Daily collections

Colour on the walk home, yesterday


Solitary mangrove. From the Goodwill Bridge


SouthBank Creek. In the morning.

Felt somewhat dispirited after our fortnightly gettogether, but then don't I always? I just try to keep beavering away.

Floating vegetation

Flood debris in the mangroves at QUT


UQ Boat House and pontoon and rowers getting off the river


Flowering foxtail palm, SouthBank

The ferries started again on Tuesday. It was the first day I had looked at the river since they had been cancelled (on the previous Thursday). There were huge logs everywhere as well as the mats of vegetation I had seen on the first afternoon after the storms. What is curious and disconcerting is that the floating vegetation continues to float, moving upstream and downstream with the tide.

We've had more rain in the last two days, too. But one wonders when the floating vegetation will cease to mar the surface of the river. It seems as if it could go on for ever, floating to and fro. (I said this to a woman while waiting for the cat. She assured me that the water hyacinths would eventually die because of brackish water... and presumably then they will lose some flotation. I hope so.)

On Tuesday, it made for interesting rowing, since the last thing we wanted to do was punch a hole in the boat by cannoning into a log.

Various palms are flowering at the moment. And on Sunday, I finally found the powerhouse at New Farm. My father would have loved the restaurant there.



Watt (at the Powerhouse on the river)

Palm trees

Flowering palm by UQ Lakes


QUT: Between O block and Old Government House

Today all I could see were Palm trees. Flowering everywhere. I first of all saw the mess on the path after all the torrential rain we have been having. Piles of what looked like tiny offcuts from wood. But actually the flowers of the palm tree in the first photo.

And then, coming home via Southbank (so that I could have a wallow at Streets Beach) I found another flowering palm.

Sparkling morning after rain

Melaleuca along a Southbank `creek'


The creek on Southbank

We have had several afternoons and nights of torrential thunderstorms. But the morning dawned bright and clear. The Brisbane River is in flood, that is, the water is moving extremely fast downstream and I expect that even the flood tide will have difficulty pushing up river today.

We rowed this morning and finally rowed as an eight. An interesting proposition: the boat rocks and sometimes it's extremely hard to keep your oar clear of the water despite being feathered as you go up to the catch. And when you don't get your oar in square when you push with your legs to pull on the oar, you shoot to the back of your seat long before the rower in front of you who is actually pulling against the water, while you are not. But I managed to be in time most of the time and to pull well on perhaps 2 out of 3 strokes.

The mornings when I row I miss breakfast at the college, and so I breakfast at Poppy's in Little Stanley Street and walk to QUT via Southbank and the Goodwill bridge. Everything was sparkling. Hence the photos.

Coming home, the river had rafts and rafts of vegetation floating down it and they were cancelling the ferries after dark.

Along the river

Mangroves at the QUT ferry pontoon


Southbank. Bougainvillea, weeping figs & palm trees


State Library from the river


Gallery of Modern Art from the river


Poincianas on the building site. (Gallery of Modern Art behind.)


Cranes



Two days earlier. Same site. Pile-driver (yellow) and two cranes.

They tell me Joh was responsible for the Cultural Centre and Southbank. I must think more kindly of him. It is a beautiful place and all Brisbane seems to flock there to barbecue, to picnic, to eat, to swim, to do cultural things and to just enjoy themselves. The people pour off the ferry at the Southbank stop and on again and it doesn't matter what hour of the day or night it is.

The ferry has to slow to a crawl between Regatta and North Quay so as not to disturb the building works on the river. I heard the yellow pile-driver first and then saw it. Amazing that they have built this way since at least the Bronze Age.
See
www.tv.com/time-team/vauxhall-london/episode/450351/summa...

The bridge being built is the Tank Street Bridge
Wikipedia
For the design see
Department of Public Works
I hope it doesn't clutter up the river..

Borrowing the beauty of others' photographs

1. wiggy1, 2. Bad Langensalza- rosa 'Little Artist' 2008-07, 3. Autumn leaves 2008-10, 4. Pahoehoe*, 5. 181_0672 Crabapple Malus Rosaceae, 6. Punk ball, 7. IMG_2243_h, 8. Cistus psilosepalus v. hirsuitus, 9. I am Outta Here, 10. Pink Woolly Feather Flower-7133, 11. Scarlet Honey Myrtle-7230, 12. Brassica rapa, 13. Punica granatum, 14. Wallum Boronia-7816, 15. Tolumnia Durras "No.1", 16. reedmace at Askham Bog, York

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

This mechanism allows me to go back and enjoy some of the photos I have tagged as favourites.

Homeless

Backhousia myrtifolia, at LonePine sanctuary


Gums at UQ Ferry Wharf, on a foggy morning


UQ Ferry Wharf


Ferry Map

Weekends are purgatory. I am without a home.
The river is always beautiful but it is not enough.

Cup day

Against the light. Lorikeet feeding in a flame tree.


Banyan near the Goodwill Bridge

Cup day and maths department party. Before the party I went to some good exhibitions at the QUT art gallery: William Robinson and some lithographs with lovely colour and feeling, and an exhibition called "Replant" where several artists were gathered together on the Daly River to draw, etch, paint, photograph plants.
Some lovely things of Fiona Hall, in particular, Green Ant Nest and Water lilies by Marita Sambono.

(I included the photo of the Banyan, because its structure reminded me of Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia.)

More chirpy

Pandanus. Gorge Walk, North Stradbroke Island.


Casuarinas. Gorge Walk, North Stradbroke Island.


Pathway. Gorge Walk, North Stradbroke Island.


Pathway. Gorge Walk, North Stradbroke Island.

On Sunday, I took myself off to Cleveland to get to Stradbroke Island. The train journey was long & tedious (nearly an hour, with the train stopping all stations), and by the time I found myself at the busstop, I was starting to wonder why I had come. But there was a sign at the busstop which gave a telephone number and advertised a free bus service to the Stradbroke flyer.

Well, the next departure for Stradbroke Island was in roughly an hour, but the bus came by and picked me up and it was a pleasant wait at the down-at-heel ferry service. It had already that island air where people busy themselves with island things and tourists are necessary nuisances. No information needs to be given: the locals know and the tourists will find out as the island time and processes take them in hand. (I'll go again, but probably not by train.)

Blue

Jacarandas

These are georgeous but I am pretty blue.