Brisbane River

We recently took a walk along the Brisbane River near where we live. This stretch of the river is only 15km from the city centre but is a small patch of wilderness. The water is salty not fresh as the seawater comes quite far up the river on the tides. Brisbane has quite a few suprises one of which is its river.

Acacia Trees in Bloom

So after the purple Jacaranda bloom of October comes the orange acacia bloom of November. It really is beautiful to see the trees in bloom here along the roadside, its a real sign that Spring is turning to Summer, not that you need reminding with the increase in temperatures day by day. Soon we will be sweltering at Xmas dinner...

Dutch Shop in Brisbane

Sorry for the break in blogging, its been a hectic time the last few weeks we have been busy buying a house more of that to follow in the New Year.

Xmas is not far away now and the temperatures are heating up, today 34C. Its hard to believe we've been here over 1 year already, time flies.

So with Xmas around the corner we start to think about dutch food we miss so today we went to Brisbane's very own dutch food shop where you can buy all sorts of goodies like ollieballen mix, speculaas and other festive food. We dont go shopping here that often maybe once every six months or so, so time to stock up.

The Race that stops the nation..

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup Day, which is as they say "The race that stops the nation"



This country is obsessed by sporting fixtures and this is the biggest on the calendar, like the Grand National horserace in England only about 10 times bigger. Everyone has a bet and god knows how much is fluttered away on the horses.

Its Halloween so we went on a Bat Boat Cruise

This evening we took a boat cruise up the Brisbane River to visit a bat colony on an island in the river. The bats, called Flying Foxes are fruit bats and roost there during the day and at sunset the whole colony of 20,000 bats takes off to feed on fruit and nectar. No photos of that Im afraid it was too dark and the batteries gave out on my digital camera...
The bat sight seeing tour was organised by a bat friendly group who nurse orphan baby bats, the volunteers brought two baby bats for the visitors to look at...strange to see a little baby bat face sucking on a teat. They may be a bat but they are cute at the same time and the volunteers said they are very intelligent





Of course Inge being a orphan squirral rescue veteren was very interested in the baby bats and how to look after them so expect more photos in the future.