Brisbane and Beyond

With the forecast looking a little gloomy, the first full day in Brisbane was spent looking for some indoor activities. That ended up including a Castlemaine-Perkins brewery tour. And courtesy of their website, “Castlemaine Perkins has been making Australia's famous XXXX beer on the same Milton site since 1878, to the point where the red "X's have become an unofficial symbol of the state of Queensland. Today it continues with the latest technology to produce the beers that are enjoyed in every corner the state.” As for the tour, it was amusing, informative, and one of the more comprehensive brewery tours I have been on. Surprisingly, we got to see bottling, canning, and keg filling (metal and wooden) in action. If you haven’t been on many brewery tours, I am telling you this is rare. Maybe like the Haley’s Comet of brewery tours. Our guide said this was the first time she had seen wooden kegs filled in 18 months of giving tours.

After that is was lunch at the famed Brekky (Breakfast) Creek Hotel, where I had one of the steaks they were known for. Also, as I had learned on the brewery tour, Brekky Creek is the last establishment in Brisbane to serve XXXX out of wooden kegs.

Our next stop was the University of Queensland (aka the UQ). UQ has a nice campus that is focused around the buildings that make up the Great Court (a big square). If you have seen “Chariots of Fire,” where they race around the University in the beginning, it is somewhat similar. Also, there is apparently a race around the Great Court every year at UQ as well. If it had not been for the big lunch, I might have challenged someone to a race for collegiate and national pride.

The real highlight of UQ for me was that their bookstore had pocket folders. Not exactly the ones I like, but it was a folder with pockets. To understand this, you must know that Australians apparently have very little knowledge about the pocket folder and no concept of the pocket folder with brackets in the middle. I have been using these for school for years (I am not sure how many, but as this is my 19^th year of formal education you can be sure it is quite a few). More surprising about this is that students don’t use laptops very often here and so I am dumbfounded why something as useful has not made a splash. When I hesitatingly asked (because I had no luck in Adelaide) the guy at the counter said, “oh you mean the ones out North American friends seem to like so much.” With folder in hand, I left the UQ knowing that it is often the little things that make a big difference.

In stark contrast to my folder was the “Big Pineapple.” This is yet another fabulous reminder that Australia is a big country with big things that we can appreciate as well. After reading Bill Bryson’s In A Sunburnt Country, I had hoped to see a few of these and the Big Pineapple was high on that list. It did not disappoint. As advertised, it was in fact a big pineapple. Also as a bonus, you could climb up inside of it. En route to the top, there were little models and information about the pineapple industry. I did not read these, but I am sure they were quite informative.



Another day trip from Brisbane took us to Australia Zoo, which was the pride and joy of the late Steve Irwin. It was a little weird going there a week after he died, but it was already in the plans. For a zoo, this was an impressive place. I saw kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian Devils, and Wombats (Oh my!) in addition to several other creatures. All in all it was a good day, but again weird being there so close to Steve Irwin’s death. There were huge piles of flowers and notes posted outside the zoo. The general response to his death here was pretty weird. In almost all the references to him on tv they would say something like “Steve Irwin, he was famous in America.” Also, a public memorial was held at the zoo a week after I was there and limited to a 3000 person attendance. People lined up to get tickets and one woman who was interviewed after camping out all night said that she was overjoyed to get tickets and felt so lucky etc… It seemed like an odd sentiment to attend a memorial service.




From Brisbane, I flew to Cairns and spent 3 days on a live-aboard boat out on the Great Barrier Reef. But that is a story for tomorrow or the next day.