Brisbane, Queensland
April 6- 11th 2004
I've been in Brisbane 2 days now, staying with a Freeloader, Jaqui, in her tiny hotel room/apartment under an overpass. It's a small living space (literally a hotel renting out rooms as apartments so you get a front desk/concierge and all and a POOL!), but Jaqui's uber cool and I can now say I've lazed in a swimming pool with cars zooming over my head. how strange.
Brissy itself is quite a shock to the system, especially after whacked out Byron Bay. It's an odd city where everything seems to snake through--- it's got a massive river winding through it, s-shaped highways that run along it, curved sculptures here and there and an occasional square building. The entire city seems to radiate waves and has the best river sunsets i've seen so far.
It's got its little quirks too-- every square electric box (for traffic lights?) you see on the street is painted over, graffitti style, soo so cool. I was waiting at this street intersection, near the mall, where adelaide st. crosses george, staring at a particularly cool electric box when the pedestrian light suddenly turned green and holy shit, a mass of people almost ran me over. it had to be the funniest intersection ever, here i was, in Australia for 3 months slowly learning to live by the Aussie rule book of waiting for lights to change and that tooting sound that seems to mean "yes, you can cross now" (it actually sounds like it's straight from star wars, the tooting sound, i mean. more like a laser zap) when i find an intersection that seems the exception to the rule. once the light changes, everyone from all four corners of the crossing, go. and i mean GOES. it's kind of fun to watch. people seriously run into each other all the time.
Ahh Brissy.
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