Brisbane

It was good to get away for the weekend. Brisbane is my home town. Well, sort of. I was born in Melbourne but "escaped" to Queensland at the age of ten.
We caught up with old friends, ate a lot, drank a lot and had a lot of laughs.
I toured around my old haunts of Ascot/Hamilton/Clayfield. A lot of the graceful old Queenslander homes still exist. Sadly some have sold off some of their original huge blocks of land and have been built out by what is now considered to be acceptable modern architecture. Some of these edifices are appalling in their bad taste and demonstration of wealth. The "pile" that has replaced "Mayfield" in Windermere Road is a prime example of how bad things can be. Even Walt Disney could not have designed something so horrific.
The Breakfast Creek Hotel still cooks the best steak in town. The Rivercat into the city along the Brisbane River is one of the great ferry rides in Australia and you can buy some of the freshest and most varied seafood in the world.

The Brisbane River Cat
We will be returning for some house sitting duties in January 2005 so am looking forward to that.
It was raining we we returned to Sydney and has continued for the next 24 hours.
GREAT!