Stradbroke Island

Last weekend, I visited Stradbroke Island with my friends. Stradbroke Island (or Straddie, colloquially) is 40kms SE of Brisbane. Straddie is known for its rugged landscape and spectacular white sand beaches. There are numerous scenic walk tracks and picnic spots. However people visit Stradbroke Island for its main attraction - beaches.

We decided to reach Stradbroke Island by 9AM. We drove to Cleveland Bay to catch the 8AM ferry. The ferry ride takes ~45mins to reach Straddie. The weather god wasn't in his best mood at the start of the day. The skies were cloudy and there was the odd drizzle too. By afternoon, good-old Queensland weather was back! It was hot and humid. We didn't feel the 32 degrees heat though. We were in the water - swimming, body-boarding, surfing, playing beach cricket (with yours truly half destroying a kid's sandcastle with his signature cover drive)....yea. Awesome fun! :D

This was a one day trip. We had time only to visit two of the four popular beaches in Stradbroke Island.

Main Beach: The best beach at Straddie. There were strangely not many people in the beach that day. The big swells and strong waves were perfect for surfing and body boarding. We spent most of our time here.

Main Beach

Cylinder Beach: A very picturesque beach. This beach is relatively shallow hence the waves were small. Compared to main beach, there were lots of people around. Kids playing in the water/sand, people sunbathing, barbecuing etc. The music was on...the beers flowed freely. It was very lively. Cylinder beach must be the most family-friendly beach I've ever been to.

Cylinder beach

There were many lifeguards on patrol at Cylinder Beach. I had a chat with couple of them. I learnt that most lifeguards at Stradbroke Island are volunteers. The majority of them are school/uni students. They love the beach, the surf, and working as a lifeguard is way to be out there and help people. Good on you guys!

Lifeguard patrol

We spotted this famous guy (carrying the surf in the pic below) at Cylinder beach. He's one of Queensland's favourite sons. Recognise him?

Bheem boy

We did the scenic coastal track before we left the island. The ocean view from the lookout points and the headland were simply breathtaking. Here are some pics.

friend_1 admiring the view

Scenic walk

friend_1 & friend_2 taking in the view

Point Lookout

"Take me away" - at the edge of the cliff. Wattey view.

Overall, an awesome weekend! :D

Out and about

I've been playing around with my new SLR camera (Canon 450D) for the past one week taking pics of random things around the house. This weekend I visited some of the pretty locales in the city to take photos and apply whatever I've learnt from the camera manual and some digital photography sites.

Here are some pics.

The Story Bridge - one of my fav places in Brisbane

Story Bridge climb - gotta do this!

Friendship

Do you know the name of this flower? She looks like Sunflower's cousin. Beautiful isn't?

It had just rained. The sun finally broke free.

I remember looking at light trail photographs during those library periods at school. Light trail photography always fascinated me and I've wondered how such pics were taken. I managed to shoot light trails, took pics at different shutter speeds with varying results.

The museum

The Big wheel at night

City museum again

I love my new camera. So,



oops. missed the dot for the ' i ', here again...

None of these pics are post-processed. It's hot off the camera. I am still learning about digital post processing. Hope you like these pics! :-)

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Update (9th Dec 2009):

Few people have asked me how I did the 'I Love You' photo. That pic, obviously, is another attempt at light trail photography. The camera was perched on the tripod. I selected Manual mode (M), set an f-stop of 11 or 16 or could be even lower aperture and set an exposure of 10 seconds. The ISO was set to 100. I used a torch to write " I 'heart' you ". You can probably guess how I managed to place the dot above the ' i '. Cheers :)

Riverfire

Thanks DF

The annual Brisbane Festival started this week with last night's Riverfire. Riverfire is an extravagant firework display show from three major Brisbane bridges, a select few skyscrapers in the CBD and few boats on Brisbane River.

This is my first time at the show and I have to say the fireworks display were absolutely stunning. For 30 minutes, over 600,000 people (yes, you read it right) who thronged the banks of the Brisbane River were treated to some breathtaking display of fireworks. The night sky was lit up in plethora of colours. Some firework burst into patterns/symbols like smiley face, heart symbol, two hearts merging etc, some fireworks were choreographed to burst with beats of popular songs by AC/DC, Lenny Kravitz and A R Rahman's Jai Ho (Pussycat Dolls version). The timing of beats and bursts was almost perfect. Fantastic work!

The OMG-this-is-too-good moment was the show's finale - dump and burn by F-111 fighter jets. The fighter jets zoomed over the CBD, flying fast and low, with the bright yellow trail of burning jet fuel. The F-111s were flying low enough I could feel the heat of the burnt fuel and the ground shake. The noise was just unbelievable.

Below is the video I managed take from my good old Powershot as I watched the F-111s in an open-mouthed wonder.

Note to self for next year's Riverfire: Don't trust Tiffanys Bar table booking. Arrive early. Secure a vantage point. Get the bloody SLR and take pics!

Liz's Birthday

I love long weekends. Who doesn't? A glorious Monday here capped off a nice Queen's birthday weekend. The Queen's actual birthday is April 21st. But no one gives a hoot. We seem to celebrate it in June. Another reason to take a day off from work I guess. The strange thing is England doesn't have a holiday for Queen's birthday. I wonder why.

It was a incredible winter day today. I woke up and felt like a long run. I ran, jogged, then ambled - all in equal proportions. I took a few pictures on the way.

Admiring the Story Bridge from coffee table point of view. Sorry about the sun, Canon!

Yea...that's mine.

Good cafe this

Just married!
A spur of the moment thing. The photographer told the couple to get on the road quickly before the traffic came in. If you remove the dudes in front, I think I took a perfect shot :D

A walkway to the Botanical Gardens.

Labour Day

'Triumph of Labour' - Statue of Labour at Marina Beach, Madras

Brisbane staged the Labour Day march today. Workers representing unions from cross section of industries participated in this march.




Due to the troubled economic times, some people/groups were quite vociferous in their slogans and chants.