If you squint really really hard (maybe so hard that your eyes close) you can just make out that this giant ventilation stack in Woolloongabba is supposed to be a jacaranda tree (see yesterday's post for comparison). It's one of two enormous monoliths (the other one a red "poinciana-inspired" number in Bowen Hills) that dominate their respective skylines. Each is the height of about a 15 storey building. The tunnel between the two stacks is 4.8 kms with 2 lanes each way and is set to carry 100,000 cars a day. As the stacks don't have any filters, (?? I know) the council have set up 4 air-quality testing stations so they can monitor just how much filth and pollution they will pump into the air next year when the tunnel opens.
Brisbane's many beautiful jacaranda trees are in full blossom right now and every year I have been here I have been surprised at just how many of them are around. For most of the year they just seem to blend in. Now (and for the next month), everywhere you look there are little splodges of colour.
I took this picture at a group exhibition opening on Friday night in Newstead. It's a detail from a piece called Rivir (52x42cm) which is made out of little lead seals by local artist Rachael Lee. 
I took the shot a few weeks ago when I was looking around for a "contrast" picture for the monthly theme day.
It always makes me laugh when the hiders get bored of hiding and volunteer their whereabouts.
Here's another one from West End Live. I know I'm posting loads from that day but there was so much going on - and over a hundred shots I haven't posted. This is a section of the Sea of Hands: a long-running campaign by ANTaR aimed at reconciling Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Supporters design a hand using the colours from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags and attach their name to it. Over 2.5 million people have added a hand since 1997. The target is 4 million. You can add one too here.
Usually a busy street with cars and buses, Boundary Street in West End pulsed to the rhythm of hundreds of dancers and party people on Saturday.
...At least that's what the flyer they handed me said. I think it's probably best for all involved if I give it a wide berth. You can see them skate in a full-contact all girl roller derby in Beenleigh Arena on Halloween - and if you dress up for it you might win a prize!
This is a piece of public art in King Edward Park, Spring Hill commissioned by Brisbane City Council. It's called "Still Life With Landscape" by Robert Parr (1990)
17 Browning Street is a big old Queenslander house over 2 levels. From 1937 it was a rooming house until it was sealed shut, frozen in time since 2002 when the owner died. Everything in it remains exactly as she had left it down to the sheets on the bed and the crockery on the shelves. Elizabeth Jeffs wrote a book about the house and the lives that passed through it.
Yesterday was the opening of the new footbridge across the Brisbane River.
Kev Carmody and West End State School senior choir brought Boundary Street in West End to a standstill last night during West End Live, part of the Brisbane Festival. Hear him sing it with co-writer Paul Kelly here.
Last night, Blackstar Coffee in Thomas Street, West End, threw a street party as part of the Brisbane Festival. Music, food, poetry, art, dancing and a 15 year old rapper who brought the house down.
I'm a huge fan of Queenslander houses. They are houses built on stilts to catch the cool breezes while allowing a cool shady place to sit underneath the house on our hot summer days. Most of the old ones are either knocked down or renovated so it's not that often that you get to see one maturing with such reckless abandon!
Trees, vines and leaves have claimed this small disused factory... at least for now. There is a plan by the council to build a 30-storey apartment complex in it's place... but not if the local community can help it.
Wednesday's giant dust storm turned the midday sun into a pale yellow circle directly overhead... it was really odd!
This was the scene driving back to Brisbane yesterday from Lamington as the dust storm from New South Wales headed north. Thousands of tons of soil have been displaced to form a cloud 400 kms wide by 2000 kms long stretching across eastern Australia. I was told by a couple of locals that in the west of the state, people will find that as a result they now have to step down an extra foot when they walk out the back door...
To compliment yesterday's post, here's the nearby traffic signal box.
This is the Baptist Tabernacle in Wickham Terrace. It's a big imposing church built about 150 years ago by architect Richard Gailey who seemed to have a bit of a Protestant work ethic...er despite being a Baptist. If you are interested in the buildings in Brisbane that Gailey has left behind, this post in Your Brisbane: Past and Present is well worth a look. I was after a shot from inside of the big glass window but it was closed. Still, the outside's not too shabby. Particularly with that fetching red trim!
Something for the weekend, madam? Break out the advocaat and prawn cocktails in half-avocados, it's time to entertain!
This is one corner inside the shop BoxVintage from Thursday. It's a kitsch bonanza! I'm not sure what those wooden figures are all about but they would be a talking point on anyone's mantelpiece.
I couldn't believe it. With the hundreds of thousands of people crowding the river, I walked into an empty room with floor to ceiling windows and the blinds down. I rolled them up and got this amazing view of the fireworks - right in the thick of it with the glass of the high rise buildings reflecting the explosions going off in every direction. This is looking straight down Charlotte Street with the Treasury Casino silhouetted against the fireworks at South Bank.
To celebrate the opening of the annual Brisbane Festival each September, Brisbane is treated to "Riverfire", a half hour of pyrotechnics stretching for a couple of kilometres along the river from the Story Bridge (above) to Victoria Bridge. According to the paper yesterday, they were expecting 600,000 people to be turning up to see the display which included the F1-11 "dump and burn". Dump and burn, you ask? Lovers of the environment look away now. They do this low flyover with the F1-11 jet and, as the jet reaches the city, the pilot dumps fuel out of the back of the plane so that it catches on fire, giving the overall effect of a rocket blasting across the sky... with bone shaking, face melting sound. It really is spectacular and everyone gets very excited. A local radio station does a live cross into the cockpit of the jet and just before the pilot dumps his fuel he says "BRISBANE LOOK UP". Unfortunately, I missed getting a photo of that. I think I was too busy staring, mouth agape.
This sunrise, a few weeks ago, had so many colours in it that I feel justified in posting a shot from it here for the third time! (others here and here).
The William Jolly Bridge is settling into its funky new look nicely. As part of Queensland's 150th celebrations, Brisbane city council has commissioned this permanent light installation with a variety of patterns by Ian de Gruchy, a projection artist who has projected on other public buildings like these ones.
I haven't quite worked it out but I think it's a very tall dog in boots, shorts and a hoody... with a backpack holding a tree and stood like he is waiting to cross the road. It's a sculpture on the corner of Wharf and Ann Streets. If you have any info on it, I'd love to know!
I've been birdwatching in my friends' house in Mount Nebo, a mountain community just to the north-west of Brisbane.
Later on this year in December, Queensland will have been independent from New South Wales for 150 years so there are lots of celebrations and commemorations already taking place. One of which is an allocation of traffic signal boxes to be painted with a "Q150" theme. This one on the corner of Waterworks Road and Settlement Road in The Gap was being painted yesterday. There's going to be a horse on one side and a cyclist on the other showing how we got around then and now. The colour scheme is the same for all the boxes doing the project - taken from the Q150 logo. Each one is representative of something Queensland-y so green is the tropical rainforest, red and yellow are the sand, blue is the barrier reef and black (along with red and yellow) are from the aboriginal flag. I had a bit of a chat to the artist, Kathy Sullivan, who said that there is a time limit for getting the thing painted and she had to finish it by yesterday - with 2 coats of paint! Hopefully it's all done now and you can go and admire her work next time you're in The Gap.
This place is great. Built in 1886, according to the front of the building, all the little coloured changing rooms are grouped around the pool (gents on one side, ladies on the other). There's a wooden viewing gallery upstairs.
Welcome to Spring Hill Municipal Baths!
This set of stairs, known as Jacob's Ladder, links Wickham Terrace with Edward Street. It's park of King Edward Park which has just had a colourful new facelift. I think it looks great!
There is a phenomenon in Australia whereby a business holder will construct something big associated with that business (usually out of fibre-glass) and it will become something of a tourist attraction. Personally, I have visited the Big Lobster (Kingston, S.A.), the Big Banana (Coff's Harbour, NSW), the Big Cherries (Young, NSW), the Big Merino (Goulburn, NSW) and the Big Prawn (Ballina, NSW). I have also driven past the Big Shell, the Big Pumpkin, the Big Mower and the Big Pineapple all in Queensland but the novelty was wearing a bit thin by then so we kept driving.
