We finally arrived in Brisbane at the end of our motorhome trip. Six weeks and nearly 6,000 km from setting off in Adelaide. That is not a hardcore trip or a massive distance. It was great fun and gave us a good taste of this part of Australia. Now we had arrived to stay with our friends Bruce and Anita for a few days. We have travelled with them and stayed with them before. They are very understanding when it comes to using their house as a base for a few days. When you are travelling long term you need to deal with things as you go. It is immensely helpful to have somewhere you can send a few things, buy stuff off Amazon and that sort of thing.
Our first job was to clear out the motorhome and then return it. We had been doing quite a lot of cooking in the motorhome. We had accumulated a pile of unused cooking stuff. Salt, herbs, flour, tinned tomatoes, dried lentils and so on. This all got donated to Anita’s kitchen. There was also a pile of bedding and a pillow. Princess likes her pillow and the one supplied with the motorhome was too thin, so we had bought a suitable one that she could put her silk travelling pillowcase on. We have not flown for over five months and it is remarkable how much rubbish you can accumulate. The next leg of our journey is many flights. We need to get back down to strictly 23 kg + 7 kg or less. This means getting a bit ruthless with our luggage.
Bruce and Anita live in a lovely part of Brisbane that backs onto a nature reserve. When we weren’t arguing over to keep, we could take walks in the woodlands close to the house. There are many wallabies and kangaroos here. And a wide variety of birds that you can hear but can be difficult to spot. Bruce took us to where some Curlew’s were living right next to the road.
After a day of sorting, we felt we had done enough and Bruce suggested we all go for a drive round. We went out to the coast. A place called Point Danger. Named by Captain Cook. It is a headland on the boundary between New South Wales and Queensland. The Captain Cook Memorial Light is here. A working lighthouse which is the first lighthouse, in the world, to use a laser light. It did not work very well. The laser was installed in 1972 and although it was massively powerful, the beam was too narrow. In a sense, the light was too precise and this made it difficult for ships to spot. A couple of year later, it was replaced by a conventional electric lamp.
This is also a good place to spot whales. As usual we did not see any although the girl in the café said there were some around earlier. The day after we were there was a big whaling event. A humpback calf was born just offshore. Something that has rarely been seen. We missed all that but we did watch the surfers for a while. This is a famous surfing area. We also watched a dredger at work. Big storms move the sand away from the beach. So, they dredge it up and move it back. The beach is big business and needs to stay in the correct place.
We drove north along the beach to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. This is fairly compact sanctuary. Closer to a zoo than a wildlife park. First thing we saw were some koalas. We know better than to call them bears. I imagine these are always a crowd pleaser in zoos. As we arrived, they were moving around quite a lot. Koalas can sleep up to 20 hours a day. To see one moving at all can be quite rare. For a mammal, the koala has a disproportionately small brain. They only eat eucalyptus leaves which are toxic. It is strange existence but they seem quite happy.
We walked through a couple of bird houses. There were some cockatiels, some parrots and a few Gang-gang parakeets. This was easy bird photography. They sit still. I take a picture. Everyone happy.
The koalas may have been happy but the bush-tailed rock wallaby looked thoroughly unhappy. Well, he looked unhappy to me. We had been warned to look out for this type of wallaby when we were out at Kings Canyon but we never saw even a hint of one. I imagined the wallaby to be wishing he was out hopping around the rocks and over the mountains.
Further on were the crocodiles. I doubt these creatures have emotions, just an on-off switch. They just lie there perfectly still and quiet while thinking about killing.
At 4pm it was lorikeet feeding time. The zoo does this every day. It is open to the public at the entrance to the zoo. For a small contribution, you can have a metal tray which will be topped up with a honey and milk mixture. Same time, every day, lorikeets from all around the city know to come here for feeding. Great flocks of them swooping round in a rainbow coloured murmuration. There was a great flock of people too, all holding metal bowls and eventually, there was a great coming together of people and birds. Bruce and Diane both had bowls but it was not going well. For twenty minutes they had both been lifting their bowls skywards in the hope of an avian visitation. Nothing was happening. They were becoming despondent. What was going wrong? Elsewhere, people were being mugged by masses of multi-coloured parrots. In desperation, they moved to a fresh location and refreshed the honey and milk in their bowls. This did the trick. First one bird, then another, then more. I think the lorikeets needed to decide if Bruce and Diane were dangerous or not. Once declared safe, they were in.
We rounded off the day with a visit to Currumbin Beach as the sun was setting. From here we had a good view of the main business district of downtown Brisbane. I photographed a Jetstar aircraft passing overhead – little realising that they were soon to become my least favourite budget airline.
Next day, with our radically lighter luggage, we were flying to Cairns.