Australia - Western Australia - Mehron Ate a Bug

Need I say more?

Just kidding. I will tell that story in due time.

We only had a week to explore and get a taste of Western Australia, which fancies itself as the ultimate Aussie experience since it is sprawling, isolated, and rugged. To be fair, it is Australia's largest and wealthiest state. It is over 1 million square miles of land and home to one of the last of the world's populations of wild camels, as well as home to the quokkas of Rottnest Island. It has a population of 1.9 million people in the entire state, 1.5 million of which live in Perth (that leaves 0.4 million sprinkled along the other 999,899 square miles of the state).

However, the activities we chose gave us the impression of it being historic, delicious, and charming. Perth was our go-to base of operations, but we didn't really ever spend a whole day in the city. I can highly recommend both Han's Cafe and Taka restaurant chains of Western Australia, which respectively serve delicious uber cheap Thai and Japanese cuisine (yes, we spend all our time and money eating in Australia. It's too yummy, we can't help it).



Aside from the good cheap eats, I will fondly remember Perth for its efficient and extensive city rail networks and the fastest moving clouds on the planet. Trains and Rains, for short.

We were totally charmed by Fremantle (which you can get to quickly and cheaply on Perth's fab rails). The main districts were all historical colonial buildings, with a surprising French influence that continues into the South West of W.A.



Our hostel was crap; we were eager not to spend a night there again. But we had amazing barramundi baguettes at a hole in the wall cafe called Sardines (and run by a hippy balding three dread-lock sporting Frenchman) that have finalized our decision to overturn salmon as our fish of choice for barramundi. Due to inclement weather, we went to a movie and if you haven't seen The Hangover, you're going to need to do so now.

Our one evening in town was spent fulfilling our persistent desire to learn more about Australia's prison convict past. Fremantle Prison did NOT disappoint.



We took the Torchlight Tour of the once largest maximum security prison in Australia and it ran the gambit from the cat o' nine tails whipping posts to the soundproof isolation cell block to the gallows room. Brilliant. At one point, they threw a body dummy off the building at us, right over Mehron's head. Fantastic. Two story highlights... a prisoner was accidentally decapitated during his hanging and his ghost is said to haunt the gallows room. Group photos taken in the room have often had a distortion over the heads of the people in the photos... spooky. Fremantle prison was also home to the escape-proof cell, expressly designed to hold Moondyne Joe. Joe had escaped from the local prison no less than four times before they moved him into Fremantle. He then escaped from Fremantle SEVEN TIMES. But not once from the escape-proof cell.

We found the Aussies of Freo (as they have nicknamed Fremantle) to be particularly friendly. I was lured into a twenty minute conversation with the informal Italian Aussie elder gentlemen's club that meets on the mall bench in front of the grocery store on Thursday afternoons. Mehr was beset by the kindest Jehovah's Witness Grannies you ever met who were adorable and encouraged us to share our pamphlet on the suffering of the world to save trees. We were also wished a good journey by several people as we passed them on the streets. Good on ya, Freo!

We also investigated Aussie buses in W.A. and wandered five hours south to Margaret River since we apparently hadn't satiated our taste for wine in Yarra Valley in Victoria. Margaret River was so named by Alfred Bussel (Bussels were a founding family of the region), after the woman he loved unrequitedly. Unrequitedly because she was his first cousin and refused to marry him. In fact, she never saw the river that was named after her! Lovely place though.

Our original plan was to do a cave and canoe tour but due to weather and the laziness of other tourists who did not fill up the tour, we were FORCED to change over to Bushtucker's Great Wineries Tour. Which by the way was awesome. From 10am to 5pm, we had a very hard day's work sampling the great wines, chocolate, cheeses and beers of the area. Margaret River is tiny but has 127 wineries. They produce 4% of Australia's wines which win 25% of the national wine awards. Pretty impressive stats, if you're a stats person.

Our tour guide extraordinaire Silvano (or the Silver Fox, as he was called by all the winery owners...) was also a master D.J. who had his bus full of tipsy patrons rocking out to Pretty Woman, That's Amore, Home Among the Gum Trees and of course, Land Down Under. First stop was Bettenay Wines. The owner was a total nutter, as Silvano informed us. The man was more than passionate about wine... he was lusting after it. The way he described his favourite Chardonnay was enough to make us shift uncomfortably around the room. Most interesting samples there were the ones made by his son, First Blush and Hot Flush, which were two versions of a fortified rose with chillis added. Next up was Knotting Hill, where Julia Roberts was married. The Aussie Julia Roberts of course, not the one you may be familiar with. Knotting Hill's Sauvignon Blanc was our favourite wine of the day in fact, which was surprising since Mehr and I are partial to reds. The chocolate and cheese factories provided needed respite from the drinking.



After lunch (we'll talk about that next), we tried the ports and liqueurs of the Grove (I had to buy the Macadamia one... it was amazing) and wrapped up our day with the famous Adinfern wines before changing pace to the Colonial Brewery.

Now about that lunch... Bushtucker prides itself on serving a variety of foods native to Australia and I will try very hard to remember everything we ate: Margaret River Factory tasty cheese, organic farms greens, kangaroo (better this time) with bush tomato chutney, rosella pesto, smoked emu, wild turkey, pumpkin loaf from Margaret River bakery, sundried tomatos, kalamata olives, kakadu plum, etc.



But most importantly, as alluded to in the title, Mehr opted in to try arguably the most authentic Australian cuisine, the WITCHETTY GRUB. His name was George and he was a sandgroper. A big white chubby worm like insect. He was from the royal line of witchetty grubs. He looked as gross as you might think.

When asked what he tasted like, Mehr said the following: "No, it is not the worst thing I've ever eaten. He tastes like pureed cashews in a latex glove."

Confession: I am in no way sorry that I passed on this 'delicacy'.

Speaking of adventurous eating, we're flying to Malaysia tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mehr has developed an interpretive dance to express her glee and excitement. I call it: The Seated Shimmy. I will leave its execution to your imaginations.

Australia - Great Ocean Road - Room With A Glimpse, located near bar with Australian celebrity

This past weekend, we were treated once more by our fabulous hosts Ryan, Lori and baby Aidan to a roadtrip, this time westward along the coastal Great Ocean Road. We skipped part of the Road in favour of keeping the baby happy, arriving in the seaside town of Lorne in 2.5 hours instead of 4.5. We stayed in a sweet apartment suite that was accurately advertised as having an "ocean glimpse". Verily we could see glimpses of the ocean through our window and the trees in the courtyard. Emphasis on glimpse.

Aidan possibly enjoyed our accommodations the most of all since he had plenty of room to run around and lots of lights to insist on having turned on for him. We spent an evening being entertained by our hundredth viewing of Aidan's Baby Einstein videos (the barnyard jamboree was my favourite) and watching VH1's exclusive 80s-related shows. I should also point out that despite Australia's living in the future, they are very retro in that the 80s do not seem to have passed from popularity here. There is a shocking amount of leggings being worn; there are too many mullets to excuse; and there is a hilarious frequency of radioplay of Land Downunder by Men at Work.

That evening after the baby was snoring away, Mehr and I offered to chill with sleeping baby to let Lori and Ryan go out for a game of pool. They went to a local dive only to spend their evening playing pool with Ben Cousins, who is a very famous Aussie Football League player (Aussie rules for the familiar). The Cuz spent the evening calling both of them "Toronto". He'd actually been there (for rehab...), although he definitely thought it was in the States. It's hard to explain but that's a big deal. And super random. Lori and Ryan insisted they would have jealous friends when they told the story later, though the magnitude of this event was a bit lost on Mehr and I.



The next day Lori drove with Mehr and I along the coastal section of the road (with 80s tunes on the radio, you better believe) through the Otways Forest Park and to the iconic Twelve Apostles in Port Campbell National Park, which are pretty much the reason for the Great Ocean Road's existence.



We lucked out on weather, with a beautiful twenty degree day with plenty of sun and much less wind than expected.

The Twelve Apostles were stunning (although puzzlingly, there weren't 12 of them...).



Best sign on the trip was outside a church in Apollo Bay: "The 12 Apostles... Made and Loved by Jesus".



We also drove a little further to the Loch Ard Gorge on Shipwreck Coast and appreciated the difficulty of trying to moor a ship anywhere on this stretch of land, with its big cliffs and tiny tiny crevices leading to bay areas.



After a lazy start on Monday morning we came back to Melbourne to do a last load of laundry and repack before setting off for Western Australia on our Tuesday flight to Perth. We were sad to leave Melbourne (though not the chilly weather). The city has been very good to us and I'm sure there's lots more we could have done and seen with more time and warmer temperatures. Still, onward the adventures go... so watch out Western Australia, we're headed your way!

Australia - Melbourne - Capitalizing on the Cultural Capital

There is a rather fierce and long-standing rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne as to which city constitutes Australia's cultural capital (Sorry, Brisbane, you haven't quite caught up with the big boys yet...). After sampling both, Mehr and I concur and award the title to Melbourne, or as the locals pronounce it, Mell-bin. Sydney has lots going for it but it's all flash and money, whereas Melbourne has lots of personality and character.

Even if we hadn't gone into a single museum or gallery, we could have kept ourselves entertained all week wandering in and out of the many many laneways and alleys of the CBD (Sidenote: whenever we say we're going/staying 'downtown', people stare at us and wonder where that is and point out there is no 'uptown' so why would there be a 'downtown'. Here the city centre is called the central business district, hence CBD).

Melbourne is definitely very European in that respect. There are tons of cafes, restaurants and small venue clubs to be found on these streets and you never know what you're going to find.



Tastiest laneway was Degraves, which featured both Spanish cafe Lorca with desayunos completos harking back to my South America days and unnamed Middle Eastern place with wicked food. Funniest discovery was a creperie that self described as "arrogantly French" on Hardware Lane. Runner up was "Bogan Bingo" at one of the bars downtown. Bogan is a term describing an individual akin to a hick with a dash of trailer trash.

However, we did hit up the galleries and museums, most of which were free with our student IDs from U of O. At the excellent Immigration Museum, we learned about all the ways Australia tried to keep out all immigrants except for Brits over the years, notably the Dictation Test which once kept out an immigrant who spoke four European languages by requiring him to do the test in Gaelic. Best sentence in the whole tour: "Batman signs 'treaties' with Aboriginal leaders, giving him 250,00 ha of land." Who knew the Caped Crusader exploited indigenous groups when he wasn't rescuing Gotham from the baddies? There is even a Batman treaty. No joke.

We then headed over to Federation Square, the centre, not the middle of Melbourne.



Very cool buildings and home to multiple museums and galleries. We arrived to a rally for the Australia Socceroos (actual team name) who were competing that night against Japan on the way to the FIFA World Cup. So random. The whole team was there signing autographs and giving typical comments such as how they would give 137% this time around. Athletes are not known for their charismatic public speaking.



We did an art afternoon (yay free activities) and took in both the Ian Potter Centre, the only exclusively Australian art gallery, and its parent, the National Gallery of Victoria, to see the touring Dali exhibition, Liquid Desire. Dali was excellent, though very graphic at times. Mehr wandered into a video he coproduced called the Andalusian Dog where a woman's eyeball is sliced open. I thankfully missed that room and wandered into Destino, a coproduced animated film short between Dali and Walt Disney which was stunning. Who knew they hung out? This exhibit also gave me the most hilarious overheard conversation of the week. In his later years, Dali was recognized as and self referred as the saviour of modern art. Blonde girl in front of me reads this caption and comments as follows: "Oh my gawd... this guy is like the Kanye West of his time." I had to muffle my tears of laughter. Salvador Dali... just like Kanye West. Huge ego, most collaborative work, no shelf life of his work. Right... I still tear up thinking about it. That girl made my day.



We also checked out the Melbourne Museum, where I experienced a silent but crippling phobia-induced panic attack when I accidentally wandered into the insect exhibit where the LIVE spiders of my Discovery Channel special nightmares reside. In one area alone I was surrounded simultaneously by the venomous Sydney funnel webs, the redback/black widow, the whitetail and several massive tarantulas. By surrounded I mean they were encased in glass and dirt enclosures on the walls, but that was WAY too close for me. DID I MENTION THEY WERE ALIVE?! Multiple coronaries later, I stumbled into the dinosaur hall and began a long recovery process by delighting in the pterodactyl skeletons.

The rest of the week was spent kicking around St Kilda, the trendy suburb near Melbourne's best beach. We wandered up and down the Esplanade and Acland St, where funky shops and yummy cafes ruled. This week has also been Mehr's first major foray into backpacker hostel living and getting her feet wet has certainly been interesting. She didn't care for our first hostel at Greenhouse Backpackers in the CBD, which smelled a bit like feet but was clean and quiet and had free internet. Her opinion of it greatly improved with the contrast to our next hostel Base St Kilda, a boutique-y spot that caters way too much to drunk 18 yr old backpackers, which she thoroughly disliked. Our next choice, the Cooee hostel in St Kilda has won the day. It was clean, quiet, great showers, and good common spaces with free internet. She has also encountered some of the usual suspects of hostel living, such as Sleeps Nearly Naked Guy and Guitar Playing Guy. She did not care for either of them. We both look forward to Asia where we can get away from residence dorm accommodations and into beach bungalows... and more importantly ditch our sweaters!

Australia - Yarra Valley - Choppers and Vino

We were whisked away to Yarra Valley the day after our arrival in Melbourne. Yarra Valley is best known as wine central. We stayed at a great cottage at the Healesville Sanctuary, with a great fireplace that we took serious advantage of. Our lovely hosts of the moment are Mehr's cousins, Ryan, Lori and baby Aidan. Ryan and Lori share our keen enthusiasm for red wine and yummy cheese; sixteen month old Aidan shares our keen enthusiasm for playing games.



Our big day out in Yarra kicked off with nothing short of a HELICOPTER ride to our first winery.



Having never been in a helicopter before, I can verify that it is in fact awesome.



And boy, do you feel VIP rocking up to the winery via the heliport landing area on the property. We then toured the Dominic Portet, St. Hubert's and Yering Station wineries (with a number of tastings at each). My favourite was Yering's Shiraz Viognier.

The rest of the weekend was spent eating amazing food, playing with the baby or board games like Trivial Pursuit and SceneIt?, drinking delicious red wine, and savouring the fabulous fireplace in our country chalet.



Not too bad. Not too bad at all...

Australia - In Transit - Hostage to Airlink and J.

In order to get to the airport in Sydney, you have to take a train. The transit here is both public and private. We opted for the public rail, assuming it would be cheaper. But no. The Airlink group owns the airport terminal stations, so regardless of whether you take their private train or the seedy public train, it will cost you $15.00 to go 3 stops over about 15 minutes. While there are ways to stick it to Airlink (see Darryl Kerrigan, The Castle), we didn't have time to kick up a fuss, so we had to fork it over.

We boarded our flight eagerly to Melbourne, ready for our next stop. Let the misadventures begin! Our seat neighbour, whom I shall refer to as J., was a friendly fourteen year old guy just returning from his first trip overseas. He was in Turkey for 2.5 weeks for a language competition. And boy, did he love our Canadian accents. The rest of this post will relive the stupefying conversation he continued with us for the entire flight.

"Do you think I'm a boy or a girl?" Honestly, was fairly sure he was a boy until he asked this, though he did have scraggly longer hair and generic clothing on.

"You look like my lesbian cousin's friend.", "You smell like purple.", "Your eyebrows freak me out.", etc. Thanks, kid. I appreciate your unsolicited comments on my person.

Number of times he smelled/touched Mehron's hair = 6
Number of times he pushed Mehron's head = 10 maybe more
Number of time he pushed our noses down on our faces = 3
Number of times he pried Mehron's eyelids apart with his fingers = 2
Number of lip massages offered to us = 2
Number of lip massages accepted by us = 0
Number of unwelcome group hugs = 2
Number of unwelcome kisses on cheek = 2
Number of times he drew on Mehron's hand = 2
Number of times he washed his hands before touching us = 0
Number of offensive not funny racist jokes = 7 (No, we get it. It's just not funny)
Number of times he referred to "proper Australians" or implied that I was the "real Canadian" over Mehron = 8 (even though we were born in the same city and attended the same schools...)
Number of inappropriate comments/passes made at us by said 14 yr old = 4
Number of times he belatedly wondered if his flirty ways would earn him a beating from our hulking brute Canadian hockey-playing boyfriends = 3
Number of times he repeated after me = 15
Number of times he overshared about family deaths and murdered ghosts = 3
Number of times he asked if I could see a resemblance between him and Mehron = 5
Number of times he called Mehron a retard and asked how I would go about killing her = 3
Number of times he contrasted the perfection of Mehr's eyebrows against the messed-upness of mine = 4
Number of times he compared my husky-man voice to Mehr's nasally timid voice = 2
Number of times he managed to insult BOTH of us in a comparison = 9
Number of times we wanted to slap him but restrained ourselves from beating a child = 78
Number of times we were willing to exchange correspondence information = 0

The plane couldn't land fast enough.

Australia - Sydney - An Open Letter to the City of Sydney Concerning Its Architecture

Dear Sydney,

You are renown for one of the most famous buildings in the world. This would lead one to believe that you are at the forefront of attractive architecture. Mistakenly.

You have so much potential. Where did you go wrong? You have a stunning natural setting of harbour front, beautiful beaches, ocean galore, scenic cliffsides and more. And obviously for many years, the majesty of the region was duly reflected in the construction of city buildings when the colony was first founded, as evident by the number of really beautiful old buildings sprinkled throughout the city centre.

And yet... sometime in the later half of the 1900's, you thought it'd be a great idea to throw up the world's ugliest skyscrapers and apartment buildings to fill the gaps and overwhelm the space between the extensive public gardens and the colonial edifices. What might have been a truly amazing skyline on the harbour front is plagued with company logos tacked atop monstrous utilitarian concrete blocks (think the Dunn building on Carleton campus, but taller) and apartment towers that look like the construction companies forgot to put the outside wall on the building frame.

Such a waste.

Regards,

Us

Australia - Sydney - Why Is It So Cold?!

So we said goodbye to Brisbane on Sunday. A huge thanks once more to the many excellent Australians who made our time there so much fun, with special mention to the Stein family and our roommates Mick, Colin and Ingrid.

We arrived in Sydney and my first thought coming off the plane was "brrrrrr". I have officially become a cold weather wuss. It is a respectable 15 to 18 degrees here during the day and I have never felt so cold in my life. I sleep with most of my clothes on (admittedly, I don't have enough at the moment) under many many layers of blankets and walk around all day in the sun in jeans and a sweater and scarf and still the circulation has not returned to my hands.

We're taking advantage of Carolyn and Gavin's hospitality once more and staying at their place in Mona Vale, taking the VERY scenic one hour L90 bus ride in and out of downtown Sydney every day. Having rushed around the CBD (central business district; no one calls it downtown here) to see every major sight in our $5 guidebook over the last few days, here are our review (Mehr's specific input: "It's bloody cold in AustrAHliaH!" Mehr thinks she's hilarious when she puts on an Aussie accent. She adds that the Sydney Opera House is... "Meh."


Yay's

Sydney Tower views. Not so much actual tower, which is kinda ugly. Take a book, go mid afternoon and hang around to watch sunset. Wicked 360 views of the city.

Opera House bathrooms! Not kidding. The sinks were incredibly cool. The water just disappeared into the wall!



Harbour Bridge. I really liked it, more than I expected to.




Stolen Generations Maze in the Australian Museum. Aside from my academic interest in genocide and historical trauma, I found this exhibit to be a really engaging way of presenting a really controversial issue. For those who are unaware, the Australian government used to remove mixed children from Aboriginal communities and foster them to missions or white families, very similar to Canada's Indian Residential Schools. The exhibit showed the social impacts of this practice through various media. Very well done.

Sydney Jazz and Blues Fest. We caught the Dan Sultan concert right on the Darling Harbour waterfront which was excellent. Better yet, the whole event was free! I was sorry we only arrived in time for the end of the festival.




Manly ferry to Circular Quay. $6 for a 1 hr cruise with great views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.




Hyde Park. Has sweet artifical lamplit promenade and a very strange Greek-mythology themed fountain in the center. Also, there are generally loads of fountains in Sydney, all spouting heaps of water. I don't think Australia understands what the word 'drought' really means.


Art Gallery of NSW. I really enjoyed this place. And I'm not usually one for art galleries.
The Rocks. Feels like a movie set. Full of historical buildings and yummy cafes.

Storytime on Mona Vale beach. Not an actual scheduled event. Mehr and I took our books down to read on the beach and I read several of Garner's politically correct fairy tales aloud to her (she'd never read them before!) as we watched the chilly surf crash on the sand. We were the ONLY people on the shoreline; the clever Australians were all inland where they were sheltered from the winds. Looks fairly similar to Cavendish beach, PEI.

Food. I really haven't been disappointed with a meal here yet. We particularly enjoyed the Malaysian restaurant we patronized for dinner with my friend Aaron, who recently moved back to Australia from Canada. Also my new favourite fish is Barramundi. I may even like it more than I like salmon. And that is really saying something.

Paddy's Markets in Market City. We wandered around in there for an hour. Buy of the day: matching aviators, which you will soon have seen all too often in our photos henceforth.




Warringah Mall Target store. Where I finally caved and bought a second sweater. I'm that cold.




Lighting of the Opera House sails. They're much prettier when painted with different coloured lights at nighttime.





Meh's

Opera House. It's not a gleaming white and huge as the pictures indicate. And $35 for the one hour indoor tour? Pass.

The weather. We REALLY wanted to try out sailing for a day but the windy sunny weather prohibited this activity. It's been nice enough to be outside but not nice enough to really want to stay outside.

The Domain and Botanic Gardens. I think I'm over gardens.

King's Cross much-hyped cafe atmosphere. We both liked the Rocks better and Mehr insists it's all too reminiscent of East Hastings, strung out sketchmos included.


Boo's

OzTrek. Included in admission to tower exhibit. Very dated tourism promo for Australia. Cheese factor = ouch.

Museum of Contemporary Art. Excepting on wall with some funny postmodern concrete poetry work by Richard Tipping and a lovely painting by Rosemary Laing, I was literally yawning through most of the exhibits. My cell phone also rang in the silent gallery and I got evil glares from all twenty artsy poseurs in my midst. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Australia - Brisbane - The Tourist Extravaganza

The week after our trip to Fraser Island was spent furiously touristing Brisbane with a vengeance (pictures link to be found on the side bar under Illustrated Version). I had tried to save the "tourist" activities for when Mehron arrived, only to discover that there were fewer than we'd imagined. Better yet, I am singlehandedly curing the drought in Australia. Of the 9 weeks I've been in Queensland, it has rained for 6 of them. This in a state whose weather motto is "beautiful one day, perfect the next". So poor Mehron has gone from the paradise islands to damp chilly wet city living.

Our first fun-filled day was spent toodling around the Botanic Gardens (like NZ, every Australian city has some of these). We were very much looking forward to our tour of the Commissariat Stores Museum, which was advertised as a history of the Brisbane penal colony. Misrepresentation of the facts, let me tell you. Although the building itself was constructed by convicts, the museum actually outlined the separation of Queensland from New South Wales as its own state with artifacts completely unrelated to the storyline. Example: the dialogue between the governors here and Queen Victoria over the name of the new state was above a printing press. What??

As we left, it of course started raining again (if there is one cloud in the sky, it's a safe bet rain is coming) so we decided we would wait it out with a leisurely lunch. We happened upon the famous Pancake Manor, a restored manor that serves 24 hour pancakes and other breakfasts. We considered that to be a heritage site and very much enjoyed our ten dollar tour of buttermilk pancakes and syrup in the dank old mansion. We braved on through the light mist of rain that was continuing to ANZAC square, a rather picturesque plaza near Central Station. However as we approached the center, torrential rains picked up and we had to duck for cover in the subway tunnel. We conceded defeat at that point and hopped on the train back home.

Day Two we had a very late start getting out of the house at three p.m. (the morning rain was a factor) and made it to the Museum of Queensland about an hour before it closed.



Fun fact: Australia had its own dinosaur: muttaburrasaurus. We then wandered around South Bank, which is quite pretty at night time as the city lights come on. I have decided Brisbane is much better looking at night. We were due at a friend's place for 7pm to watch the State of Origin rugby match, first in a series of three games between NSW and Queensland teams (it's a big deal). Because I'm hopeless with estimating distance, we of course were late, but luckily didn't miss the beginning of the game. I made an effort to explain some basics of the game to Mehr before it started, but also gave her the fallback option: "when in doubt, imagine a complicated version of Red Rover".

Day Three was our ambitious journey to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which literally took us almost three hours each way to get to on the south side of Brisbane. Lone Pine made good on its promise; there were TONS of koalas everywhere.

Mehr also got to frolic with kangaroos and wallabies, which she has decided are not as cute in real life. Also, they smell suspiciously similar to skunks. We meant to get back to the Queensland Cultural Center as well to see the Art Gallery or the Library, but by the time the incredibly slow bus got us back downtown it was after closing time. Plus we still had to take the train and do the half hour walk home. Oh well. Next time right? ;)