Miscellany

Kurilpa Street Bridge.


Spilling spoons sculpture. South Bank.


Early morning rowers on the river.

I am trying to document both the Kurilpa Street Bridge and the Hale Street Link. They will only be built once, so each day is a unique snapshot of their progress. Here, the bridge looks to me like a ship.

Sometimes, in the morning, rather than swim at the UQ pool, I swim at Streets Beach and breakfast at South Bank. The morning is a lovely time to be there and the spilling spoons sculpture (who is responsible for this beautiful object?) was spilling water in its lovely random fashion.

And, finally, I am a very lucky person learning to row on the river. Although my last expedition (in a sharpish wind) we cut short because of its hazardous nature.

Last row

Stacked oars in the UQ Boathouse, with boats in the background

Our last row this morning. We had seven and we rowed seven and we all rowed most of the time. The only time all seven were not rowing was when we were manoevring to get in to the pontoon and when we were turning about. A. (our coach) stayed at the stern the entire time - I presume to make sure she knew precisely where we were headed.

It's an amazing world. There is a living all around the world for rowing coaches and A. is off to Inniskillen in the new year to take up a rowing coaching post, while most of us have had a pretty positive experience and intend to keep on next year, rowing fours not eights in the early new year. A far cry from when I was a girl growing up and such a sport was simply not offered.

But here, the college (perhaps 200 girls) field 5 fours, which is 25 girls with the coxes, and so do all the other nine colleges.

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)

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.