Our first posting

So here we are, in Brisbane, the magnificent capital city of Queensland, home of the Great Barrier Reef, Fraser Island and 'the Big Pineapple'.

Were slowly getting used to life over here and beginning to understand what people are saying and the strange enthusiasm for giant fruit.

Brisbane is hot, busy, thriving, hot, friendly and hot, but mainly hot. For the first few weeks we thought we would see if life without air conditioning was an option. It wasn't. All environmental ethics went out the window and we cranked up the air con and boy was it good, well infinitely more preferable than eating dinner in our underwear.

Apart from being hot, Brisbane seems to be a pretty funky place to live. We're just a ferry ride away from the CBD ( or bit with tall buildings in it) and the riverside pathway is just outside our front door. Every evening, hoards of lycra'd up Aussies power walk past our house along the river. Now this is no evening stroll, this is walking with attitude and the goal seems to be to get as sweaty as humanly possible without breaking into a jog - and they're really good at it.

We've given it a go, but we keep forgetting that we're meant to be going fast and stopping to look at interesting trees or we get talking and realise ( much to the distress of the people behind us) that we've reverted to an amble. We've decided to stick to the jogging, which is a much more sensible and painful way to keep fit.

The other sport we have tried out it boogie boarding. Its a bit like surfing for novices on a wide stubby surf board made out of polystyrene that you lie on and when a wave comes along you glide towards the beach on the crest of the wave, looking a million bucks. Or, you just about manage to get out past the breaking waves without falling over, wait for a wave, it dumps you face first on the floor whilst your board surfs gracefully into shore. Alternatively you don't even make it out to where you should be waiting for 'the big one' without misjudging a wave and losing your bikini bottoms, your board and your street cred.

We've also discovered that 'rashies', the vest that all surfers seem to wear, are not a fashion item but a surfing neccessity - this we realised only once we had become, not only the pastiest, but also the blotchiest people on the beach. Still we've got two years to become bronzed surf monkeys so watch this space....


The pastey surfer tackles the pacific ocean