A diversion to Queensland

Tim and I went on a four day trip to Queensland two weekends ago. The trip was motivated by an invite for a friend's wedding (Clay, fellow colleague from Blue Rocket TAS), and then it became our holiday adventure for the year since we hadn't planned on flying anywhere else. Plus I've never been to Queensland before, so I was excited and curious to go, despite having this collection of words I've heard people associate with Queensland over the past few years: plastic, tacky, humid, "I ran to Queensland the police were looking for me", "that junkie got sent back to Queensland".

Well, Queensland to me was nothing like any of that, it was like this:

It was not the sunshine city while we were there, it was balmy, wet, 30 degrees, and I don't know why, but I didn't mind it. I loved how there was lush green everywhere, green thick overgrown grass, overgrown bunches of creeping plants, covering huge overgrown trees, littered with palm trees, it was tropical indeed. And there were large pockets of areas like Fortitude Valley, the "Northbridge" of Queensland, where the seedy was making way for indi art. We were staying in a boutique hotel, Limes, that had woolly chairs, and a popular rooftop night bar that shuttled beautiful young things up and down via a small elevator the few nights we were there. In walking distance all around us there were unique cafes, bars, and art galleries.

Other things of note in the collage of photos above: the most AMAZING french toast at Cirque Cafe (bannana-honeycomb-passionfruit and strawberry-mint-walnut-mascarpone), Michael Zavros "The Savage" oil paintings at Phillip Bacon Galleries, and the kitsch decor and heart shaped butter at Flamingo Cafe (but be warned, the space is tiny and a couple of the wait staff were on the art-crass side).