Bribie Island

Continuing our quest to discover Brisbane and the surrounding areas, on Sunday we spent the day at Bribie Island. Bribie Island is approx an hour's drive north of Brisbane and the only Island close to Brisbane that is connected by a bridge.

We started out at Bongaree which is on the South East of the Island. Being on the sheltered side of Bribie this is a lovely little village that is ideal for young kids, as there's virtually no surf. There's a small beach with a pier, which is surrounded by parklands with plenty of BBQ areas and children's play areas.





From Bongaree you can get a view of the bridge back to the mainland. Also, you'll have to take my word for it because I forgot to take a photo but to the left of this image there would be a view of the Glasshouse Mountains in the background..



After having lunch at Bongaree, we then drove 7km straight across to the west side of the Island to Woorim. Whereas Bongaree is ideal for the small kids, Woorim is great for the big kids (me), as there is plenty of surf to play in but nothing too scary..



Although Lauren is like a fish in the pool she's still wary of the ocean...





More of our photo's on Flickr

Strange Coincidence

Back in Sydney again. Just a flying visit this time (24 hours). At the airport I heard the announcement "Darren Gough please proceed immediately to Gate 39". Of course I had a look round to see if, unlikely as it would be, it was THE Darren Gough. The strange coincidence is that when I got to my hotel and turned on the tele, Sky News came up and scrolling across the bottom in the news ticker were the words "Darren Gough retires from Cricket"!

Could Darren Gough be celebrating his retirement with an holiday down under?

By the way the Hotel I'm staying in now is the same one that the Australian Idol contestants stayed in. Not that I watch that drivel :-)

An Englishman Abroad

Typical Englishman abroad. Steve McClaren has only been in Holland 6 weeks and he's already doing the pigeon English thing. They should put this stuff in a Rough Guides guidebook. If you are an Englishman on holiday in a non-English speaking country, simply speak slower and louder at Johnny Foreigner. Failing that, try speaking in the accent of your host, that's bound to work, the non-English speaker will understand you perfectly!

Father's Day at Icon

Yesterday it was Father's Day here in Australia, and so for a treat we went for Lunch with George, Julie and Reyce to Icon at Raby Bay.

We'll definitely be returning to Icon again. The food was fantastic, especially given it was a buffet. Usually at buffets you end up getting the cheap cuts of meat, but not so at Icon. It was only $30 per head for adults and $15 for kids and the quality of steaks, salmon, prawns, etc was superb. After sharing a bottle of wine and a few beers we made our way home to continue drinking in the garden. Back to business as usual for Sundays then!

Some pics...




More pics on Flickr

Manly Harbour Festival

Yesterday, Rach said she wanted to get some spring cleaning done so I took Lauren down to the Manly Harbour Festival. Here's a few pics:

A little something for the adults...


And a little something for the kids...





This is a view of the rear of Rachelle's work. You can see two cranes - one is dredging and the other is pulling out piles - making ready for the new extension to the marina...


We also had a drive round the corner to Wynumm so Lauren could have a swim in the Wading Pool. This is the first time we've been there since it has been refurbished. I didn't realise how huge it is...


Lauren was the only one brave enough to take a swim. It's still too cold for the Aussies (and me)...



I'm really jealous of Rach getting to work here (certainly beats my view of office blocks)...


I couldn't believe how quiet it was. It was a bit windy but was still a beautiful day - we definitely needed the sun tan cream.


More photo's on flickr

Brisbane RiverFestival Weekend

A few of our pictures from last weekend...

On Saturday we had planned to go on board HMB Endeavour - the replica of Captain Cook's ship which visiting Brisbane for a few days, but we got there a little late as Lauren attended a friend's birthday party in the afternoon. Plus, we couldn't be arsed to queue for an hour so instead we spent some time on Portside Wharf where HMB Endeavour was berthed.


On Saturday night Rach went out with the girls whilst myself and George babysat for the girls, and watched the RiverFire fireworks on telly. Seemed very different watching it on telly after being there last year.

We were both feeling a little rough on Sunday morning, but nevertheless we got up and went down to South Bank for the free breakfast BBQ that was being held on Goodwill Bridge.


Afterwards, we walked across into the CBD and checked out Brisbane Library. Very funky indeed. There's more computers and Plasma screens than books!


We then walked over Victoria Bridge back to South Bank and went to the Brisbane International Boat Show being held at the convention centre.



Afterwards, we went for a late lunch at a greek restaurant in South Bank.

More photo's on flickr

The Aussie Immigraton Map

Gettingdownunder.com has a handy immigration map for anyone wishing to emigrate to Australia...

Google Chrome

Google has finally entered the Internet Browser market with the release of Google Chrome. Only time will tell to see if it can compete with Internet Explorer in terms of market share. For me, Firefox is the best browser out there but it still only has a 20% share of the market - even IE6 which is ancient in Internet years has a bigger share of the market than Firefox.

Will Google be able to leverage its search engine dominance to make Chrome bigger than IE?

I've downloaded and tested Chrome. My first thoughts were I like the clean look and feel. Secondly, it's clearly faster than both Firefox and IE, which is a major bonus. I also like the fact that each tab acts as its own 'sandbox', so that if a website causes the browser to crash, which happens a lot in IE and Firefox, it will only cause that tab to crash and not the entire browser.

So does that mean that I'll ditch Firefox and start using Chrome? Not likely yet. The biggest draw for me with Firefox is the plugins. There are currently no plugins or extensions for Chrome. That means no easy del.icio.us bookmarking, no stumbleupon toolbar, no Better Gmail, no GTDInbox for gmail, and no Firebug, to name but a few of the plugins I rely on. As Chrome is open-source I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before the plugins start appearing.

Also Chrome is only currently available for Windows, although a Mac version is in the works.

Hopefully by the time the Mac version is released they'll also have some decent plugins, in which case Google Chrome it will be.