27 November 2005

Xmas Party Season Is Upon Us



I give you ... the Xmas party booze-pool for the RAVE street press party in Brisbane last Friday night. The Beer was Brazilian 'Brahma' brand and the coloured bottles were Smirnoff vodka-flavoured things.





Emily and Lisa with John Cusack autographed book about Johnny Cash





This band is called Sekedin. They played fast, loud and tight punk power-pop. The drummer is the actual star of the band as far as I could ascertain.





Finally, a selection of incriminating evidence.




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07 November 2005

Hot Buttered Soul

The following pictures were taken Friday night last, in the downstairs room of the Alibi cafe during the progression of 'Hot Buttered Soul'. A most excellent night was had by all. Revellers pictured not identified to protect the guilty, and the instigators of the guilty.

And no, I did not play the 16 minute Isaac Hayes version of 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix' that appears on his album 'Hot Buttered Soul'. I played another track.


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31 October 2005

Poker Machine Art II



More poker machine art, from the County Clare Hotel Sydney.

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Sydney Harbour Bridge Sunset



What I've left behind; Sunset while crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Winter 2004.

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30 October 2005

Lichens



Lichen on rocks, NSW south coast.

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Poker machine art

Poker machine art, County Clare Hotel, Broadway, Sydney.






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29 October 2005

Tent Spider



This is probably a tent spider (as close as I can tell from the Qld Museum spider website). We've got quite a colony of these in one of the plants in the backyard. This is a medium sized one. They are very pretty, coloured, stripey spiders.

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Kookaburra





This is 'Cookie' a member of the kookaburra family whose territory includes our backyard. Cookie's mate likes to show off his hunting prowess by flying up to a tree and visibly parading his latest catch for us to admire. We once saw him with a blue tongue lizard, nearly the size of himself. I love the way that kookaburras wait silently for up to an hour, patiently watching for the signs of a lizard betraying itself with its movements on the ground.

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28 October 2005

Golden Orb Weaver



This Golden Orb Weaver spider set up residence on our back deck a couple of weeks ago. The other day it caught a large beetle and ate it in only a few hours - now it's much fatter than pictured here. Don't worry, these spiders are common and harmless.

Update: After she got fat on the beetle, a small male turned up and spent the next week in the web with her (the male is tiny compared to the female). Last night (Sun 6th Nov) she started climbing around our balcony - we were very curious what she was doing and thought she was looking to move to a new location. But this morning we found still in her web - much skinnier, even skinnier than pictured here! She had laid a marvellous big golden webb'd eggsack up underneath the gutter. Baby spiders on the way! Lets hope she catches another big beetle to make her fat again.

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Yo yo the Grey Butcherbird



This is one of the two Grey Butcherbirds that hang around in our back garden. We call them both "Yo-yo" after the various calls they make. One is shy and retiring and the other - seen here - is as bold as brass. From their colourings (more buff than grey), we think the two butcherbirds are juveniles. There are also some Pied Butcherbirds in the area, they sing absolutely beautifully in the early morning. However they keep their distance. Because of the butcherbirds though, we can't leave the budgerigars unattended in their cage out on the back deck - Butcherbirds are predators of nestlings (look at that big sharp hooked beak) and a captive budgie would make a tasty snack.

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Urban Chicks



Monday afternoon we found this chicken browsing by the side of street near our house in Auchenflower. She's a very cute chicken.

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31 July 2005

Hallelujah I'm a Bum!

Last Saturday we stumbled across The temple of peace in Toowong Cemetery. Built by Richard Ramo, it's dedication was attended by thousands of socialists and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies. Hallelujah bum again!

23 July 2005

Who do we love now? HOVERBIKES!

Something that we found is definitely good with Brisbane is the amount of cycleways in the city. There's a particularly good one that runs along the river from Toowong in the west to New Farm in the east.

So we bought new bikes this week I got a Scott Aspen and Lisa a Jamis Cross Country - We can recommend Epic Cycles for anyone looking at buying a bike in Brisbane.

I managed to stack mine the first day I had it. But beside that little mishap (my kneecaps rue that mistake), we've been having a great time biking around the city, clumps of slow moving and pretty dim-witted pedestrians that clog the entire width of shared tracks aside. It's a very refreshing change from inner-city Sydney!

15 July 2005

birdie paradise

The budgies love it up here although we put them on the balcony the other day and turned our backs for five minutes and there were two Butcherbirds (like a small Currawong) standing on the cage looking at the tasty snacks inside. So the budgies only go on the balcony when we are there to supervise now! The previous occupants must have fed the birds because on Sunday we had three Kookaburras perched on the balcony waiting for use to give some some food, which we obliged them. Its birdie paradise except for the abundance of crows - they are ubiquitous - even more than Currawongs in Sydney.

10 July 2005

Chow Time

On pleasant surprise in the colonies is the food here is of a pretty surprising quality. We have managed extra-vehicular activities to several food service establishments, all of which have proven to be excellent value-for-money and tasty to boot. An added bonus is the service staff. There just doesn't seem to be any of the "oh i'm sorry your acting career isn't taking you where you want to be right now, but I'd like my meal sometime this week?" attitude that there is back in the Home World.

08 July 2005

A message to citizens of the colonies

Premier Beattie assures Queenslanders that the terrible bombings in central London won't be occuring in the obviously next most important target - Brisbane. Citizens of the colonies - do not panic. The authorities here are on high alert.

07 July 2005

A new life awaits you

So here I am. 15.45 Thursday afternoon Eastern Standard Time, sitting in my new house in the Leafy Suburbs of the off world colonies. Books and equipment sit strewn around me, empty boxes and new ones still wanting my attention. A room full of junk to be sorted. My connection to the mothership is restored, for the time being, thanks to the wonders of radio-broadband, having been offline all week during transit time.

Here, on the planet Auchenflower, in the Brisbane system of Galaxy Queensland, time appears to run slowly, much more slowly than back on the HomeWorld. Space has been stretched to breaking, a cosmologist's dream come true; the open Universe's last moments on a locally observable scale. Everything is enlarged, lumbering, as if spacetime has been engorging itself on the souls of the strip-mall inhabitants, driving perplexed in circles around the oversize roundabouts. The city has a familiar look, but a slighty disembodied sheen - no a glare - appears to cover everything.