2026 Aussie Visit
What happened was, Lauren’s NZ family includes a nephew who’s currently living in Brisbane and got married last month, so a dozen or so Kiwis and three of us Canadians got on airplanes and converged on easternmost Australia. We went on to tourist a bit and visit friends in the Melbourne area. Came away with impressions and pictures.
Australia’s different. I don’t claim any particular deep understanding, but at least we were mostly among locals and often off the tourist trail. Also I find some of the pictures pleasing.
Damn, that’s a long plane flight.
Eleven or so hours into the journey, dawn over the Pacific; ice crystals on the windows plus something put the Pixel into Macro mode and thus the reflections. Vaguely self-portrait-ish.
The wedding · It was great; she’s a Grade 4 teacher and he’s a cop. They’re both exceptionally attractive and have large supportive families. It was well-organized and good fun.
The mothers of the bride and groom both looked very sharp.
Niece of the groom sends a silhouetted heart.
Brisbane · The city didn’t do much for me, but maybe that’s because we were mostly out in the burbs: Our Airbnb, the Kiwi-branch Airbnb, the bride & groom’s place, and the wedding venue. All in decent but (except for our joint in Brighton) not terribly memorable neighborhoods.
Also there was “Chermy”, the Westfield Chermside Mall. OMG. It’s the size of a small European nation and getting prepped for the wedding required enough time there to drive my nervous system nearly to meltdown, I’m not good at malls.
I’m left with the impression that Brisbane is designed and optimized for automobiles but, once again, maybe we just came at it wrong.
Low tide off Flinders Parade in Brighton, Queensland.
Kookaburra of course.
After the wedding there was a gathering at Felons Brewing, an absolutely massive gastropub on the banks of Brisbane’s river, which I totally recommend. The place is too big but somehow they make it work and the food is really good.
Warragul · Our dear friend Sally, after a long career in Melbourne, sold her house in a decent Melbourne neighborhood and bought something of a palace in Warragul, a couple of hours by train to the east. It’s in Gippsland, a green and pleasant part of Australia.
Warragul is small, busy in the center, and very quiet outside it.
Warragul.
My favorite thing about the town was Bandolier Brewing, which has a friendly and relaxed small-town vibe and terrific pizzas. The beer is OK but not memorable.
The countryside around it is remarkably nice.
Looking down on Gippsland pastureland
from the
Cape Horn Lookout.
Melbourne · Lauren got her Ph.D here and has lots of context on the place, plus still a few friends. It’s a cool city; the fact that it’s got twice Vancouver’s population shows. A whole lot of style statements were really working, plus the streets and alleys operate on a welcoming human scale.
It’s a foodie city, which as a side-effect highlights a big difference between there and here: Pay is better in Australia. Here are the minimum-wage rules (for Americans, those Aussie bucks are worth about 70¢ just now). Those rates are a lot higher then where I live. “But,” our taxi driver told us, “nobody’ll work for the minimum, you have to offer more than that.”
This is in your face when you eat out; first, because everything on the menu is expensive. Second, nobody asks for a tip. I kind of like this set of trade-offs and wish North America would get a clue. If you follow that minimum-wage link above you’ll observe its from “Australian Unions” and they claim a lot of credit for the pay structure. To the extent that’s true, good on ’em.
Anyhow, back to Melbourne. The center of the town is Flinders Street Station, which I’ve pictured on this blog before and will again; the place makes me happy.
At Flinders Street station.
On our last day we visited the Vic Market, where a huge and remarkably random selection of merchants sell, more or less, everything imaginable. A cheery place; my daughter and I had a food-truck lunch (me: Ethiopian, her: Mexican) that was at least competitive in quality with the fancier-restaurant fare.
Trailing observations · Here’s a place near Sally’s in Warragul.
It nicely illustrates a few of my take-aways. Item: Vast lawn. Item: Nice brickwork. Item: Capacious roof overhang for shelter from rain and sun. Item: Since they don’t have alleys, every house has a front-facing garage (behind the bush in this pic). Item: Solar; in reasonably new/modern areas, somewhere around a third of residences have these. It’s subsidized enough to make it a financial no-brainer. Item: Impeccably clean road and curb. Item: Single story, no basement or upstairs.
I actually like a lot of the Aussie residential architecture. Pity about those front-facing garages.
Finally, speaking as a full-time hat wearer, for my money Akubra makes the world’s coolest. Expensive, but rugged and stylish. Check ’em out.
