The site of the Suncorp Stadium (or Lang Park as it is also known), " The Home of Rugby League", is built on a big old graveyard. The little Anglican church is still in use and sits in the shadow of the enormous venue. The memorial garden with grave stones in it stands right next to the stadium with big plate glass windows walling one side of the garden and offering a view of the seats inside. It's a strange combination...
It's pretty muggy and humid here in Brisbane at the moment. We're waiting for a nice storm to clear the air and the weathermen keep predicting one but so far, nothing. This ominous looking cloud crept over Bardon on Wednesday just after 6pm. It hung around looking threatening for a few minutes and then just sort of disappeared. Maybe today will be the day...
Dotted around Brisbane Square at the bottom of Queen Street are some big metal balls, made from copies of World War Two steamers welded together. Collectively, the installation is known as "Steam" by Aussie artist Donna Marcus. You get people pushing them around, posing infront of them and on top of them and peering into them. At night they light up in different colours and brighten the place up quite nicely, I reckon.
There's a lot to see when you look up in Brisbane's CBD (central business district). Nestled in amongst the towers of steel, elaborate cornices and mouldings, buildings with curious names, dates and crests.
This is a finger lime, something I didn't know existed until a year or two after I moved here. They are quite difficult to grow and take a long time to fruit so you don't see them much around. Mostly in posh restaurants. Looking at the photo, I should have put something in there to give it some scale. It's about the size of a man's finger (funnily enough). They are an Australian rain-forest native fruit containing caviar-like beads that explode with a sharp limey tartness when you bite down on them. Great with fish... even greater with a gin and tonic.
Brisbane City Council are impounding shopping trolleys and holding them to ransom, asking the supermarkets to pay $107 per trolley for their release. It's made me notice them around a lot more, often a long way from home, lonely... but with a nice view.
The rainclouds of recent weeks have finally cleared leaving gardens bursting with life, calf-high grass and plants I thought I had killed back in July suddenly and miraculously poking through the soil. As someone said to me the other day "nothing like rain to make the plants grow". Too true!
This is Brisbane's big casino all lit up. It's called the Treasury Casino as the beautiful colonial building it's housed in used to contain Brisbane's Treasury. Humourous, no?
Here's one of the painted traffic signal boxes outside the fire station on Roma Street. Many of the boxes around Brisbane are site-specific, particularly if they are near a landmark. This one was painted by Mark Makhoul.
Alright you can't see too many stars in this shot - they were there, I promise you!... will the star-bursts around the street lights do?
This is a night time view of one of the lighthouses that projects several patterns a week onto the William Jolly Bridge. Tomorrow, come back and see it in its stripey skin.
I had an extremely rare Friday night by myself so decided to stroll around town with my camera. This is Brisbane Square where last night there was a dj and sound system set up and people getting down to salsa music. I thought maybe it was a special event but one guy told me it's run by Brisbane City Council and is on every Friday night. I really should get out more.
This is part of a long wall in Newstead with striking paintings all down it. I don't have much information on it but the huge amount of work gone into it suggest it might have been commissioned.
Part of the electricity substation on Montague Road in South Brisbane. I love this style with name and number rendered onto the building.
I'm back from a week in the Mary Valley, about 2 hours' drive north of Brisbane so I realise here I am encroaching on Sunshine Coast Daily Photo territory but... well... I just had to share the view from my deck early yesterday morning. The air was warm for 5.15am - probably about 22-23 degrees celcius. Occasionally you would hear the odd bird echoing over the hills and there was no wind at all - just this low-lying mist. It was almost like the valley was holding its breath.
Another shower passes over the William Jolly Bridge with a poinciana tree in bloom in the foreground.
I'm not sure if this long stretch of urban art has been commissioned or not but it really improves the area.
This one was taken on Christmas Morning at around 8am from a Citycat on the Brisbane River. I think it was the last time we saw a blue sky in about a week! And can I just say how good it was to have public transport running? We had the boat to ourselves it was fantastic!
The William Jolly Bridge has two red lighthouses, one on either side of the river, built for the specific purpose of lighting the bridge with patterns at night (see one here and another here).
Happy New Year!!
