Cultural word association

2008-10-06 - Monday

As mentioned yesterday, the Port of Brisbane is our destination today. Again, there are no activities planned; today's plan is just to drive the 550 km to get ourselves to Brisbane so we can meet our ferry ride to Moreton Island tomorrow morning.

It's funny to think that we'll be driving to Brisbane, but not really taking any time to see the city of Brisbane; after all, it is one of the more recognizable Australian cities. But that's just not the way this tour is designed. I can't really say I'm upset by that either. If I had wanted to tour all of the cities of Australia, I could have signed up for that type of tour... I can't say I'd have traded anything I've done yet to tour any of the cities we've passed through in more depth... and really, I will have a couple of days to explore Sydney... So that's cool enough for me - well, maybe Melbourne would have been cool too... But we can't be greedy now, can we.

On the way to Brisbane, we stopped into the Ettamogh Pub, which is attached to a themed park called Aussie World. Ettamogh's claim to fame (as far as I could figure) was that the crew of builders had forgotten their levels at home when they build this structure. Except for the bar and tables, there's not one vertically straight wall in the building.

Well, I don't have much more to write for today, so I'll fill it in a bit with some of things I've learned about the English language from my English and Australian co-trekkers:

* Pants are underwear, not outerwear (I got more than one strange look when I mentioned, "I think I'll wear pants today.")

* Trousers are outerwear (what we would refer to as pants)

* Aluminum is pronounced <a lu min eum> not <a lum in um>

* Cheers is used to express thank you and good bye, but not hello

* Rubbage bins are garbage cans

* Thongs are flip-flops, not underwear

* Esky is a food storage cooler

There's more and if I can recall them, I'll add them before I post this entry.

So, back to the Port of Brisbane. Brisbane is basically a commercial centre for Queensland; there's really no touristy stuff there. So, other than shopping, which I could do without, I wasn't really missing anything by not touring the city.

However, pulling into our accommodations for the night, Matt (our tour leader) could sense some pent up edginess with the group as a result of 2 long days of travel; so he suggested we hit a local beach to work off some energy.

It was a great suggestion. The beach was actually more a sandbar; with Brisbane visible to the west ant Moreton Island just barely visible to the east.

Along the sandbar route we walked, there were several beached jellyfish - a translucent blue in colour; and a great deal of washed up, dead coral.

On the way back, Paul came across a miniature porcupine fish which fluttered around our feet. He was a pretty cute little fella and more ressembled a wind up toy than a living creature. I'm sure Pugsy, my sisters Boston Terrier, would have loved to play with it... don't think the porcupine fish would have enjoyed it very much though.

With some energy spent it was back to our site for supper. Prepared by Emma and Jessica, we had a choice of seafood or meat sauce (red) over a bed of spaghetti.