Author: crimsonkathyrnandcrew

Our last night was so wonderful and beautiful, I just had to share!! The Brisbane Festival is still going on – lots of people out and lots of lights.

It’s been an amazing 9 days in Brisbane and I feel that we have seen a lot of the city and the surrounding areas. After returning from our weekend away, we’ve explored more of the city centre and travelled north along the Sunshine Coast.

We started our last week visiting the 2 arts galleries – Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), plus the museum. All 3 are in the same block which makes it super easy to visit. We saw some very interesting artwork at the Queensland Art Gallery. The GOMA only had 1 floor of artwork so it was a very quick visit. They had a special exhibit on the main floor and we chose not to go to it.

I think I’ve already mentioned how pedestrian friendly Brisbane is and we have taken full advantage of all the walking trails and pedestrian malls. I’m sure we’ve walked many km during our time in the city and we’ve also enjoyed riding the ferry up and down the river. It’s another really nice feature and the ferries have allowed us to see most of Brisbane without worrying about driving and parking!

On Wednesday, Sept. 14, we drove north up to Eumundi to go to their outdoor market. It was a wonderful 1.5 hour drive that went through some hilly parts of the state. When we arrived at Eumundi, we found the Wednesday market quite busy. There were many stalls of local crafts, soaps and jewelry as well as lots of clothing stalls. There were also lots of food stalls!! We had fun shopping at the market and found some nice souvenirs!!

Today has been a low key day. Matthew, Mark and I went for a walk around the neighbourhood and spent most of the day just relaxing at the apartment. Tonight we’re heading into the city centre to meet Margie for dinner. It’s our last night here so we’re going to enjoy the night lights one last time. We fly out tomorrow (Friday, Sept. 16) around 6pm and should be back in Ballarat by 10pm or so.

Well we sure had a great weekend touring around the Stanthorpe area and then exploring the carnival of flowers in Toowoomba. We really spent our time well and had some great adventures.

On Saturday, we started our day with a drive to the Storm King Dam (it was a large pond area just outside of town). The dam had a small boat launch and a little concrete dock. From the dam we drove to Girraween National Park which is notable for all the large boulders that seem to defy gravity in places, stacked up and leaning on trees! We drove into the park and went for a 2.5km walk to the underground river. This area was amazing – the colour of the rock and the sound of river was mesmerizing!! It was a great morning.

After our walk we drove out of the park and stopped at a little shop called Heavenly Chocolate!! You can guess what we bought there!! Yummy! After that stop, we were on the hunt for some lunch. That proved to be a bit of a challenge but we ended up in a little town called Ballandean where we had a nice lunch.

Our next stop was at the only winery of the day – Ballandean Estates Wines. We did a nice wine tasting at this winery – sampling 6 wines each. These wines were very nice and a few bottles came home with us!! We made one more stop that day at a soap shop and then headed home for a relaxed even with a campfire, wine, cheese, bread and of course, chocolate!!!

We were up early on Sunday and checked out of our lovely holiday house at 9am. We drove north east to Toowoomba – about a 1.45 hour drive – to see the carnival of flowers. This festival runs for the month of September and we saw lots of beautiful flowers.

After lunch in Toowoomba, we headed back to Brisbane which was about a 1.5 hour drive. Traffic was good and we got back to the apartment around 3pm. The weather was beautiful today and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the apartment. It was a great weekend and now we’ll make some plans for our upcoming week in Brisbane.

We’ve spent the past few days exploring various areas in Brisbane as well as travelling west a few hours into the interior of Queensland. The weather has been perfect for walking around – not too hot and the rain has held off until the late afternoon!

Brisbane has a very lovely botanical garden and we spent a morning looking at the different plants, trees and flowers. Some of the fern-like trees have been transplanted from a gorge in Western Australia and they are millions of years old!! It was very peaceful walking around – hard to believe the city was right there!! That night (Thursday) we took the ferry back into the downtown area for dinner. Brisbane is beautiful at night!

On Friday we left Brisbane and drove southwest about 3 hours to the granite belt region which is a wine producing area. Margie booked a really nice house for us to stay in so we can visit the area for the weekend. We stopped at 2 wineries on our way to Stanthorpe (that’s the town we’re staying in for the weekend). The first one called Castle Glenn was a bit weird – they had lots of liqueurs but very few wines! We decided not to do a wine tasting here. Our second stop was at Heritage Wines – a very nice stop!! We did a wine tasting here and bought a fair bit of wine to enjoy later!! Our last stop was for dinner at Balancing Heart Vineyard. We enjoyed some amazing pizza while sitting on their patio as the sun went down – an excellent end to a great day!!

On Tuesday, Sept. 6, we boarded an evening flight up to Brisbane to stay at Margie and Matthew’s apartment. Margie works for a company that has its head office in Brisbane so she travels up here at least once a month. Brisbane is located in the south of Queensland, right on the ocean. The name “Brisvegas” came about because it was the first city in Queensland to open a casino.

Our flight north was aboard Virgin airlines and because of all the flying Margie does, we were able to relax in the Virgin lounge before our flight!! It was very nice! Tough to go back to the poor man’s airport now 😁. Our flight left the Melbourne airport slightly early and landed in Brisbane just after 8pm. We had a short drive to the apartment and were all settled in by 9:30pm.

Brisbane is divided by the Brisbane River – it meanders its way through the whole city. One of the really neat transportation features is the city ferries. There is a ferry stop about 2 minutes from the apartment and it will take you all the way to the city centre (for less then $3). It’s about a 20 minutes ride with great views of the city.

Mark, Matthew and I spent our first day walking around the downtown area. The city is very pedestrian friendly with dedicated pedestrian bridges and many excellent walking paths. The area we walked in is called South Bank and it’s full of amazing old and new architecture. It has lots of shops and restaurants plus lots of park areas. It’s also home to the cultural side of Brisbane – the museum, art gallery and performing arts venue are all located close together. September is Brisbane Festival time – an international arts festival held each year in September, so South Bank was all decked out for the festival.

We had a nice sunny morning and were able to walk around in our shorts!!! By early afternoon, the rain had started so we made our way back to the apartment (with a few stops for food and drinks). Tomorrow (Thursday, Sept. 8) we’ll explore more of the city and on the weekend, we’re heading west towards a town called Toowoomba.

Here are some more photos from our visit!

We’re back in Ballarat after our weekend visit to Echuca and Moama. We travelled north east on Friday (Sept. 2) up to the border between Victoria and New South Wales to stay at Kerry and Porky’s cabin. The drive was amazing through some very picturesque scenery. The route took us through some familiar towns, like Daylesford and Bendigo but continued north to a part of the country that was new to us.

This northern part of Victoria is very flat with lots of farmland. One of the main crops grown in this area is canola. We saw fields and fields of bright yellow canola flowers mixed with fields of sheep and some cattle. Most farmers can plant 3 crops in a year and this current crop should be harvested by the end of September.

We arrived at the cabin just after lunch (it’s about a 3 hour) drive and had a chance to look around the caravan park. There are lots of these holiday parks which are a combination of trailer sites and permanent small houses. Kerry and Porky’s cabin faces a little lake and is 2 stories tall with 3 bedrooms. It’s a really nice place to vacation in and was super quiet this time of year. The park itself was mostly empty with only a few campers brave enough to camp out. The park also runs alongside the Murray River. After all the rain of recent weeks, the river was very full and had flooded parts of the area around the holiday park.

On Saturday we visited Echuca / Moama. These 2 towns straddle the border – Echuca in Victoria and Moama in NSW. Echuca is an old logging port situated on the Murray River. It has a very cool historical part of town and some really nice little shops. We spent a few hours looking around the old port area and also doing a bit of shopping.

Moama is a smaller more residential town that has some nice walking trails. We spent some time on Sunday morning (Australia’s father day) walking along a trail that took us to the overflowed shores of the Murray. This river can be quite dangerous because it has a lot of current and with all the recent water, it was moving fast. We had a beautiful day for our walk and got some awesome photos!!

By the way, I am using a gallery format for some of the photos (I can add more photos this way!). To see these photos larger, just click on the first one and they will open into a slide show format. I have lots of photos so I will do 2 posts!!

We’ve had a few cool, rainy days this week so we’ve stayed pretty close to home. We did take a Sunday drive to Geelong, a town that is south east of Ballarat and right on the water (Port Phillip Bay). We had a great drive down to Geelong and a lovely walk along the waterfront. This town has put a lot of effort into improving their waterfront area. There were lots of boats in the harbour and several sailboats out in the bay enjoying a sunny afternoon sail!

Mark and I have done a few walks around the neighbourhood. Even though the weather has been wet, it’s really nice to walk along the streets and down in the valley behind Matthew’s house. As I mentioned in my last post, many of the houses have very interesting ironwork on their porches. The houses also have front yard fences and gates – some of which are super fancy!!

This coming weekend we are heading up to a cabin owned by Margie’s sister. It’s in a town called Echuca and it’s on the border between Victoria and New South Wales. It’s about a 3 hour drive north so we’ll see a bit of the country side as we had north. This town is on the Murray River which is Australia’s longest river. The first time we visited Australia (back in 2000), we rented a motor home and drove from Queensland all the way back to Ballarat. The girls were young (7 and 5) and they got quite bored of the drive, so to keep them entertained, Mark kept telling them about the big river we would be crossing – the mighty Murray River. Well that winter Australia was having a severe drought and when we crossed the Murray River it was just a trickle in the centre of a wide riverbed. We’re expecting a much bigger river this time around because there have been flood warnings the past few days!

Matthew and Margie live in a lovely town called Ballarat, located about 1.5 hours north west of Melbourne. We’ve arrived nearing the end of winter and the weather is cool – no shorts for Mark. The town is very charming and many of the older homes have beautiful iron work details on their front porches. I just can’t get enough of this beautiful ironwork on the homes.

We spent our first real day (Saturday, Aug. 27th) checking out the local farmer’s market which happens near the lake. It was quite busy – lots of people getting out in the nicer weather (we had sun and about 15 degrees). We looked around at the botanical gardens and had a bite of lunch near the lake. It was a relaxed day – we’re still getting used to the time change – 14 hours ahead of Toronto, so we’re taking it easy.

I’ll take some photos of the houses around town soon! For now, here are some shots of our market day!

With the sailing season still several months away, Mark and I decided to take a little side trip to visit my brother and family in Australia. We’ll be staying with Margie and Matthew for 5 weeks and are excited to catch up with them and also see a few new spots in the country.

Our adventure started on Tuesday, Aug. 23 with our usual drive to Toronto. We had a great visit and lunch with Ted and then headed downtown to have dinner with Evelyn and Caroline. We spent the night at Evelyn’s. We were up early (5:30am) and Evelyn drove us to the airport at 6:30am (arriving just after 7am). I am very pleased to say that all the horror stories I’ve been reading about Pearson Airport didn’t come true for us. Evelyn was a great help as we navigated the WestJet self serve checkin kiosks and then the self serve baggage drop off!!

By 8am, Mark and I were through security and American Customs and Immigration and were seated at the gate for our 10:35am flight. Time for coffee and a bit of breakfast.

Our WestJet flight boarded on time and we departed about 15 minutes late (that seems pretty standard to me). It was a full flight to Los Angeles but didn’t feel crowded at all. This was our first WestJet flight and it was quite nice.

We made great time flying across the USA and when we arrived at LAX at 12:45pm (pacific time), our gate was still occupied by another plane. We sat on the tarmac for about 15 minutes before the plane proceeded to the gate. It was a very smooth first flight and with the aid of our newly purchased AirTags, I could tell that both our checked bags made it to LAX!!

So here we sit – an 8 hour layover before our big 14 hour flight to Melbourne. The departure gate for our 9:30pm flight was empty when we arrived at 2:30pm, so we found a nice spot by the window where we could plug in our devices and charge them up. We still have about 4 hours to kill but airports are always interesting places!! Next stop – Melbourne at 6am Friday morning!!!