Brisbane and its second Go-round

After saying goodbye to Airlie Beach, I arrived in Brisbane once again to make an outgoing journey to New Zealand. Two days and two nights hence, Brisbane is a wonderful city. Great daylife, nightlife, scenery, and skyline views. This picture here is over looking the Brisbane River.
This is in the botanical gardens right on the river side and bordering some of the city as well. These trees facinated me and are found sporadically throughout the city and parts of Australia.

With this, I attempt to show you the night skyline a-top Mnt. Coot-tha.

Here is another River view with a sad attempt to mimic the London Eye ... :)

This is in the lagoon at Southbank. This bird wandered around for a bit and enjoyed the lagoon too.

Here is another look of the lagoon, which sits elevated next to the river, city and structure all around.

More city!

Brisbane this second go round was great, I even caught a surprise fire works show viewed next to the building with the hightest elevation in Brisbane!

On-site location work at Plants Whitsunday

After working at the nursery for 2 weeks in retail and wholesale, I volunteered to go out on location at the company Christmas party. With that - the guys who go out on location didn't realize that my Dad had taught me how to garden, dig, shovel, use a wheel barrel, electric screw gun and handle tools. (Thanks Daddy!) So many of them were sceptical of me sticking out working in the direct sun in what feels to be 99% humidity, and not complain about it.

I sure showed them :) With a smile on my face we arrived at our location in Proserpine, Australia, not 20 minutes away from the nursery. With "Utes" (what the Aussies call Utility Trucks) loaded and work starting at 7:00am, you can already feel the heat. Mind you it takes 12 minutes to burn in the Whitsundays, so when you see Aussies apply sunscreen 4 times a day, any other gringo, or Caucasian should apply double the amount of sunscreen. And thats what I did. Lathered up and ready to go, here is our site. Nearly 200 plants total to be planted, irrigated, and mulched the next day. Here are some pics:

Here is a quarter of the site, mounds piled and holes dug, we were unloading all of the plants out of the truck.



This is another half of the property, plants are now in their designated areas, and there are more along the back fence too. You will see some boards in the bottom left of the picture as well, those are for day two when we mulch!

I shall also mention that, around this time of unloading some of the trucks I had my second Kangaroo sighting here. Along the back fence, it came hoping along at what seemed to be lighting fast. It stoped in its tracks again to get its barings, and as soon as I went for my camera, it was gone again. Working with three born Aussies on site, none of them had ever seen a Kangaroo in this city, nor had they seen one in general in a small town setting. It was a 'in the right spot at the right time' kind of moments.


The first break is Smo-Co, which means a smoke and a coffee. That is 3 hours into your work day, you get a small break for a snack, smoke and a coffee. Leaving out the smoke and coffee I had some fruit and got back to work, but Matt and Sam felt it a good time to take a little sit back in the shade.






After break its back to work, here we are planting.




After all the plants are in the ground, we did irrigation. Every plant has to have water especially in this heat and watered nearly 4 times daily. With that runs a major irrigation line, then you have to create alternate lines to reach each plant.




While testing the irrigation lines I had the priveledge to give all the plants a little drink in my wide brimmed hat and loaned purple boots!


Day two after all the plants are in the ground, heaps of mulch were brought in, thousands of pounds worth and we had to spread it all. Notice here the boards are also up now around the plant islands to hold in the mulch as well.




And at the end of day two, a well finished product, greenery and mulched... the guys were proud to have me as part of the team.



They even asked if I wanted to join in the next day laying 300 square meeters of sod. I accepted.

New friends and BBQ's at the Lagoon!

An Airlie Beach night out with new friends.

While Wwoofing, you meet friends of friends, and throught the Kiwi's that were working at the plant nursery, we met some more good people. Michael and Julie from France, and Horatio and Leo from Argentina. The others all met even before they arrived in Airlie Beach. You see, the interesting and yet, un-ironic part about traveling in Australia is you either start in the South and go North, or vice-versa. While on this expedition traveling in a specific cardinal direction- so are thousands of other people... So even if you meet 4 people you get along with, the chances of you seeing them in a town in your next destination are highly likely.

This was pizza and ice cream with the gang.


This was a BBQ night at the Lagoon in Airlie Beach

From the left, Horatio, Michael, Julie, back right is Leo, Hong, Bert and Lindy

And the goodbye pic when everyone parted ways again.

And a random day after work in town at Airlie Beach in the Whitsunday's

A new job or two... and boo those buses

Those pictures are my bus stop... :)

Ha, so I now am at the mercy of the bus system in Airlie Beach... which is not like a busy city's system at all.

A bus comes every hour to half hour or so, but runs on hours that are ever so slightly not comprable to my work schedule. I find myself waking 3 hour before I have to, to take a bus 2 hours before I must arrive into work. Yuck.

This is because I have taken a job as a "WWOOFer". This means a Willing Worker On Organic Farms. So right now I work 5 hours a day for free accomodation and food at Plants Whitsunday, which is a plant nursery just outside of town (9 Kilometers) (Just outside the main town bus stops).

So I was able to flag down the bus going into town two days in a row, but the third day, not so lucky. Since I get picked up outside my work on the main roads, it could possibly be hard to see me waiving, but not when I wave rediculously to try and catch a bus!

So, I ended up trying to hitch-hike... ha! It didn't work. Not many cars went by after the bus, and no one was feeling friendly that morning... but oh well. I was able to find a ride from one of the workers at the nursery luckily!

Made it to work on time (another work at a travel agency to make a bit of income too)

Anywho... flash forward, I get off work and wait 40 min in town to catch a bus home... this is the first bus I have caught at this time around 6:40 pm and aparently it wasn't the right bus. So the ending destination was about 3 kilometers out from where I still needed to go.

So I walked... in the dusk, then in the dark. I did have my little flash light with me that my mom got me. It was a big help. Saw some road kill... and had some quiet time (because my ipod ran out of battery).

Needless to say, I got home safe in a heap of sweat because of the 99.9% humidity rate at the moment, but it is a very safe town and all is good.

I technically only have to take the bus 3 or 4 days a week too, which is not terrible... but being at the mercy of another schedule is no fun :).