Brisbane is a nice city -- lots going on here, with no shortage of stuff to do. Susan and I got mountain bikes and we've been enjoying the many urban bikeways with new local Brisbanite friends Lauren and her father, Craig, who are into biking. We've ridden our bikes a couple times to the coast... we take the train to a 'burb called Mitchelton and there's a bikeway the whole way to Shorncliffe, on the coast -- it's about a 3 hour bike ride and lots of different scenery along the way.
Brisbane Botanical GardensWe'd like to hit some offroad MTB trails, but ironically haven't been able to get to any very easily without a car, so that plus my music habit (amplifiers, etc.) and our desire to go beyond Brisbane have prompted us to buy a car, which we just got a few weeks ago. It's a 2004 Nissan Pulsar hatchback, which we hope will be good on the fuel economy. So far, driving for me has been scary, as I started out leaning TOO far left and I don't like the roundabouts! Oddly, Queensland gave me a driver's license with only a few forms of ID and no driver test. But, with each time I drive, it gets easier and more comfortable, so it's getting better.
I've been plugging away at "uni" and so far I've been liking it okay. I've decided that I'm not really into the academic theory type classes and much prefer the practical application classes (i.e. programming). This semester I took two of each, but I think I'll be avoiding the theory classes from now on! Susan seems to be liking her job well enough. She's recently started doing some research work at a lab in Coopers Plains -- a suburb at the south end of the city and she's also started working at an HIV clinic one afternoon a week -- so she's keeping busy.
I've now joined two bands -- one original band and one cover band. The original band is sort of psychedelic indie rock or something like that. We just found a drummer a couple of weeks ago and hopefully, we'll get some recordings and think of a name for ourselves so we can share our music with the world. The band includes me on bass, a Scottish guy on guitar, an Aussie (who just recently moved back to Oz after 14 years in the US) on keys/guitar/vocals and the drummer is the token local Brisbanite. We've got a number of songs, which we're still refining. The cover band doesn't really have a name yet either, but the drummer and guitarist/vocalist have been playing together for years and we may add a guitarist/backing vocalist (after I proved how badly I sing and play at the same time).
This past weekend we wanted to do our sea kayaking trip (for which we have vouchers) but we could only do it Sunday, so I guess we need to be better about booking further ahead!! So far, we haven't been very good at that... Instead, we went for a day hike in Lamington National Park, which is about a 1.5 hrs south of Brisbane in the Gold Coast hinterland (they seem to be fond of that word, "hinterland" here). We wanted to go camping as well, but ditto on the planning ahead thing... all booked up! The hike was okay, although the map I downloaded from the web was too small and didn't make much sense to us, so we were sort of wandering back and forth trying to figure out where we were. We encountered an older local couple on the trail, and they took pity on us and gave us their more detailed map. So, now we'll have to go back and get in a proper hike. This time we had gone to the Binna Birra area, but next time we want to go to an area called O'Reilly's.
I STILL haven't gotten permission to work from Immigration, which is annoying since they said it should take 7-10 business days and it's been over a month now. I've applied for a few jobs, but it doesn't do me much good if I'm not allowed to work! I called the Immigration help desk and they claim it should be processed by the end of this week. We'll see...
So... I've finally posted some pictures I've taken over the months. Some from the Brisbane area and some from Melbourne I took when we were there back in Decemeber (!!). Enjoy!
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/barckhoff/AroundBrisbane2008http://picasaweb.google.com.au/barckhoff/MelbourneDec2007
