We spent yesterday and today doing the Museum Trail. The Queensland museum, the Brisbane Museum and the Maritime museum. Thats a lot of “eums”. They were interesting, though a lot of it would have gone completely over my head. The Maritime Museum was quite interesting, as were the two sprightly octogenarians (one an ex Navy engineer, the other ex special forces) that assisted us in navigating the museum exhibits and on the Diamantina. Also, yesterday we used the Brisbane “City Sights” Tour, to get around and get a feel for the place (jumping on and off at various locations), this morning we took a trip down the Brisbane river on a tour boat, it was extremely relaxing to have a coffee and watch Brisbane literally float by.

Some interesting facts(?). Brisbane has more sunny days than Florida and warmer winter days than the Bahamas. The oldest building is a Windmill, that was never really used as a windmill (not enough wind).

What has really impressed me about the place is that all along the waterfront is accessible to the public. Anyone developing a property on the waterfront has to allow public access. This means that there is over 20kms of walk/cycleway along the river front. Also, there are ferrys (citycats) with pontoons at strategic locations up and down the river. Rather than just go over and back, they go up and down allowing one to get from one end of Brisbane to the other on river based public transport, how cool.

Another thing that has surprised my about the country in general is, given that there is so much sun, there is relatively little use of grid tied Photovoltaic power systems. There are however, some houses, (more further North) using Solahart Water Heating systems, and even the odd house using a 2 inch Black Plastic pipe (works quite well in the sun). I can only assume that the economics of doing so still ísn’t attractive except over a much longer term, like at home.

Time for a swim. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, we are here.