As a part of my undergraduate teacher-training course, the government paid for the tuition, air-tickets, accommodation, cultural activities, and food for two months at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Life down under wasn’t particularly exciting, what’s with the café closing at 3pm and the terrible public transportation, but Aus was definitely a place where I thought I could retire in.
This post is about the city proper – Greater Brisbane includes to the south the world-famous Gold Coast and to the north Sunshine Coast, and lays the claim to be the largest city in the world. But let’s not. They aren’t all the same city.
Downtown Brisbane was just like any other colonial town, with numerous European buildings.
It’s not really that different from Hong Kong, both being former British colonies. And of course there’s the fact that Australia is an immigrant country with lots and lots of orientals. (I think Cantonese is actually the second-most spoken first language in the country.)
I may be biased in a way, or rather, ignorant. Even though I had been to many places by that point, it was mainly still usually around oriental Asia, and so the few European buildings in Brisbane (where I’ve been a few years prior, actually) might have looked better to me than they would now.
A dinosaur in their museum. I’ve always liked casts like this.
When you’re talking about Australia, of course you have to talk about its unique animals. Kangaroos are undeniably the most famous.
It’s sort of a petting zoo, and so they weren’t dangerous. I heard they could be if they were wild. Also, I did approach slowly and wasn’t standing tall.
Very friendly bunch indeed.
Joey, I’m so sorry; oh-woah-woah can you hear me
The Devil!
I don’t have a photo for it, but they have something called the butch turkey or something. They are everywhere and quite annoying. Apparently protected.
This was one of those times when you took a photo with some nobody and then they ended up being very famous. At the time, I thought I was just channelling the Princess of Pop Britney Spears at the Grammy’s; little did I know I was taking a picture with country-pop songstress Taylor Swift, the woman who managed to move over a million copies in their first week for three records straight!
One unique thing about Brisbane is the fact that boats are a part of its public transportation system.
And they also created an artificial beach for some reason.
You may know Australia to be a huge country, but do you know their cigarette butts are proportionally even bigger?
They like coffee so much they drink TARDISes of them. Totally addicted.
The university left much to be desired, by the way. One of the lecturers was trying to sell me creationism (which he called “intelligent design”). It was awkward.
I had an interesting experience though. I still can’t recall what actually happened, but my alarm didn’t sound and I woke up late. It was raining the night before, thus I slipped and fell on wooden ground before going to the other house for breakfast. I still can’t remember anything, but apparently I was walking towards the wrong direction, a classmate grabbed me to our coach (we were going on a school visit), and I kept asking everyone if I could just follow them for the rest of the day. In the end, they found me way too erratic and sent me to the hospital.
I had a concussion. The first thing I can recall is seeing one of my other lecturers next to my bed, asking if I realize one of the other classmates had run away. I didn’t, of course, since I wasn’t exactly conscious despite the fact that I was walking around with them. It turned out a girl ran off to New Zealand with her boyfriend without telling either university! And she stayed there for nine days before coming back. She was sent home right away.
From the peak of Brisbane.
jagged little earth 