Last Friday I headed into Brisbane city centre to visit some of the places I hadn't got round to the previous week. I wanted to go to the Surrealism exhibition at GoMA, the city's modern art gallery. But first it was off to the information centre to book my ticket heading up the coast to Cairns in a few weeks' time. Found a good deal with Greyhound buses that includes a two-day trip to Fraser Island, three days in the Whitsundays and a Great Barrier Reef day tour, plus all my bus journeys from Brisbane to Cairns.
The exhibition was really interesting, maybe it's because I haven't really had to use my brain too much or maybe it was too much like going back to University and studying Philosophy again but I struggled with some of the concepts of surrealism. I must have read and reread a few times what Dada and surrealism mean but they still didn't really sink in! Oh well, it was fascinating nonetheless and I particularly liked the depiction of the game of 'exquisite corpse' as I remember playing something similar at school. It's where you collectively assemble a drawing or poem/story but you don't know what the other person has drawn or written. So you write or draw on a piece of paper, fold it over, hand it to the next person and they carry on. Produces some hilarious results. The ones in the gallery looked far too well done to be real to me though!
Saturday was spent with my aunt and uncle, plus Rodney's daughter Joanne as she didn't want to attend the BMX race the rest of the family was in town for, so we headed to the Boondall wetlands to spot birds, trees and Aboriginal totem poles.
Since then I've mostly spent time with my other cousin Andrea and her three kids, having barbecues up on Mount Glorious, walking through the rainforest, eating chips and ice cream or picking out nice shells on the beach.
I managed to fit in some Skype calls to mum and dad, and my brother over the weekend. My niece has got lots more curly blonde hair since I last saw her and is getting up to more mischief. Really great to talk to them all back home and they also got to say hello to their Aussie 'relys' as well (am I sounding like a native yet?!).
Sunday night was spent out on the town with a friend of Nick's who I'd never met before but was really lovely. Marnie picked me up (and had to meet all the relatives at once, poor thing) and we went to the Brekky Creek Hotel, a real staple in Brisbane apparently, for beer and a steak - delicious. A glass of red later and we headed off to the Dessert Cafe for two very tasty but sickly desserts. Here's a little fact about Queensland at the moment, bananas are ridiculously expensive here and everyone keeps commenting on it. Most of the crop was wiped out by the cyclone (and I don't think the flooding helped) so my caramel tart came without the bananas advertised.
Heading off to Melbourne today for a couple of weeks to catch up with old friends and see the sights of somewhere I've not visited over here before. Looking forward to it. I've got plans to hang out with penguins, sample some lush wine and pick up the old social life.
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