July 17, 2006
QLD
Brisbane's a pretty cool (or rather, warm) city, friendly people and
much more laidback than Sydney. It seems to cover an area as big as
Melbourne but much more open bush spaces. Disadvantages compared to
Melbourne are less ethnic diversity and public transport - and large
mall-covered suburbs with the same depressing multinational brands you see
everywhere else. On the plus side - temperature in the mid 20s during
the middle of winter, and healthy music scene which is hopefully
easier to break into.
Liquid Architecture festival was great fun - Cynthia & I did a multimedia set with video projections plus live computer, guitar, banjo, percussion, shakuhachi etc - compliments we received were that it was 'raw' and 'engaging'. So nice for a change to have a couple of hundred people in the audience, be paid to play, and have someone else doing all the promo work!
It's an amazing part of the world. We did a couple of
thousand k's driving up to Rockhampton and over to Great Keppel Island
to snorkel around some coral (seeing a turtle flying bird-like through
the water a highlight; coral bleaching giving an aspect of sadness to
the whole thing), then inland to Emerald and back down through
subtropical rainforest at Mt Glorious. Then looking at the map we
only covered a little corner of the state!
Even though the temperatures were comfortably warm, it did still feel like winter: the Aussie birds & insects, which get pretty raucous in summer, were quite subdued. We came near a kookaburra in a tree at one point and it sat there silent, not laughing. We also caught a small cane toad (noxious introduced pest) and put it in the freezer (most humane way of killing them apparently).
Queensland is a whole other world from NZ as it goes right up into the tropics. The drought there has been going for a few years now and nobody seems to have any solutions. Several fields were barren dirt as crops were unable to be planted - green irrigated pastures stood out in sharply artificial relief. We passed a number of dry creek beds, and the landscape had a bleached out look the colour of kangaroo fur. Kangaroos are a frequent sight, usually as roadkill carcasses, but you also see a lot of live ones at dusk - and have to be careful of them while driving. I find it deeply ironic that the Australian national animal is most often seen squashed.
Silver eucalyptus trees look and smell amazing.
Windmills are a recurring theme in the landscape.
Australia has dozens of national parks, but most are tiny: 0.3% of the subtropical rainforest is left.
The size of Australia is on a whole different scale from NZ - driving for days is common, and when it's evening on the east coast it's still mid afternoon in Western Australia. On the other hand the arable strip along the east coast is surprisingly narrow - beyond the Great Dividing Range it simply doesn't rain enough, and huge areas are sparsely populated.
The mountains of the Great Dividing Range look more like hills to NZ eyes.
Rainbow lorikeets are a frequent sight, and fruit bats fly around at night.
The Queensland motto is "one day perfect, next day the same".
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Back to music school for term 3 now. This term will be a buildup to Dunedin Fringe Festival - I'm doing two different shows over three nights and should also play at the Wunderbar in Lyttelton on the way back.
Next album I think could be a soundtrack for Dunedin Fringe - I'm keen
to experiment with some new instruments, eg trumpet, saxophone,
clarinet, marimba, and the music school's harpsichord and full-scale
pipe organ...
Plan for next year is taking shape - back to Australia to hopefully
tour the main centres and spend a month or two each in Canberra and
Brisbane saving up, then on to Asia, maybe staying a while in Japan,
and then Europe. I do see the temptation to keep exploring Australia
(we've hopefully found a place to stay and plant trees 50km out of
Darwin) but on the other hand I should probably keep going further...
