Today we're going to see the whales. It's inexpensive and a nice day on the water. It's a cool 28C and the whales are here to party, we see them breach a few times and the Mother and young calf enjoy playing in the water. (The picture isn't mine as I couldn't get a good picture because I'm a crap photographer).
To test Kieran's ability to fly we hire a small water plane to go and see the whales and dolphins from the sky. The Pilot says he'll put the picture on his website. I ask for Air miles in return. (Didn’t get them :)
As I'm working in Port Macquarie this week -including the weekend- Emma decided to join me. It's a 9 hour drive south from Brisbane and as Kieran is used to the car (4000 km just a week ago) it was considered a medium range drive. Besides, you didn't think Emma would stay in the same place for more than 48 hours did you? She drove down and took pictures of her in front of big things. Big Banana, Big Prawn, Big Clogs.
Riverfire is a yearly city-wide fireworks to celebrate Brisbane and the River. (We don't need much to celebrate here) The fireworks can compete with Sydney's and this year was bigger and better than ever before. This year was a special one as this was the last time ever that the F1-11 flies over Brisbane doing a fuel dump. The noise is so loud that your body vibrates because of it. Kieran slept through the entire thing.
We had to walk 8 minutes from our home to get to the best vantage point in the city. I love our apartment and its location.
On the map of Queensland, it says 'famous hotel'. Brian, the fierce looking, soft spoken manager of the Birdsville hotel welcomes us. He has been planning this event for a year and seems completely on top of things.
Just to give you an idea of how friendly people living here are: They drove up a baby cot from the next town (360KMs away). They gave us a couple of bottles of wine, they came to ask every day how we were doing and invited us to eat with the crew.
The races are something to behold: The Birdsville races: where the dust never settles. In the sweltering heat of the Simpson Desert horses race in a cloud of dust. Bookies from all over Australia are yelling numbers to get people to bet.
We drove out to ‘big red’ the largest red-sand dune in the Simpson Desert. Not the smartest thing to do, as it’s a 2 hour drive on a “road” with a warning sign: Travel on these roads is dangerous; you must warn the authorities of your destination and expected arrival. We cheerfully ignore the message and make it to ‘big red’.
We make many new friends, We're invited to NSW and VIC whenever we like.
We lose money as we're no good at betting on horses.
We drink litres and litres of water.
We (have to) show Kieran to every woman out here in the desert.
Fred Brophy is an institution; he runs the last boxing tent in the world, or so he claims. A tent where amateurs can volunteer to box a few rounds against some pretty mean professional boxers. It's where you can see a 120 kgs farm hand being floored in the first round by a feather weight champion.
Two guys, dressed up as super heroes, volunteer to box a tag-team match. Fred tells them 'You're laughing now, but you won't be in a minute, I can tell you that!'. And indeed, within 30 seconds both of them have bleeding noses and are not laughing. Within 45 seconds one falls to the ground semi-KO. The crowd cheers and yells. The match is over.
Next up is one of two brothers drunk out of his mind, he has a hard time standing at all. The crowd expects them to go down in the first 4 seconds... it takes 2 seconds. But what's this? He stands up, BANG! nope, he's down again... Alcohol keeps him going, because he tries again... Boom, BOOM... Down he goes again.The crowd now yells: 'Stay down mate! don't get up!'.
Unfortunately this is not the brightest kid in town and he stands up again. The professional boxer is getting annoyed and bestows a salvo of uppercuts on the unfortunate cowboys chin, followed by volley of punches to the head. This would have floored a horse. But... to the amazement of the crowd the kid stands up again... Fred looks puzzled and ends the match.
With the air conditioning set to 'SubZeroFreeze', Barbados dance music set to 'AreYouDeafYet' and Cruise Control set to 'DesertBlazing' we cruise through the outback. The dust cloud behind us can be seen from space and we are making good time on atrocious unsealed tracks leading to one of the world’s best parties: The Birdsville races.
The Birdsville races have existed since 1882 and grow bigger every year. It all boils down to an all Australian outback piss up where everyone is everyone else's friend.
Everybody knows what the outback is, but no one really knows where it is. So just to make sure there's no discussion whether this is the outback, Birdsville was chosen for the event.
We make good time and work through the 1700 kms and get there if the afternoon of the 2nd day. Kieran had to endure a make-shift bath...
