Tentative explorations

Banyan. Queensland Botanic Gardens

My first ventures into the city, today. Via the botanic gardens. Lunch in the city with Jane, and then after work, a drinking session with the other students. Then to North Quay and a ferry ride along the river under the darkening sky.

Aerial routes

Kegelia pinnata flowers
(The Sausage tree flowers at nightfall.)

QUT is formed by many buildings close together on a small sloping site. As a consequence it is like a mediaeval town with walkways between the buildings which pass overhead. So as well as the earthly routes, the aerial routes need also to be discovered.

En route

Kigelia pinnata
Walking to the ferry through the UQ campus


Walking to my building on the QUT campus


Leaving QUT via the Goodwill bridge. Low tide in the mangroves


Through South Bank past an artificial creek to catch the 109 bus back to UQ

Going to work, and coming home.

At College

Early morning view across one of the lakes at the University of Queensland


Giant pandanus along the path by the lakes

Finally, the move has been made. I am now in Brisbane.

The colleges are on the western perimeter of the lakes, which are just a part of a more extensive parkland which surrounds the south-west of the university as it bords the river. In the morning I walk amongst immense tropical trees to the ferry, with birds foraging: ibis, geese, moorhens, coots, corellas, a brush turkey and a willy-wagtail. In the evening they are settling down, with much noise, to roost. And as I take my swim in the pool under the darkening sky, the sound of screaming birds from the trees above the pool is remarkably soothing, and not unlike the evening shrill of cicadas on a Sydney summer evening.

So, however stressed I am by making this move, I have a wonderfully calming start and finish to each day. All I have to do is hang in.

Converting

Gum blossom, Whale Beach Road, Whale Beach

A person I know was (is?) a Roman Catholic. He is thinking of converting to Judaism. I just do not see this. Apparently one still believes in the same God, but while continuing to accept the old testament God, one now rejects the son of the new testament.

I just don't believe this.

I can only see it as yearning for a community and hoping that one may find it among those professing a different belief.

Tourist on Google Earth

Rivers in Arnhemland

Had dinner at Z & B's on Sunday. We spent the night on Google Earth: started off hunting for my pictures in Palm Beach, moved to WA to show Z my daughter's place, checked out Rottnest, fireworks for Australia Day seen from South Perth, moved to Uluru, Kakadu, Adelaide River (NT), Pine Gap, Norfolk Virginia (to check out the naval base), did the Milford track, thank's to Z's amazing skill in navigating valleys (the Clinton River and the Arthur), checked out the Nevada nuclear test site with its wonderful subsidence holes from underground tests, and crop circles in the Mid-West.

But the best was exploring the former Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), looking at roads, valleys, canyons, rivers, memorials, bridges, all of which had personal stories attached. (Attempting to repeat the same tourism in the following days, I wrecked my copy of Google Earth.)

M-day

Behind the Bondi Beach pavilion

Moving day is getting increasingly closer and I am getting increasingly freaked out. It will all be over soon and hopefully all the things I am panicking about will simply recede, as all the things to be done take over.