The British Invasion - Scarborough Marina, Queensland, Australia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 26 Apr 2010 05:44
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27:11.685S 153:06.401E
Or our version of it anyway...
As promised, Jackie and Michael (from the British
boat Lady Kay) flew over from New Zealand to stay with us for a week on
Harmonie (4/7/10 - 4/14/10). As you might recall, our long time cruising
partners decided to return to New Zealand instead of carrying on to Australia
with us last October. This year, their plan is to complete a loop through
the islands much like we did last year, although they will skip Tonga and sail
straight for Fiji, then on to Vanuatu and possibly straight on to Australia
after that (skipping New Caledonia). They will most likely
participate in the Sail Indonesia rally next year and possibly catch up with us
in late 2011 in Malaysia or Thailand. Knowing that we wouldn't be seeing
them for a while, we were very happy to have them aboard Harmonie for a week in
Scarborough.
The marine attractions around Scarborough are few
and far between, so we opted to remain at the marina with our guests and do the
land travel thing instead. Below are pictures from our week with the
Brits.
Picture 1 - The city of Brisbane as seen from
the museum/art gallery section of the city called South Bank, which
(surprise) is located on the South Bank of the Brisbane River. While
there, we took a quick look in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. The
gallery was in the midst of a major exhibit changeover, so there wasn't much to
see. We did walk through one interactive installation though....it
involved a small, glassed-in room with a mirror on one side and thousands of
thick pieces of white twine/string/yarn hanging from the ceiling.
Each piece was a slightly different length, so the effect was like looking at an
upside-down landscape of white rolling hills. Walking through it was like
walking through a very dense upside-down cornfield - one that was embarrassingly
easy to get lost in. Hmmmm.... sometimes the point of modern art escapes
me, but the experience was kind of cool. Next was the
Queensland Art Gallery, where we spent quite a bit of time in the hat
exhibition. Yes, hats. The highlight for me was seeing that crazy,
twiggy crown-like hat that Camilla wore when she married Prince
Charles. I can report that it was just as odd-looking in person as it was
when sitting on Camilla's head.
Picture 2 - The friendly gargoyle over
the entrance to The Printing Office, built in 1910. Lots of gargoyles
in Brisbane.
Picture 3 - The Shrine of Remembrance.
An eternal flame burns here for the Australian soldiers who died in WW
I.
Picture 4 - Michael and Jackie in the Brisbane City
Botanic Gardens.
Picture 5 - One of those cuddly and perpetually
sleeply koalas. We went to the Australia Zoo because it was highly
recommended in the Lonely Planet Guide. The Australia Zoo is owned by the
Irwin family. You know, Steve Irwin, the Australia crocodile guy who died
when he stepped on a giant sting ray? Anyway, we went to the 'show' when
we first arrived, thinking we'd get to see one of those amazing animal
spectacles. It wasn't long after we settled down in the 'Crocoseum' that
we were subjected to thirty minutes of Bindi (Steve's 11-year old daughter, who
is named after a crocodile) singing stupid animal songs and dancing with her
group of 'jungle girls'. We should have known better....it was Easter week
and Queensland kids were on a school holiday. It didn't get a lot
better after the show, but at least we finally got to see a few koalas up
close.
Picture 6 - The Glass House Mountains.
The one in the center of the picture looks a lot like our own Devil's Tower - an
abnormally tall spike of rock sticking up well above its surroundings.
Named by Captain Cook, who thought they looked like the glass furnaces
of his day, they are really volcanic lava plugs that used to be in the
center of volcanic craters. The volcanoes and their craters eroded over
time, leaving only the lava plugs. This picture doesn't do them
justice as their relative mass and height comes as quite a surprise
when they sneak up on the horizon.
Picture 7 - Jackie and Michael on the beach in
Mooloolaba (pronounced ma-loo-la-ba). This marvelous surf beach is about
an hour's drive north of Scarborough. Lined with high rise resorts and
about eighty restaurants, this place is great for good food and people watching
- not to mention the surfing (not that we ever go surfing....). One of our
friends from the World ARC rally, Eric, from the French catamaran Williwaw II,
nearly met his demise on this beach last year when he got flipped by a wave
while body surfing. Lucky for Eric, one of the life guards saw him
floating face down in the surf and immediately swam out to rescue him.
Eric was resuscitated and after some recovery time, was flown home to France
where, thankfully, he recovered fully. Scary.
Picture 8 - View of the Gold Coast Hinterland from
the Binna Burra Lodge. The four of us drove about two hours south to
the Gold Coast Hinterland (mountainous area just inland from the Gold
Coast, which is just south of Brisbane) to meet John and Sue at the
Lamington National Park Binna Burra Lodge. The plan was to get there
early enough for a hike, stay one night, hike again in the morning, and
then move on to stay one night onboard Storyteller, which was docked in
Southport in the heart of the Gold Coast. We did follow the
plan, but there were one or two hitches we weren't expecting.
First, it rained. We should have expected
this as Lamington National Park is a rainforest. Duh. Never
fear though, we hiked through the mist anyway (Don even went part-way with us)
and thoroughly enjoyed the walk through ancient, lush forest with the
occasional invigorating valley view.
Second, it wasn't until we arrived back at the
lodge, when Don opened the door of our cabin to greet us that we
realized there was something amiss. "Beware of the leeches!!" Don
bellowed. Leeches?? What leeches?? We did see the signs in the
lodge cafe when we ate lunch urging visitors to "Please remove leeches
outside.", but we thought the signs were a joke. Aha!
The joke was on us.
Leech count:
Don: 6
Michael: 2
Jackie: 2
John: 1
Anne: 1
Sue: 0
And this was with socks and sneakers on (except for
the leech-ridden Don, who wore only his crocs because no
other shoes will fit on his doughy, fluid-filled foot). Aside
from John and Sue, none of us had ever experienced leeches before, and to say
that we were creeped-out is an understatement. To
Sue's bewilderment, Jackie and I cranked into hyper leech-fear mode and
proceeded to check our feet and legs thirty times an hour for the remainder of
our stay at the Binna Burra. We were brave enough to chance another hike
through the rainforest the next morning though, and happily escaped
leech-free. True, with the exception of Michael, who had one particularly
large and gelatinous leech attached to his wrist, which Jackie happened to
notice while we were all having coffee in the cafe. Yes, the same cafe
that has signs urging patrons to "Please remove leeches outside." Michael,
who until this time professed not to have the same level of leech paranoia that
Jackie and I were exhibiting, did move quite quickly to remove the leech -
initially attempting to flick it in Don and my direction, but when that didn't
work, scrambling up from the table to grab a napkin and use it to whisk the
offending leech off his wrist and out into the great outdoors.
Picture 9 - Sue and Jackie looking relaxed and
happy (pre-leech knowledge) next to a massive and ancient tree in the
rainforest.
Our last night with Jackie and Michael was spent on
Storyteller with John and Sue. All was very pleasant as we sipped
sparkling wine with our Indian food at a nearby restaurant on the very ritzy
Southport strip and reminisced about leeches.
We enjoyed the British Invasion very much and do
look forward to Michael and Jackie 'catching us up' (a little Brit-speak for
you) in Southeast Asia.
More on our long-awaited departure from Scarborough
Marina later.
Anne
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