the tournament and were very sad to see him lose in the final.

Rod Laver Arena

Enjoying the view from the back row..

We’ve just started a photography course for our Digital SLR camera, so hopefully the quality of the photographs featured here will improve over the next 6 weeks - I’ll let you be the judge of that. We are hoping to meet some new people as well as learn more about our camera, and given that Tom hasn’t done his homework yet for this week the former may well be a more achievable objective! We have lots planned in the near future also – a long weekend on the Mornington Peninsula, a wine tasting course and Easter in Brisbane with distant-relative Merryl (if anyone can define the relationship please let me know – Merryl is Tom’s Dad’s cousin).

We are very excited to be coming back to the UK for the first two weeks of June 2010, which is timed for Tush and Andy’s wedding (yay!) but also designed as an opportunity to catch up with friends and family. We hope to see as many of you as possible if you are free when we are in your area – we will be whizzing around the country making stops to shake hands and kiss babies. All good practise in case either of us decide on a late career change to politics!

Here are a few more photos to close:

Valentine's Day BBQ - this is my attempt at making a heart shape from the sausages!

Sampling the local fish and chip shop - where *everything* was deep fried!

Purple sky at night...?

We made a friend at the beach!

I never tire of watching the sun!