Brisbane is a decent place to spend a week or so, with plenty of options for getting out of the city and going for a walk. In addition to the earlier trip to Lamington, Jen and I also managed to fit in hikes at Noosa and Tambourine.
Noosa was a coastal walk where we were able to watch a couple of giant turtles been buffeted by the waves in a cove. They didn’t seem too bothered, so I imagine that there was enough of whatever turtles eat to make braving the waves and rocks worthwhile. There were also sharks or dolphins. Or maybe tuna. Whatever they were, they had fins.
We also saw a koala sat high in a tree, although it didn’t do much of interest. I understand that they sleep for most of the day and I suppose that being wedged between a couple of branches twenty feet up in the air makes being disturbed that much less likely.
I doubt we would have spotted the koala if it hadn’t been for other people pointing upwards. We probably see only a small proportion of the wildlife that we pass by.
The trip to Tambourine was a different type of walk, mainly on tracks that at times reminded me of the forest at the start of the E.T ride at Disney. There was a short trail to a waterfall that seemed to be the most popular route for visitors and then a longer loop that wasn’t so busy or as well signposted. It was only when we found ourselves peering into a hole in a tree trunk that we’d looked into half an hour earlier that we realised we’d taken a wrong turning and repeated a loop.
If it hadn’t been for that tree we might very well have just lapped that particular part of the circuit for the rest of the day. There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife. I think the best we saw was a dragonfly. Pretty to look at but no doubt, like most things seem to be over here, deadly poisonous to Teessiders.
As for football, we were able to see a second game, again featuring Brisbane Roar against Adelaide United, but this time in the Womens League.
The fixture took place at the Cleveland Showgrounds, which was a short drive out of the city. It was five dollars to get in, or free if you were a Brisbane Roar member, which just about everyone apart from Jen and I seemed to be. The Showgrounds wasn’t really a stadium, more a pitch with a clubhouse at one end and then six small temporary stands dotted around the two long sides of the pitch.
The place was supposed to hold a thousand and I’d say that would be about right. We were too late to get a seat in any of the stands and so just leaned against the railing that surrounded the pitch. I reckon that there were probably five or six hundred people watching but with enough gaps on the rail to accommodate up to the capacity.
Brisbane had started the season well winning their first two games, but Adelaide were quicker out of the blocks in this one with an opening goal after ten minutes. The home side pulled level midway through the half with a cracking shot from Katrina Gorry that the American keeper in the Adelaide goal did well to get a hand to.
Gorry was probably the stand-out player for Brisbane and there wasn’t much that went on that she wasn’t involved in. Her teammate at left back looked decent as well, particularly going forward, although her defensive work came in from some criticism from the bloke stood next to me. I politely agreed with him that she was crap, only for him to reveal himself as her father.
Adelaide regained the lead in the second half after yet more poor home defending. This time though I kept quiet in case I upset any other family members in attendance. Elsewhere on the pitch Brisbane brought on their new Kiwi signing who looked pretty good, as did their left winger who had a trick or two.
The flashes of quality weren’t enough to compensate for the slack defending though and Adelaide deserved the win. As with the previous days A-League game, I wasn’t overly impressed with the standard. There were too many players who struggled to control even the tamest of passes and it certainly wasn’t of the level that I’d seen at women’s games in Germany or even Iceland.
In fact, as the game petered out I found myself paying more attention to the tiny birds that were flying close to the surface of the pitch at high speed, swooping every now and then to eat bugs that had been unearthed by the stud marks. That’s worth five dollars of anyone’s money.
Trail of the Lion King 