Queen Street, Brisbane, Australia @ Night
Restaurants in Brisbane tend to be open to the street.
A daily personal photoblog from Pete Geniella, a Fort Worth, TX based photographer
Restaurants in Brisbane tend to be open to the street.
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pete g
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09:28
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Labels: Australia, Black And White, Canon 20d, People, Tari
This freaky looking dinosaur-monster is actually an Ibis. They are almost as common in Australia as pigeons and room the streets, eating refuse and scraps. Although generally friendly, even a bit shy, it was somewhat disconcerting to have such a big bird casually lurking about the busy human world.
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pete g
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10:59
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What if Main Street in Fort Worth was closed off like this? How wonderful and open it would be? There is an idea that people don't want to walk in Texas because it is too hot, but it's hot in Australia too. Queen Street is closed off the vehicular traffic, making it the central walkway through the CBD (central business district). Our hotel was on Queen St., and I spent hours there people watching and shooting photographs.
This might be my favorite image from our trip to Australia. UnderWater World offers a "Seal Swim" encounter where folks can hop in the seal tank and play with them. The seals were like playful puppies darting around the kicking and swirling humans. I made this image in "Seal Stadium" which was empty at the time. It was incredibly peaceful.
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pete g
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08:40
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We did a touristy thing and got into the shark aquarium at UnderWater World in Mooloolaba in Australia. We hung out there for about 30 minutes while ancient death-bringers with craggy teeth swam past our faces, over our heads and around our legs. While intellectually, I understood that none of the dozen or so sharks in the tank had a lust for the sweet nectar of human blood, it was still unnerving as they would swim up to my face, look at me with their cold, dead, killing eyes and move their toothy jaws up and down as if to taunt me, and then slowly swim past me.
Posted by
pete g
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13:29
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Labels: Australia
Byron Bay is a cool little beach town with lots of open air coffee shops and restaurants and backpacking Euros marching around. Reggae drifted out from the coffee shops and everybody was young, healthy and beautiful in a natural surfer kind of way. We were in Byron Bay to go SCUBA diving at Julian Rocks Marine Preserve.
Named by Captain Cook before he got killed by angry Hawaiians, Julian Rocks are just a couple of rocks about 1/2 a mile out in the Bay. Because they are situated right where the warm waters from the north meet the cooler waters from the south, it has a unique abundance and variety of marine life. Some people say they diving there is better than on the Great Barrier Reef.
After getting geared up we took a quick 5-7 min ride out to the Rocks on an inflatable sided boat. The weather was perfect, the sun out, crystal clear skies and water. It felt so good to be alive... riding on the boat with the wind in our hair and the sea spray blowing in our faces. We did the total Jacques Cousteau backwards roll into the water. It was exhilarating.
We did two dives and they were well organized and personalized to our skill level. We dove with an instructor on both. The first dive was kinda rough because we had never dealt with currents before and our group had 5 people in it, not including the Dive Master. Once we got down (60 feet), Germans were bumping into Italians, and it's not like the two Americans were staying out of the way either. We say a Leopard shark, lots of fish and other marine life. It was a good start.
When we went out a second time it was much better. It was just the two of us and our dive master was better than the first. We took our time and had a really mellow dive. We saw a school of about 25 Eagle Rays swim by, and then as we rounded the corner we saw some sort of Giant Ray swimming up a rock wall. It was awesome. He was so giant and graceful. We saw puffer fish, schools of tuna, dozens of wobbegongs, little plankton-y type critters, crabs, big ol' potato cods....we saw so many different kinds of fish, we couldn't possibly remember all of them to identify later. It was incredible.
Posted by
pete g
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09:21
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Labels: Australia
Posted by
pete g
at
09:14
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Labels: Australia
I've add "Live Linkage" down below. This will be a constantly changing roll of links I find interesting along with some commentary from me. Some of it will be photography related, but not all.
Posted by
pete g
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09:50
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