Max Brenner at South Bank in Brisbane. What you see before you is a suckao, their version of a hot chocolate. Above the tealight is a recess filled with milk, upon which you put your heavenly chocolate buds, which then melt. You control just how strong your hot chocolate is. The metal pole in the middle is the stirrer which doubles as a straw. Once you’ve finished drinking it, there’s a small jug with more milk, and you get to do it all over again.

Ah….bliss. I love quality chocolate.

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Lunch with the family at the Sofitel in Brisbane. Seriously, their buffet is incredible! It’s $70, but well worth the price in the quality of food you eat.

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It was my sister’s birthday today, so we went to a Brazillian BBQ restaurant in Brisbane, called Mundos Churrasco. The food was pretty good, so if you’re down that way make sure you go. I had a couple of days left before I resume dieting, so enjoyed some sweets while I could.

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The day started off shaky, when on the way to Brisbane I encountered some heavy rain on the highway. From there, the rain pretty much never let up, although there were a few moments of clear skies (albeit short lived). The festival was based at Doomben Racecourse, which being a race track meant the majority of outside areas was made up of grass. Lots and lots of grass. And when you combine grassy areas with rain, you get mud. Lots and lots of mud. By the end of the day I had mud up to my knees, and my white shoes had turned a dark shade of brown.

During the day we saw people mud wrestling, or kicking/throwing mud at each other. Patrons wearing thongs soon discarded their footwear, choosing to walk around barefooted instead. The roller disco that had been set up soon turned into just another dance party area, as the water deemed the roller skating surface too dangerous. There were rumours during the day that some bands were going to pull out due to the rain, but thankfully the rumours didn’t prove to be fruitful.

Earlier in the morning there had also been set up issues. From what I was told, the guy who organised the festival had also been responsible for a festival the previous weekend. When packing up the equipment to relocate it to the racecourse, it had all been put into the truck backwards. This meant that electrical equipment (usually the last to put up) was at the front of the truck. Due the rain during the week, they were unable to take anything out of the truck at the risk of getting the electrical gear wet and ruining it. By the time the festival opened, the setup team were approximately 3 days behind schedule. They’d had to block off almost 3/4 of the festival grounds (main stage and two of the minor ones) while they finished setting up all the gates and safety equipment. By the time the crowd were allowed through to those areas the festival had been going for almost two hours. The need to stick to the schedule meant that any performers on the closed stages for the first two hours missed out on having an audience. A massive shame for them, and all due to a simple packing decision.

With regards to performances, I really only got a chance to see a couple of shows. I made sure I got to see Franz Ferdinand, who were absolutely fantastic. It may have been raining, but it was worth it to see them. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Back in 2009, I’d missed out on seeing The Prodigy at Big Day Out. It had only been a month since my knee surgery, and they were in the Boiler Room (a great big tent). The crowd was so large, and I was a bit fearful of hurting myself so we passed on seeing them. I was determined not to let that happen this year, especially after I was berated by a friend, a diehard Prodigy fan. At Future Music, they were the last to go on the main stage which meant that space wouldn’t be an issue. It was still raining, but I was set up with my drizabone and ready to see them. While their music isn’t quite my scene, I can definitely appreciate their talent. They worked that stage SO hard, andthe crowd were definitely in the moment. A sea of people just constantly jumping and dancing, it was wonderful to watch.

One band I wasn’t impressed with was Empire of the Sun. I enjoy their music, and their film clips make it look like they’d be incredibly interesting on stage. But when I got there I was horribly disappointed. The lead singer basically stood at the microphone singing, didn’t really move, didn’t dance, and was outright boring. They had dancers with them on stage, but they were doing the same move for minutes at a time! It was a yawn fest. They looked fantastic, they were wearing some pretty elaborate costumes, but unfortunately the rest of the performance didn’t match up. Disappointed, I left after about ten minutes.

Overall, the day was pretty good. It was my first time going to a festival where it turned into a sea of mud and I thought I coped pretty well. The crowd were fantastic considering. We didn’t have many drug or alcohol incidents, and everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves. Really, you can’t ask for much more than that. But maybe I’ll buy some gumboots next year, just in case.

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First up we went and had breakfast at the Coffee Club in Callamvale, which wasn’t anything special. While we were there we tried to figure out what we wanted to do for the day. Movies, imax and putt putt were all put out there, but finally Mat decided he was keen to go to the museum. He’s been to the science museum, but never to the regular museum. Being that it was free to get in, we decided that was a goer.

Once there, we walked around having a look at all the exhibitions. I must say, while it’s great they have so much stuff I didn’t find it that fascinating. Probably because none of the areas interest me – animals, old vases etc. I was intrigued by the war section though, and we sat down and watched a movie about 3 guys who were awarded with the Queen’s medal from World War 1.

After that, we reached a room that had a long display of animals, starting with the largest and working its way down to the tiny tiny bugs. At the head of the lot, was the bundy bear!

Bundy Bear at Brisbane Museum

After that, we’d pretty much had enough of the museum, and decided we would go to South Bank for lunch. I was still incredibly full from breakfast, so made do with just a boost juice for lunch. Mat opted for a long baguette looking thing, as well as a juice. We sat on a concrete wall near the river, and just relaxed. It was great how casual the atmosphere was at south bank, I can imagine that if I lived in Brisbane I would go there to chill out with friends. A lot of people were riding past with sticks coming out of their helmets, however courtesy of twitter I discovered it was an anti-magpie device. Or it’s quite possible that as one of my contacts said, they were aliens.

One of the walkways at South Bank, Brisbane

Feeling the heat (it was a scorcher that day) I managed to convince Mat to go for a ride on the Brisbane Ferris Wheel purely because it was air conditioned. Thankfully the line wasn’t long, and we were on the very next ride with a carriage all to ourselves.

The Ferris Wheel known as the Brisbane Eye

I was really impressed with the view. It was such an amazingly beautiful day, and I hate to say it but Brisbane didn’t look too damn ugly from up there. It’s scary that I’ve written that down, because you’ll never hear me say it again. The ride lasted between 10 – 15mins, or roughly 3 rotations. It was really quite peaceful, and very like it went for a lot longer than it did. And most importantly, the air conditioning was absolutely heavenly. We paid $15 each for the privilege, but it was exactly what we needed.

One of the views of Brisbane from the Ferris Wheel

Another view of the Brisbane skyline from the Ferris Wheel

After that, we walked back to our car and went and caught up with Sam and Amber. It actually turned out to be a really great day, Mat and I really enjoyed ourselves. That says a lot, because usually you wouldn’t catch us dead in the city by choice, by ourselves. Maybe in another 5 years we might just do it again.

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Sunday afternoon after enjoying a high tea at my Aunty Sue’s place, a few of us decided to venture down to the Roma St Parklands intending to watch the Brisbane Zombie Walk planned for that afternoon. On arriving, and making our way towards the coffee shop we saw a man dressed entirely in black crouched down in the grass. Given any other day it would be reasonable to expect him to be a mass murderer, but on this day it seemed anything was acceptable. I took a photo of him, at which point he had put on his black head gear (similar to a motorcycle helmet), stood up and was looking directly at me. Freaked out, I hastily put my camera away and walked away.

Eventually we saw a few other people – two female zombies with a pram containing two child zombies, followed soon after by another group of zombies. We decided to follow them, and found the meeting place. There were so many people! We saw punk zombies, a girl with intestines falling out, some surgeon zombies and about a bazillion zombie brides. It was a very surreal environment. There were also a LOT of photographers.

After standing around for a few minutes just observing, we made our way towards the Wickham Terrace exit of the parklands where the zombies would walk past on their way into the city. A couple of little girl zombies jumped out of a car at the lights and ran in to join the others. We joked about what a surreal moment that was, seeing zombies jump out of a car, probably saying “thanks mum!” and running away. Bizarre.

Finally the zombies were on our way. We watched them start to pour out of the gate, then hurried further down the street to get an excellent position to take photos. They swarmed towards us, interacted with us, freaked us out, and continued on their way. A couple of the notable zombies:

* The girl with intestines falling out
* The millions of Zombie Brides
* The zombie nurse, who both Mat and Amy found hot (an impressive feat given that she was covered in bloody and ikky stuff, but she did have her boobs almost falling out so Mat probably zoned in on that)
* Surgeon zombies
* Nun zombie
* The zombie with a gate stuck through his stomache coming out the other side, and more importantly, wearing puppy dog slippers
* Nintendo Zombie (definately most creative, and hence my favourite)

More pictures after the jump.

The girl with the intestines coming out

Banana Splits Zombie

Surgeon Zombies

The guy who freaked me out at the beginning of the day

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