Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
| f |
Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
|
|
March 16 - In & around Brisbane, Queensland 107 Km (66 Miles) |
|
You will notice the use of Kilometers (km) for our primary distance measurement while in Australia. We decided to go with the Metric system, since all of the road signs are in km, the rented motorcycle speedometers and odometers are in km or kph (kilometers per hour) , and we could set our GPS units to read in km and kph. Today was our day to spend in and around Brisbane, and Clint was our tour guide. First Clint led us into the mountains of the Great Dividing Range again, this time to take us to mountain view points which had splendid views of the city of Brisbane, and which also had extensive views of the surrounding hills and mountains. At one of these viewpoints, several bus loads of Chinese tourists came to see our motorcycles, and just mobbed Clint, for taking photos of themselves with Clint and his Gold Wing. Clint is a big man, and with a big motorcycle, he was the main attraction. Some other Chinese couples had their pictures taken with Jack, and a few did also with Deane. - Quite a mob; we had a hard time getting away! One of the special parts of the landscape is the "Glass Mountains". These are actually huge volcano plugs, millions of years old, which dominate the landscape. It was Lieutenant James Cook who named these, in his exploration and mapping of the coast of Australia, using a borrowed term of the glass green houses popular among the wealthy in England in the 1700's. Because these are so large, they could be seen for some distance out to sea.
Then in the afternoon, Clint took us to have a ride on the Brisbane River Ferry. For a distance of about 10 miles, fast ferries ply the river for walk-on commuters, and give a really good view of the buildings along the river. This allows an excellent way to see some of the sky scrapers in Brisbane, and many are really impressive - clean, good architecture, and very impressive.
In the evening, Charleen and Clint organized a barbeque for us to meet their motorcycling friends, and that was delightful. As they had promised by e-mail correspondence, they barbequed Kangaroo steaks!! (No, - Kangaroo doesn't taste like chicken - it is more like beef, but kind of rubbery.) It was fun to meet their crowd and find out what some of their rides are like. |
||
