Carnival of Flowers

 Letter No. 253

Dear all,

Mum and Dad took Katie and I out for Katie’s belated birthday lunch on 18 July. We went to the Sofitel for their lunch buffet which is pretty special. I had at least two dozen oysters which really ruined my diet but was worth it!

The next day, Friday, we went to City Hall with Jessica for the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award Ceremony. There were about 40 young people from all over South East Queensland receiving their awards from the governor of Queensland. There was an afternoon tea afterwards and we stayed and chatted to some of the other parents. Jessie then had to rush off to work but Katie and I stayed in the city for a few drinks in a bar overlooking King George Square.

On Saturday it was Jessie’s driving test again. It was third time lucky and she has finally passed. Thank goodness but look out Brisbane. J

The next night we went to the St Aidan’s Signature Ball at the Howard Smith Wharfs. We were invited to sit with a group of people from Jessie’s year but most of them still had younger daughters at the school. There was a lovely cocktail reception on the veranda overlooking the river and Storey Bridge and then we moved inside for dinner. We had a really nice night and knew lots of people and we also scored an excellent table right at the front next to the VIP table (Katie was very happy about that). The only downside was that the band was very average so we didn’t dance at all.

I had to go to Alice Springs on 25-26 July for work. There are very few direct flights so I had to fly there through Sydney and back via Adelaide. It was a very long trip for about two hours of work and less than 24 hours on the ground in Alice Springs. In the evening I went for a run through the town and ran up Anzac Hill for the view. I had dinner in Todd Street Mall and got chatting to some Austrian tourists and had a nice evening. The view from Anzac Hill was pretty good so I got up early the next morning and ran up again to watch the sun rise. It was a little cold but a great sunrise. Then back to the hotel and on to the airport for the trip back to Brisbane.

We went to our friends the Malins to watch the Rugby on Saturday 27 July. Wings made a great Chinese meal for us all before the game. Australia beat Argentina so it was a good result! In more rugby news, we had a few friends the Tods and Grahams over to watch the Bledisloe Cup game on Sat 10 August. Everyone bought a dish and we had a quick meal before the boys went to the pool room to watch the rugby and the girls stayed on the verandah to chat. The boys went back up for dessert at half time. It was a nice evening made all the better by the surprise result of Australia beating New Zealand.

On August 25^th we went to friends Thao and David for dinner. Katie had been working all weekend and has had a crazy month. She raced home just minutes before we had to leave so did a quick turnaround. Thao & David have a vertical house perched on the cliffs of the river bank in Corinda which they call the Treehouse. Their top veranda (of three) is about 50m above the river and looks directly on to the top of huge red gum trees. It was just sundown as we arrived and it was lovely watching the sun go down and all the birds chattering to each other in the top of the trees. Jessie is best friends with their daughter Porsche so she came too as our driver for the night!!

On 31^st August I flew to Hong Kong. I needed to go to Shanghai for work so decided to go via Hong Kong and take a few days annual leave for a little holiday. I arrived about 7:30pm on Saturday evening and stayed with Ian and Cathy Muir for a few nights. On the Sunday morning I went for a 2.5 hour run in the country park behind the Muir’s flat. It was a really lovely run around water reservoirs avoiding the baboons. I made it back to their flat and got changed before we went out to Sai Kung to meet Diane Powers for lunch. The Muirs came as well and drove and we had a lovely and very long lunch on the beachfront before wandering around Sai Kung town. We made it back to Kowloon Tong by about 4pm and Ian and Cathy dropped me at the train station. I caught the train to Tsim Sha Tsui and wandered around looking at the old haunts – my office, the Weinstube and the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. I then caught the Star ferry to Wan Chai and went and had a beer in The Wanch for old times’ sake before going home.

On Monday I went into Central. I walked up Cotton Tree Drive past St John’s Cathedral where Katie and I were married and stopped in the church for a while. I then caught the Peak Tram up to the Peak and did the walk around the Peak. It is a lovely walk with great views of the harbour which takes about an hour. It was raining (there was a Typhoon Signal No. 3 in force and a Yellow Rainstorm warning). I managed to get around and back into Starbucks for a coffee just as the torrential downpour started. I waited for the rain to subside a little before catching the tram back down and getting a bus to Stanley for a walk around the markets and lunch on the beach. After lunch I went for a swim at Stanley Main Beach. The PA was announcing that people shouldn’t go into the water due to the dangerous wave conditions. As the waves were less than knee high I decided to risk it and had a nice swim. After a shower I caught the bus back to Wan Chai and went for a beer in Carnegies – where Katie and I had our first conversation – before catching the train around to the United Services Recreation Club near Sham Shui Po to meet Ian and Cathy for a nice Indian dinner.

The next day, Tuesday, I spent the morning in Mid-levels, wandering around all the places we used to go and to see if all our old flats were still there. There were heaps of new coffee shops, bars, restaurants, deli’s and supermarkets around where we lived in Caine Road. I also went to Hong Kong Park and the Botanical and Zoological Gardens before walking down through Hollywood Road and Lan Kwai Fong and then on to Central MTR station. I caught the train to Tung Chung on Lantau Island and spent the afternoon at The Big Buddha. It was just about the only Hong Kong tourist site I had never been to, as it is fairly remote. They had built a cable car to get there since we had left but it was closed for maintenance unfortunately, so I shared a 45-minute cab ride with some similarly stranded tourists. The Big Buddha is pretty impressive and I wandered around the monastery and village before catching the bus back to Tung Chung which was one tenth of the price. I went back to MongKok on the train and walked through the Ladies Market and Temple Street Markets picking up a few things before going back to the Muir’s. Katie said afterwards that I had managed to pack our entire 10-years of life in Hong Kong into just three days!

While I was in Hong Kong there was lots of trouble with the protestors and rioting. There seemed to be one or two MTR stations shut every day as there was rioting going on outside the station. It did inconvenience travel a little. One day while I was there they blocked the road to the airport and people had to walk 5km in the rain to make their flights! Luckily I was not impacted.

On Wednesday 4 September I flew on to Shanghai. I arrived about noon and caught the Maglev train most of the way into the city centre. There are two trains, one goes 430km/hr and the other 300km/hr. Unfortunately I got the slower train and it took 8 minutes to travel 40km. I caught a taxi the last little way to my hotel. That afternoon I went for a walk around Shanghai and also visited the Shanghai Museum which was quite good but small and took about an hour. I met my client and the steel factory owner (Chris) for drinks and dinner. As the oldest person in the group and the most honoured guest I got all the best portions of the dishes such as fish heads, goose feet, brains and other delicacies. I need to make sure I travel with older people next time I go to China. Chris was determined to entertain us in style with shots of rice wine. I was pleased to get back to my hotel for a lie down after dinner.

The next day we had a long drive to the steel factory on a massive freeway, driving for three hours up to 160km/hr and never really getting out of suburbia. It was all industrial estates or other cities.  I was also quite surprised at how clean everything was. We spent the next two days inspecting the steel and quality documentation for the steel for our project in Brisbane. That night we went to Taixing City about 30 minutes’ drive away, including a car ferry across the river. It was a massive city. My room was on the 43^rd floor and the view was amazing - huge buildings, sports stadiums, gardens and roads and buildings as far as the eye could see. We had another spectacular dinner and again I got all the good bits like the turtle head and chicken gizzards! After dinner we met up with a few of Chris’s friends and went to a karaoke bar where we had a private room with pool table, massive TV screens, darts and heaps of games. The waiter brought in a case of beer and opened every one of them before we found out they were warm. The Chinese didn’t mind but the three westerners wanted (and got) more cold beers. The amount of waste was quite appalling. We managed to avoid the karaoke by playing pool. Around midnight Chris bought a bottle of Scotch and insisted that we all drank shots until it was gone. There were only eight of us, so it was a struggle to get out of bed and go back to the factory the next morning.

I had to leave at 2:00pm Friday for the 3.5 hour drive to Shanghai airport and the overnight flight back to Brisbane via Taipei. Luckily I had a lie flat bed so got a fair bit of sleep. Matt met me at Brisbane airport and I made it home by 11:30am on Saturday morning. It was good that I made it home that day as it was Jessie’s 18^th birthday that day and her party was that night. I had already set up the fairy lights a week or so earlier and bought the drinks, but we all had to spend the afternoon setting up.

Jessie had about 60 friends over and Katie was quite worried about whether the party would get out of control so she did a lot of food. Matthew was the bartender which was quite a good idea as he had control over the size of the shots the kids were putting in their drinks. Katie and her friend Thao were in the kitchen producing food all night and I handed it around and cleaned up. Jessie had requested Asian food, so Katie did rice paper rolls, sushi, spring rolls and gyoza on platters followed by noodle boxes of vegetable curry and rice. All-in-all the party was quite a success. No-one threw up (at least in our house), there were no knife fights and the kids all seemed to enjoy themselves. They sang happy birthday dutifully when we produced the cake and scoffed the chocolate cake enthusiastically. Jess had been thinking about clubbing in the Valley but in the end decided not to. We got to bed about 1am. We spent the Sunday cleaning up and putting the house back to order.

On Friday 13 September Katie and I went for dinner at the Spanish Tapas place in the village and saw Downton Abbey in the local cinemas. It was really good if you like that type of period drama. The next night we went to Hillstone Golf Club for our friend Caitlin’s 50^th birthday.

The next weekend Katie and I went up to Toowoomba for the Carnival of Flowers. We left about 8:30am on the Friday and made it to Picnic Point Parklands at the top of the range for morning tea and a short hike in the bush. We went to the Orchid Society Spring Show and the Toowoomba Bonsai Group Annual Show in the Rose Cottage of Newton Park. We bought a lovely orchid which was planted inside a hollow log and a bonsai fig in a lovely blue pot. We went on to look at the roses in Newton Park. 

We were staying in Potters Hotel, about 800m from the centre of Toowoomba, which was quite a good location. In the afternoon we went to Laurel Bank Park where the gardens were spectacular with lots of lovely flowers and some very colourful flower beds and fantastic topiary. In the evening we had a couple of drinks at the George Banks Rooftop bar, a very funky and contemporary bar with a lovely view over the city. We wandered around the lanes looking at the street murals for a while and then had dinner at Fitzies in the centre which was heaving.

On the Saturday I went for a run and went back to Laurel Bank Park. Even at 6.45am it was still quite crowded! We had coffee in the GPO Café located in the historic old post office building, before walking on to Queen’s Park as we had all day tickets to the Heritage Bank Food and Wine Festival. We wandered around Queen’s Park first looking at more fantastic flower displays and had a ride on a quaint little ferris wheel. We had a nice lunch at the food and wine festival and found a great bar table to prop ourselves up at for a few hours listening to the bands playing. At 2:30pm we walked back into town for the Grand Central Floral Parade. A squad of Super hornets and Black Hawk helicopters from Oakey flew over to start the parade. There were lots of colourful floral floats although many of them seemed to be advertising aged care homes and had minibuses covered in flower pots and all the residents inside the van dressed up for a nice day out. When we went back to the festival we somehow found ourselves a brilliant space to put our picnic rug down close to the stage with a great view. We took turns wandering around buying a large cheese platter and an olive platter and a couple of bottles of wine for dinner and watched the bands. There was a great funk band Electrik Lemonade followed by  Queen Forever with an amazing Freddie Mercury singer with all the moves and costumes, then an Abba tribute band Bjorn Again. There were fireworks and then we miraculously managed to get a cab back to the hotel.

Unfortunately I managed to leave my phone in the cab. We realised quite quickly and Katie called it and luckily there was a girl sitting on my phone and felt it vibrate (it was on silent). We arranged to pay the taxi driver to bring my phone back after he dropped them off for $20. I was very relieved to get my phone back. However the girl who had found my phone had mischievously set the phone alarm for 3:00am and 3:05am with the reminder “Don’t leave your phone in a taxi”. So funny…NOT!

Sunday morning we went to Cobb and Co. Museum, a collection of beautiful antique horse-drawn carriages. Bill Bolton, the grandfather of one of our close friends, had collected most of them and set up the museum in the 1960s. It was a very nice collection. He had initiated and completed a stage coach ride in 1966 which covered over 3700km from Port Douglas in North Queensland to Melbourne in three months. It is the record for the longest horse-drawn coach ride in the world. It was a very nice weekend, both colourful and floral.

That’s all for this month.

Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly