Australian fauna

Everybody has of course heard about the fantastic and dangerous animal life in Australia. We have started to explore it! As Brisbane's location is sub tropical most of the species should of course be present here so we started by exploring some lush parks.

We felt that was both daring and enterprising to a reasonable level.

So what did we find? Well, actually no brown snakes so far.

The fellow above represents an extremely common specie. They are literally everywhere and although looking a little bit vicious they seem to be quite friendly. The biggest risk is actually to step on them. (As we haven't seen any squirrels in the parks I guess the lizards eat squirrels?!...)

Next guy is also very common. A little bit like the mallards back home they are everywhere. But they are much bigger. Despite their very big beak they also seem to be quite friendly.

But of course you need to be careful. And there are warning signs....  

In a country with 24 of the 25 most venomeous snakes in the world. With deadly spiders in every backyard. With crocodiles behaving like big killing machines. Not to mention the big white...

What would you then think the signs warn you about???

BIRDS!!!!!

Yes in Brisbane it's obvious that the danger comes from above!
The average Brisbaner certainly worries most about birds....

A funny consequence of that is that most of the cyclists have spikes made of cable ties on their helmets to protect from magpies, which are considered the most aggressive ones.

I actually cought a magpie on picture while preparing to attack me. Do you see the evil in his eyes?

Ok he didn't but honestly I was actually attacked by one of the below (You guessed right, I didn't mind the sign...) Not a pleasant experience at all even though he just flew very fast like a decimeter over my head making a terrible noise a number of times.

 Cheers!

Traffic red alert! The Swede is on the road

I have been driving.
On left side
In rush traffic.
For three days.

I'm still alive!

Well to be honest it wasn't the first time but now it was some years since last time.
It always follows the same pattern
- Takes one hour to get used to drive on wrong side of the road
- Takes two days to get used to sit on wrong side of the car
- Don't know how long it will take to get used to being overtaken on the right side!
Each time, and that are many ( I'm a careful guy), I yell "WHAT THE HE.." and press the pedal to the metal. "You bastards are not gonna pass me on the inside!" Then I pass them and slowly realise I'm actually the one on the inside...
Also wonder how long it will take to learn turn my head left instead of right to find the rear mirror not to mention using the blinkers instead of the wipers before turning...

Cheers!

Oumbärlig - A touch of Sweden

Last Sunday we decided to go for an excursion and explore something outside central Brisbane. We thought IKEA would be a good target as we also needed to complement our household equipment and after 5 weeks also felt it would be nice with some Swedish food :)

IKEA in Brisbane is located in Logan, a suburb one hour with bus south of the city.
Actually the bus trip in itself was quite interesting as they have built a separate road only for bus traffic. This road has bus stops that look more like train stations, i e the whole concept is like a commuter train solution but with buses instead of trains. No impact from traffic jams on the motorway. Quite smart I think. Never seen that before.

Finally at IKEA we could see that it is as popular here as in Sweden. Crowded! And everything looks exactly the same way. The restaurant served meatballs and salmon, just like home. Well it's a pity if the Aussies think these meatballs are the real thing. In Sweden we all know that mother's meatballs are the best and no mother would be proud of these pale, texture-less things served at IKEA. Anyway we enjoyed the cream gravy and lingonberry jam.

As mentioned the concept is exactly the same as home "Designed in Sweden, built for Australia" is the motto and if it wasn't for hearing english everywhere you could as well have been in Sweden.
Even the names of the products are the same.
And here I start thinking...  how does these names sound for a non swedish speaker? Do an Aussie have any clue of what hey mean or do they think it´s just something made up to be impossible to pronounce?Take for example "Oumbärlig" How would an english speaker pronounce that?  Waambaarlich?
Correct is rather oo-uhm-ber-lig
To be honest it's a rare word in swedish as well that hardly noone below age 40 would use.

For those interested all Ikeas product names
simply are swedish words.
Furnitures are usually Swedish towns and villages ex "Stockolm", "Liatorp", "Vitemölla" (The last one might make one or two of my swedish readers happy) and in some cases person names like "Billy", "Erik" or "Ingolf"

Smaller products used to be adjectives but I guess they ran out of them so now it can be any type of word 

The best thing for an expat is the food shop outside where you find things like pickled herring, swedish caviar, "knäckebröd" etc to fill your food stocks.

Oumbärlig?? => Something you can't live without

Cheers!

River fire

In last post I promised to tell you about River Fire. I'm sorry it took me some time to get it out but anyway, here it is.
River Fire is the Grand Finale of the Brisbane Festival that has been ongoing during  September with different cultural and entertainment events every day. Although many interesting events the big thing that everybody's been waiting for is the fireworks, River Fire!

Many hours before it starts the walks along the river and the best viewing points are crowded with people trying to get the best positions and also having barbecues at the same time. You could say it is a real family party.
Before the darkness falls there is a show with fighter aircrafts and helicopters flying very low along the river. We walked to South Bank which is the place where most people gather and watched the air show from there. After that we walked to Kangaroo point cliffs for the fire works to have a shorter and less crowded walk home afterwards.




At 7 pm it started. There were loudspeakers deployed that played rock music that was synchronised with the fire works in a way that it changed theme and colours with songs. Exactly same fireworks were fired from six different platforms in the river and in addition to that also some extras from the some of the roofs. Together it gave a massive experience.
Impressing!

The guys on the picture to the left obviously lived for this event. They had taken a perfect position and had rigged a camera, probably already in the morning, to film the full show. They were actually dancing synchronised together to most of the songs during the show!  

 Cheers!