Bris-vegas

IMHO, Brisbane wins top score among the major Australian cities. Its location on the east coast of southern Queensland offers a fantastic climate for lovers of hot sunny days and balmy evenings. Maybe it gets a bit too hot in February, but manages to avoid extremes at all other times. Right now it’s a safe haven between tropical floods in the north of the state and devastating bush fires with alternating searing heat and extreme cold in the southern state of Victoria.

It’s 26C on arrival in Brisbane at 9.30am Sunday morning. A convenient fifteen-minute train ride to Central Station put me down just five minutes walk from a fine riverside apartment. Most of the high-rise accommodation and commercial buildings now gracing the waterfront post-date my first visit to Brisbane 12 years ago. 'Old' in this city means grand, colonial and well-preserved.




One of Brisbane’s best features must be the Botanical Gardens that run from just south of Eagle St Pier to another bend in the river at Queensland University of Technology – my final destination for the day.


Australia has a large, diverse population of birds and other ‘curious critters’. There is no need to travel far, or go to zoos or bird parks to see them. My concern that something was wrong with this one ‘splattered in the sand’ was quickly dispelled when it glared at me and fluttered off. Just cooling off I guess.


The flying dinosaur design of the Ibis always intrigues me. These designer scavengers are the pigeons of other places, and can reliably be found raiding wheelie bins in restaurant back yards.


The waterlily pond at dusk is a veritable hive of activity with ducks, moorhens, pigeons and more prehistoric creatures – large lizards posing around the edge.



Not all of the country's wild life can be found in the flesh in cities, though artists contribute the missing ones.

In the early evening hours, the park transforms into a huge outdoor gym. Trim, taut, terrific bodies flee past on bikes, gather in groups to contort into painful poses, skip, jump, box and run. Shutter-bug tourists are another well represented group.

The prize view of the day though, is a Tawny Frogmouth with its chick sitting calmly on a log in the shade. Not the best spot for photographs but a wee bit of touching up shadows results in presentable images. They are naturally well camouflaged in woodland surrounds, and could easily be mistaken for logs at a glance. Sightings of this owl species are quite rare apparently, though these two don’t seem to think so. Is this the cutest chick you ever saw or what?



For anyone wondering about the title of this post – the suffix is added to the names of many growing-but-still-slightly-small-scale cities. Rotorua in New Zealand goes by the nickname Roto-vegas. I’m sure there are many others. These 'bubbly queens' show that side of the local culture.


Next stop is south across the border into the New South Wales time zone (Queensland doesn’t do daylight saving). Destination Lillian Rock, a tranquil spot with views across the Eucalyptus clad hills to Mt Warning.

Kobe beyond the bathroom

Kobe is an old city with a lot of modern additions as well as some major renovations that were required following a major earthquake in 1995. I do remember seeing and reading about it in the news. Apart from painful memories, memorial parks and a small area of unrepaired damage onthe the harbour front, there are few signs of the extreme chaos that hit the city that fateful January morning. Although the tremor lasted only about 20 seconds, the damage was considerable and the aftershocks continued for many days. Further information (some unverified) at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_earthquake

Apparently it was surprising to learn that reclaimed land does not ‘buckle’ (incorrect technical term acknowledged) under the pressure of an earthquake – or not this one at least – as huge areas along the waterfront survived better than other parts of the city. It’s very scary looking at the cracked concrete, twisted railings and leaning lamp posts and thinking about the force needed to cause this amount of damage.



In the same area relics of the old foreigner settlement can still be found. The style of some of the buildings tell what era they were built – as a country that was previously largely closed to foreign influence and trade, its quite easy to date the start of this period of settlement to around the middle of the 19th century. Seems it continued well into the 20th as art deco architecture is very much in evidence.

There is even an example showing that popping the roof of an old building to add a dozen more floors can actually work and look reasonably well in keeping with traditional style.


Some pretty spectacular, and some less 'in character' residences remain among traditional temples in the Kitano district, which is located up the hill overlooking the port.





The reason for Kobe’s expansion on the seawards side needs no exploration. Fringing the west side of a large, roughly horseshoe shaped bay, the city is flanked on the south edge by hills steep enough to prevent further building.



It is winter right now, and just to illustrate that point, there was frost on the hills the first clear morning of my stay. Nice to see a spot of sunshine after leaving the heat of NZ summer behond to come here, even if it did take the temperature down to about 1C.

Osaka is on the east side of the bay, and although I was told that two or three other cities lie in between there and Kobe, it was impossible to tell where one stops and the next starts as the entire area is built up, built in, covered in high rise apartment blocks, factories, gas storage terminals, timber yards enclosed shopping malls etc. etc. etc. Do you get the idea that its pretty densely inhabited? I was surprised to learn that the population of Kobe is only about the same as Auckland (1.5 million). It sure looks like a whole lot more.



I guess it’s the density that does it!

Last word in luxury?

Checking in to the Sannomiya Terminal Hotel in downtown Kobe dredges up a trivial scrap of memory from a previous visit to Japan. I’d already done the calculation to answer the question ‘first trip to Japan?’ Twenty five years ago that was, more or less. Surprising as it may sound, one piece of technology hasn’t changed in all that time; the ultimate luxury loo, and I’ve still never seen one anywhere else.

The fluffy cushioned heated seat could have caused an accident on first contact if I hadn’t been in the right place to start with. Easy to get used to that in a cold bathroom in the chilly winter months! But this one needs to be approached with care in light of the warning on the instruction sheet. Yes, instructions on how to use the loo ARE necessary. It may look perfectly innocent, but read on and check the pix carefully… does your loo have knobs and dials down one side and wires snaking out from under the seat? Maybe not!


In case the picture is too small to read, it says 'spraying before indicator turns red releases COLD water.' My advice based on experience is don’t test-drive the shower function – at least not in operational position or with the lid open! The instructions don’t say what the difference between shower and bidet functions are – and tell you what, I didn’t bother to find out!

More (serious) impressions of Kobe will follow shortly, including earthquake and early foreign settlement stories.