Viking 2012: Out of Brisbane

"Australia is a lovely place to live," Peter said. "It's just a pity it's so far away from everything else."
We all agreed with him.
Peter, an English water engineer, was born in London but now lived in Hervey Bay, and even a boy from Brisbane thinks it's the arse end of anywhere. He and his wife, Julie, were seated next to me for the first two of my three-leg trip to Frankfurt. We were sharing an exit row as far as Dubai, where they would stop for the night before heading on to London.
"To see the Olympics," Peter said. "And the kids, obviously. But really, the Olympics."
"What was it like in Sydney during the Olympics?" Julie asked me.
I didn't know, I wasn't there. I took a guess. "Hectic."
"London will be, too."
When we turned off our entertainment to make the descent into Singapore, Julie asked why I was heading to Frankfurt.
"I'm not, I'm just stopping through on my way to Stockholm."
"Oh lovely," she said. "Have you been before?"
"No."
"Is it just a holiday or are you going to visit someone?"
I told her why I was going.
"Well, that's fascinating," she said. "Our eldest son has just taken a year off work to write his first novel."
"Oh, what's it about?"
"He doesn't know yet. He's renting a house at the seaside and taking the time to figure it out."
Ah. That kind of novel.
"Good for him."
The Kenyan-born hostess sitting with us had family in Stockholm. "But I haven't been since I was a baby," she said. "I would love to go, but we don't fly there."
"I know."
She let me try on her hat but I had stowed my camera and my phone, so I don't have a photo.

Instead here's a photo my mum left on the camera of her living room.

When I arrived in Frankfurt I had been travelling for a hair under 30 hours. There had not been time for a shower in Singapore, but I had changed my shirt and socks in Dubai which meant I didn't smell as much like a gym bag.
"Purpose of the visit?" asked the German customs officer.
"Uh- to- uh- a holiday." I had slept four hours on the flight from Brisbane to Malaysia. My body thought it was 3 AM. There was no way I would stand up to questioning.
"When is your departing flight?"
"To Australia? Twenty third of August." Damn, wrong answer. I fly out the 21st.
He smiled at me and I think I smiled back. "Have a good holiday," he said.

The stunning view from my airport hotel. There haven't been heaps of great photo opportunities yet.

Reckon I will.

High tide at Mowbray Park

This is where I used to catch ferries.

 The tide's up, time to see how bad the damage is.  No word yet on whether this will be the highest things get today, but tomorrow's meant to be worse again.

A crowd has gathered at Mowbray Park to watch the pontoons race down the river.  There were a few barbecues going.  A lot of cameras. I hope a lot of reflection on how lucky we are.

The water has pushed giant slabs of concrete to the banks, the driftwood of giants, smashed the ferry terminals and drowned the jetties.  Today is the first day I have thought of the Brisbane River as 'dangerous.'

The ACGS boathouse.

Work has just texted to say nobody's going in until at least Monday.  Water's supposed to start going down on Saturday.

Please stay safe, but if you can get a look at this you should.

One for the school ties; Churchie and Bulimba

Army trucks hauling arse out of Bulimba.

The Skeptic said earlier today that the Flat floods if you give it a dirty look.

The Smith Fields are now an aquatic center.

Fisher.

Soon Bulimba will all be under water.

Brisbane, when it gushes

Good morning, Brisbane

I woke up at sunrise and, with no work to go to, decided to do some hill sprints up a the cliffs.  I figured I would take my camera with me, in case the river was doing anything cool.

This is where i usually run.

When I got up there, curiosity got the better of me and I instead ran from place to place, taking photos of the river.  I wasn't alone.  Every morning person in the city had come down to see how high the water had come overnight.  A crowd of us stood under the Captain Cook bridge and listened to the constant rush of water, punctuated by the hard crack of jetties slamming against pylons.

The Goodwill Bridge has become a debris collection point.

As I came down from the cliffs, the first thing I noticed was the smell; not foul or rotten, as the mangroves sometimes are, but silty.  Very silty, like snorting mud, until you get used to it.

These pelicans normally stand about a meter and a half out of the water.

Another crowd had gathered on the Goodwill Bridge, snapping photos.  Parents had brought their kids along.  They pointed and squealed at the jetties racing towards them, dashing to the other side to see them go, the world's biggest game of Poohsticks.

There is no Southbank.

In the city we could hear evacuation sirens competing for attention.  I had received multiple messages from work telling me not to go in today, and I am not alone.  Power was turned off at 7am.  I'm desperate to see photos from the CBD; I imagine it's a ghost town.

Photo speaks for itself.

A lot of people were simply going about their daily routine.  While I was taking photos, a half-dozen lycra-clad cyclists were turned back from bikeways several feet under water.

Why?

Oh.

The reappearance of the sun has brought with it the muggy air we associate with Brisbane summer.  I can only imagine what the mosquito population is going to be like once the waters go down.

The best game of Poohsticks ev- wait, does that jetty still have a boat on it?

I wonder how far it will get?

Around the corner, at Southbank, the promenade has disappeared. Shortly afterward the upper walkway also vanished under water.

I had no intention of crossing.

The closest I could get to the river at Southbank.

The Performing Arts carpark was a touch damp.

...probably not

I didn't try to get any further than the Cultural Center. I've seen a lot of photos from West End in the last few hours, and I think I did the right thing in turning back.

Water lapping against the Art Gallery and Museum.

Water levels are expected to peak at 3 this afternoon, so assuming I can still get in and out of my street I'll head back up to the cliffs then and see what I can see.  If you're reading this from outside the city, I hope this gives you an idea of what we're facing.  If you're in Brisbane, please stay safe and for the love of all things decent, stay off the roads if they're flooded.

High enough that the walkway has broken the sign.

So LA's not all bad.

We had a bit of time to kill before we had to return Maggie to her overlords, so we went to our favourite LA cafe for some breakfast.  With a midday cutoff, we figured we had enough time to make it to one great thing before the airport.  The best recommendation was for the Huntington Library.  I mostly wanted to see the gardens, but there's no part of the Huntington you're allowed to see before midday; the same time we were due to drop Maggie at LAX.

Looked nice.

Naturally, the one highway we needed to get out of Pasadena and to LAX was closed; we spent a very interesting hour with google trying to find a route which didn't take the 110.  We made it an hour late, paid our fees, reported the crack in the windshield and said goodbye to Maggie.  God bless her, she had taken us a long way.

Our bags were checked, our boarding passes collected, and we had 10 hours to wait until our flight boarded.  Continuing our tradition of being the softest backpackers known to man, we spent our last $150 on day passes to the Admiral's Lounge.  Several beers and snacks later, we were called for our flight back to Brisbane.

We left the United States of America as the date ticked over from the 18th to the 19th of November.  It had been an incredible trip.

Just a couple of lists

I will miss:
All the great people we've met, and meeting new great people all the time
American micro-brews
American football
College towns
Driving to a totally new place every couple of days
Every part of the west coast except LA
Northern accents
Having an accent
Finding location-appropriate driving tunes
The hamburger a day diet

I will not miss:
The smell of hostels
Weird hostel residents
American national beers
Los Angeles traffic
Intersections with four stop signs; one in every direction
Kids with American accents
The hamburger a day diet

San Diego is a really nice town.

The Liar wanted to check out some modern art in LA and, I later found out, get on a bus to Compton.  The Skeptic and I were done with LA and looking for an excuse to get out.  That excuse came in the form of a day-trip to San Diego.

Two-ish hours drive south of Los Angeles, San Diego is probably home to lots of cultural stuff (like a Zoo, some university campuses and the Chargers football team) but we didn't have time for that.  We just hammered Maggie down the 101 and eventually the 5, all the way to the coast so we could sit outside a bar at Pacific Beach, eat our last real hamburger of the trip and drink a locally brewed beer which tasted almost exactly like Carlton Draft.

Nice beach, despite the smog.  Just have a look the other way.

See?

The drive back took six-ish hours; our first real experience of LA traffic.  With two of us in the car, we were able to use the carpool lane most of the way back, so it was only the last 20 miles or so that we really slowed down, averaging three mile an hour.  We took so long, the Liar called to find out where we are which, if you know the guy, is pretty hilarious.

But we did make it back, headed to the pub and raised a whiskey to our last night in America. It had been a hell of a trip.