Bris Vegas

It's funny, when my brother was living in Brisbane I never travelled there once for work but since he left I have been there at least six times - five of them since November last year. I have many good memories of Brisbane and it was the first part of Australia that I visited when I was younger. To me, it is quintessentially Australia and even after having lived in Melbourne for 18 months, the first thing I think of when I think of Australia is Brisbane - I guess it is etched in my memory. In many ways for NZers Brisbane is everything NZ is not. The weather is fine and warm, the people are sun tanned and friendly (if a little bigoted at times) and you can't help but being swept up in the optimism and positive vibe when you are there.

One of the funniest things about Brisbane is the crazy creatures you encounter just wandering around the streets or in the botanic gardens. Lizards are a frequent site (big ones, little ones and medium sized ones), often clamoring around street lights looking for there next 'mothy' meal. Okay, so the reason I'm waxing on about Brisbane is that I have just got back from a five day trip there. My manager was kind enough to shout Asia's flights there and back so she could come with me and also pay for a couple of extra nights in the hotel. I had to present training on the Monday-Wednesday, so we only really had the weekend to look around. We took the early morning flight on Saturday and while we waited until we could check into the hotel we took a stroll around the central city and checked out the Art Gallery, which had a particularly interesting collection of old propaganda posters from the 70s and 80s. It's quite interesting to see how things have changed substantially since even then. The big issues of the day were women's equality and nuclear weapons.

We had a great meal at a riverside restaurant on Sat and on Sunday we decided to take the train down to Dreamworld, one of the big American style themeparks, on the GoldCoast. Despite finding it a little tacky we had a pretty fun day, highlight: catching a shot of a tiger in mid air.