Brisbane, Day Two

Today Jaimie's high school friend Amy came in to Brisbane to show us around the city. She works in one of the skyscrapers downtown and lives only a half hour outside the side so she is pretty familiar with it. Our first stop was actually outside the city at Mt Coot-tha. It's a 15 minute drive from Bribane and is the prime lookout point over the city. It was mostly tourists and families while we were there, but at night it is rumored to turn into quite the lovers spot. The weather was a bit cloudy, you could just make out the Pacific coastline beyond the city. While we were watching, a rain storm started dumping on the downtown area. You could see the rain trails streaking down.


From there were drove to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Finally, I would get to see of these infamous koalas. My entire trip, every had been calling them drop bears, a name used to scare tourists. The koalas would apparently drop out of trees and attack, preferring to claw at their victims thoats. This was usually followed by a descripion of a wombat and how they preferred to break people's kneecaps with their thick bony skulls. Lone Pine was also home to wombats, in addition to a host of other species, dingoes, kangaroos, emus are only a few. They even have a Tasmanian Devil, but it wasn't on display. The koalas are pretty cute animals, they mostly sit in trees and munch on eucaplytus. We saw a few of them jump around around from limb to limb and even two younger boys fighting with each other. They bit each other, trying to knock the other one onto the ground. After a few minutes, a larger Koala, probably the dad slothed over to stare at the two frisky ones. The fight ended quickly. We spent a few more hours at the animal park before the rains forced us back to the car.


We headed into the city for lunch, choosing a pub in the center of one of Brisbane's downtown malls. After an entirely massive meal (I had a double quarter pounder w/ bacon) we saw an RM Williams store acoss the street. This is the same chain Jaimie works at as an assistant manager. Seeing as how I had never been in one, we had to take a little trip. The clothes they sell are pretty nice, carry a western Texas cowboy-ish theme, but are extremely expensive. They had one pair of boots made with crocodile and kangaroo leather that retailed for 8000 dollars. I saw a pair of moleskin pants I liked that are pretty unique, I might buy them later if we have time to stop by Jaimie's store.

From there we walked over to Brisbane's Botanic Gardens. Its a large park like area with gardens ranging from a subtropical rainforest to water-dwelling mangroves. These trees are pretty cool, growing up straight out of the water. Even the branches have roots and I suspect that all the different trees are joined together as part of the same underwater organism. I couldn't help but be reminded of Harry Potter's screaming mandrake plants. There were plenty of people strolling around the park, including a game of soccer- something you would sadly never see in the US.

Sadly there isn't more much to do in Brisbane. The city doesn't really have an iconic tourist spot like Sydney's Opera House. at least none we could think of. The four of us spent a few more hours walking around the city before finishing the night off with some beers at a bar down the street from our hotel.