Wanderung 20

Australian Walkabout

May - June 2009

Friday, June 19th, Back to Brisbane.

Bob:

Our GPS once again helped us cope with morning rush-hour traffic on our way into Brisbane. The motorway we had chosen became completely clogged with traffic and we opted to follow the GPS's advice to divert to the North and then come straight in from the West to the downtown area. With Monika helping spot street signs and the GPS to keep our orientation, we did arrive on time and unscathed at the rental agency.

Retrieving all our gear from the car, we started to trundle our rollies back downtown, but stopped when we found the historic, WWII-era Inchcolm Hotel, which, according to its pictures, had hosted many celebrities in its day including General Douglas MacArthur. The Inchholm was fairly close to the Roma Street Station where we had to pick up our train to Sydney the next morning, and the route over there was all downhill, which was big plus as we would be pulling our wheeled luggage. Our suite wasn't ready yet, so we dropped off our luggage in a locked room and went on to enjoy our final free day in Brisbane. Since the weather was beautifully clear, sunny, and warm, we decided to walk the promenade along the North bank of the Brisbane River that we had seen on our previous visit.

Monika:

The GPS guided us safely from Ipswich to Brisbane and hence to the Rental Agency. I was happy that everything worked without a major hitch of getting lost or getting into an accident.

So after we found out that the rental agency could not take us back to the hotel for at least another hour, we decided to hoof it back to the IBIS. But halfways there, I spotted what looked like a Quality motel sign. It turned out to be an old refurbished hotel, the Inchcolm Hotel, that had several advantages over the IBIS: it was right here, whereas the IBIS would have been another 4 blocks; it was closer to the railroad station; and most of all, it was cheaper! What's there not to like?

The room would not be ready until after 2PM, but we could put our luggage into a locked room. So we were unencumbered and could see some more of Brisbane. We first went over to the railroad station, so that the next morning we would know where to go and how long it would take. It was a pleasant walk past a nice little park.

We had to figure out which platform to be at the next morning; after all CountryLink is a New South Wales train system and we were in Queensland with its narrower gauge rail. So CountryLink had its own platform on the second level that only accommodated the trains from and to Sydney.

After having looked it all over, we decided to walk down to the Brisbane river and take the river walk on the north side of the river, where a week ago we had taken the one on the south side.

Bob:

We again had a wonderful time walking along and enjoying the views of the opposite shore while being buzzed by passing bicyclists and greeted by passing pedestrians. We ended up in the Botanical Gardens, which had some flowers still in bloom despite the fact that it was technically winter time Down Under.

Monika:

The walk was fun. It ended at a botanical garden, where we really enjoyed the trees and flowers with glimpses of the river in between. By now it was lunch time and there was a little outdoor cafe that had the good old Australian standby of meat pie, so I was happy. Bob opted for a healthier chicken sandwich.


 

Bob:

After eating lunch in the Botanical Gardens, we crossed the river to see the Queensland Maritime Museum we had found on our previous visit. That took us a couple of hours as they had not only a bunch of exhibits in a main hall, but HMS Diamantina, a WWII frigate in dry dock that we could look over from top to bottom.

We spent at least one hour exploring every nook and cranny of HMS Diamantina. If you ever get to the maritime museum in Brisbane, be sure to look through all the rooms in the Diamantina as many of them have unusual exhibits. In one we found a Fold Boot kayak and a description of how they were used to invade a harbor in Indonesia during WWII and destroy German freight ships. I suspect that exploit was the factual basis for a very old British film called "Cockleshell Heroes" dating from WWII that I saw when I was a kid. In the film the kayaks are used to attack Axis shipping moored in Cherbourg harbor, as I recall, but the basic idea was exactly the same.

Another room had both the hanging hammocks that the ship was originally outfitted with and the bunk beds that had replaced the hammocks after WWII. That was the first time I could really see a bunkroom with hammocks installed. The space for each sailor to sleep was, as I suspected from the books I had read, extremely narrow. I also wondered about whether the hammock would actually be more comfortable in a rolling ship than being pitched about in a solidly fixed bunk bed, but that question remained unanswered. We did, however, chat a while with a volunteer docent who was an old sailor from the 60s and 70s, as I recall, and he was a lot of fun plus being a wellspring of information.

Monika:

After we had eaten, we noticed that we were right at the pedestrian bridge across the river, and that ended at the Maritime Museum. Bob had pined for it a week ago, but it was too late when we passed it. But today we had plenty of time and having just eaten, I was up for a few hours of Maritime Museum.

They had a WWII frigate in a slip right next to the museum and you could walk all through it and absorb history.


 


 

Bob:

The exhibit hall had the beautifully detailed scale model ships that I have typically found in maritime museums, but naturally they were mostly examples from Australia's nautical past.

We had difficulty finding the way downstairs to a section on lighthouses, but when we finally found the secret stairway it was well worth the effort. The exhibits were carefully arranged by "generations" of light-generating devices starting in ancient times with simple signal bonfires and ending up in modern times with electric lights. I had not known, however, how many innovations had occurred for intervening technologies such as oil or gas lamps. Usually the innovation concerned cleaner combustion, which would translate to less cleaning of the reflectors or lenses, or more efficient combustion, which would translate into longer intervals between refueling.

The exhibit that intrigued me the most, however, was a simple map of Australia with the routes of various explorers delineated by lighted pathways. When you pressed a button with an explorer's name, the lights would sequentially light up and a sound track would explain the explorers trip. I was very surprised that Dutch explorers were dominant before 1700 and yet Australia ultimately became a British colony. Could it, I wondered, have conceivably occurred differently in which case Australia would have been a Dutch colony like New Amsterdam (New York)? I just wish they could have hooked up a projector with a screen in the middle of Australia where they could have pictorially shown scenic highlights from each explorer's journey. That would have made it a killer exhibit!

The oddest thing I saw at the Maritime Museum was an all-aluminum boat about 9 or 10 feet long and about 8 feet deep with a short, stubby mast. Apparently some poor but adventurous (crazy?) guy had sailed a first version of that chunky boat across the Pacific Ocean from Canada to New Guinea but then came a cropper on some reef. Rebuilding the thing, he had persevered on to Australia, but when he entered the port Australian Customs tried to charge him import duty on the boat, which was money he didn't have. So he ups and donates it to the maritime museum and then turned around and left the country. A wild tale, that, if true.

Monika:

I was surprised at the amount of information they crammed into the museum. There were not only boat models, of course, but also lighthouses and other assorted maritime information. Especially fun was a map was routes of early explorers to Australia. Good old James Cook was definitely not the first European to reach Australia, although he was the first to circumnavigate the continent. Dutch merchants from the Dutch Indonesian colonies had come earlier but decided that the aboriginals were really not very good trading partners. A French explorer had gotten as far as Tasmania and determined that it was an island distinct from the continent. But it was finally the English who needed a place to put their convicts, after the Americans had rebelled, that resulted in the settlement of the continent.


 


 

Bob:

After filling out a questionnaire on our experiences at the museum, we trudged back to our hotel room for the evening. Once again we turned in early and set the alarm clock on Monika's camera to awaken us at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Having a camera doubling as an alarm clock was a great "two-fer", just like my GPS could double as a night light when we put it on to charge overnight in the bathroom.

Monika:

We passed the pagoda on our way back and other sides we had seen a week ago. It was late when we got back to the hotel and took the old fashioned elevator (General Douglas MacArthur rose and fell here!!) up to our room. Our room was really spacious with a bed on one side and a nice sitting area with even a little kitchenette on the other. So we had a nice evening meal, before setting our alarm clock (my camera) for the next morning and turning in.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Australian Walkabout Epilog

May 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
June 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.