A wet cold Brisbane - where the hell are we?
Trip Start
Jul 10, 2008
1
5
20
Trip End
Jul 10, 2011
Brisbane,
Queensland,
Australia
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Our first task was to get by the tough immigration folks. On my last visit to Sydney they had nicely disinfected my hiking boots for me, there was a little red dust on them from their last trip to red rock country in Utah. I had been informed that if they wanted to they could have fined me about $100 for the cleaning service. Erica decided to chance her luck and bring food supplied to us by Qantas Airlines on our flight over. She soon disposed of a nice packed of salted nuts while we waited for our luggage and the sniffer dogs came around. We saw them confiscating nuts from other people, although the M&Ms she brought were OK. I had concerns about my Congolese face mask that I forgot to give to the movers and subsequently had to come in our checked luggage. Luckily we didn't get picked for the random x-ray machine that checks for organic material and strolled right through the rest of security.
After the great escape we proceeded with out bags to a different terminal. We had to take a train there was a 20 minute wait in between. It was raining and cold and at 7am in the morning it was rather chilly to the point of getting the shivers, I was stood there in my shorts and t-shirt, the only clothes I had. I was expecting to be arriving in the tropical heat of Darwin with no rain and 30C + temperatures until October! What sort of country had we come to! I have to say also that arriving in Brisbane was a bit of an anticlimax, we had both though that it would feel like we had arrived in Australia once we got there. I don't know what we expected, kangaroos bounding down the runway? But at the end of the day multinational airports are pretty much the same all over the world and we could have been in London or NY for all we knew.
Next we had to recheck out bags. Well the lady at the check-in got a bit shirty with us when she saw the size of our hand luggage, unfortunately she got to weighing mine and was none too happy that I had gone over the 8kg weight limit - didn't she realise we were coming for 4 years! My bag was overweight by quite a bit as it had all my nice camera lenses in it. She requested we put it in the hold and when I asked nicely if there was any way around putting it in the hold she stormed off saying 'they won't let you on the plane with it you know, you could kill someone with that bag if it fell out of the overhead locker!' Well it was 7am in the morning but I felt she was maybe a bit over dramatic! We proceeded to the departure lounge hoping we would make it on the plane. In the end Erica got stopped boarding the plane and was told her bag was too large and they checked it for her, but told here there was no guarantees it would make it to Darwin on our flight. Mine passed the visual inspection and I was able to part split it with Erica, it was probably still a smidgen over 8kg but it did not fall out of any overhead lockers and hence we survived the flight without any deaths to fellow passengers.
As our plane got close to Darwin the memory that will stick in my mind were all the bush fires around, not huge ones but a plume of smoke here and a plume of smoke there. Now Erica was the breadwinner and the wage earner it was her job who had arranged for a limo to come and pick us up and take us to our hotel. She was happy that this was the first time been met at the airport when someone holds up the sign with your name on it, hell it had only happened once before to me. We had never seen a luggage conveyor belt with so many people around it. It must have been 5 deep. It was a short belt and there were 2 flights arriving at the same time. I hate fighting with crowds in situations like that so we stood back and waited until things had cleared a bit before grabbing our bags. In fact I've always though it would be a lot easier if everyone took about 5 steps back and just went forward to pick up their bags, but it never really works that way! Luckily the over sized hand luggage they had checked for Erica arrived. The craziness here reminded my of a great system that had at Launceston airport in Tasmania. They had no conveyor belt, instead they just drove out the nicely stacked luggage cart into a side room at the airport. Once the cart had stopped you could just stroll over and pick you your luggage. It was all very civilized and made me think if all these expensive conveyor belt systems at airports around the world were misguided spending and if simpler sometimes isn't better.
On the way back to the hotel our driver pointed out a few low spots on the road where the previous year there had been flash floods and over 2M of water, this was 4km from downtown Darwin! We quizzed him more about the Darwin weather system. What are the seasons? How hot and humid does it get? Is it liveable? We were surprised to hear that he and a number of other people he knew actually liked the wet season, it seems like it will rain a lot for short periods each day, but outside of that it is often blue skies. There is still of course the 'build up', but as a lifelong native he didn't seem to mind that too much either. Time will tell but I get a feeling it's not going to be any worse that the hot humid summer days in Boston, but just constant for a couple of months. I for one was looking forward to a tropical climate for a few years and seeing what it was like to live through a monsoon.
Well there is nothing like getting to a new city and getting out to explore a bit. After some quick showers we were out and about in town. I've learnt the quickest way to get over jet lag is to try to adjust to the local time zone as quickly as possible. Our plan was to try to stay awake until 9pm that evening! We wandered around town and had a look in the shops. One of the great things about Australia is the price you see on the label is the price you pay. There is no sales tax that gets added on afterwards. When you walk up to the register with $1 items hand over the dollar bill only to have the cashier say 'that will be $1.06' and have you scramble around in your pocket for additional change. We both like this system.
One thing we have noticed in Australia is the number of sex shops, they are very conspicuous and even walking down the main tourist drag and shopping street, Mitchell Street, they are set amongst the rest of the stores.
I always find the best way to determine how expensive a country is based on its beer price - besides there is only so much time it is enjoyable to spend in shops! We found a really nice outdoor bar looking towards the Timor Sea (Char Restaurant @ Admiralty I think on the corner of Knuckey and the Esplanade). Here they had some of the finest beers (and food apparently) that Darwin had to offer. From a bar perspective the beer price was reasonable. The one big difference is the bar staff certainly don't expect a tip. I had become use to the system in the US where you are expected to give a tip both at restaurants of up to 20% and bars where you sit at the bar about 10%. I have nothing against this when the service is excellent. Although to get mediocre or crap service and still be expected to leave at least 15% in restaurants was not a part of any system that I believed it. Service was generally superb in the USA, but I always felt the tip system had turned into a way to make prices look cheaper and have the customer subsidise what the restaurant owner paid in salaries. In Australia tipping wait staff is optional depending upon the quality of the establishment and the level of service. You would normally not leave anything over 10% and I've never heard about tipping of bar staff. One thing I have learnt since been here is it is often nice to leave some small change, but nothing more than 10% for a taxi driver, as I write this we have taken a few taxis and never left anything (oops!) but any taxi driver we've used always seems to have left with a happy smile.
On our way back to the supermarket we popped into Woolworth's or Woolies as the Aussies like to call it. Over in Australia Woolies, along with Coles is highly effective and one of the two main supermarket chain. Funny thing is people in the USA will recognise Woolworth's as failed five and dime stores who didn't move with the times and went bankrupt. In Australia Woolies also own Big W (the second larger big-box retailer) and Tandy and Dick Smith's (two popular electronics stores). Well I digress, we were a bit shocked at first with the cost of food in the supermarkets. Compared to the USA ground coffee, for example, was up to 3 times the price as was that box of tangerines we were eying up. Beer was expensive, even at the supermarket store it was $15 to $20 for a 6 pack. However wine was definitely a lot better value in Australia. We had a feeling our drinking habits would change :-)
We headed back to our hotel room that night to chill out - for me it was nice to see so many British TV shows on the TV that I missed seeing in USA. There was Top Gear, The Bill, a lot of David Attenborough and the news contained a mix of British news, US news and of course Australia news. A perfect mix for someone who had lived in all 3 places! I had a feeling I would be watching more TV over here!
On a final note on our first impressions - we had concerns before we arrived about the temperature, but at this time of year it was fantastic. During the day it was hot, but walking around during the day with a sun hat was pleasant. In the evening it was perfect for sitting outside on your deck with a class of cold beer - It reminded me of the Mediterranean. There was also often a nice sea breeze. The good news was from what we understood the temps and humidity never changed much away from what we were experiencing now all the way from May to September.
