Aaron Around The World - Anybody want a peanut?

Aaron Around The World    >>    Oceania    >>    Brisbane, Australia

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Thursday, 13 April 2006 - Happy Easter!


Happy Easter all :)

		For the last week I've been on a client site for work in Kingaroy, a small town with a population of 12,500 a little over 200kms northwest of Brisbane. I had a rental car for the week, pretty decent accommodation considering the size of the town, shitloads of food morning, noon, and night, plenty of booze, and I paid for $0 of it! ;) I'm back there again for the next three weeks. Incidentally, my current client is Tarong Energy, a government-owed power station supplying a quarter of Queensland's electricity through hydro, coal-fired, and wind-powered generators. The two steam stacks in the centre of this photo piss out bloody phenomenal amounts of steam that can be seen from miles away - pretty unreal to see up close. Loving this consultancy gig! :)

(Good) Friday, 14 April 2006


After a week on the road with work, the legs were itching a bit so I went for a small 50km cruise (a far cry to last weekend ;) I found this along the way hahaha, good shot! Spot the bumper left behind.		Far out, it's a small world after all! (See here)

Tuesday, 18 April 2006 - Email forwards
A year ago today I started my first job in Brisbane as a consultant for PlanTec, a small IT consultancy company (it lasted three months before I quit and went to Mincom, but that's another story). So anyway, I thought this was kind of appropriate :)

Friday, 21 April 2006


Been on the road with work again all week (absolutely loving it!), and Avis gave me a Commodore this time which was a far cry to the gutless Camry they gave me last week. This was only a basic 2005 3.6-litre V6 VZ model but shit it was nice to drive! I'd take the Skyline back any day of the week though.		Yup, I was pretty impressed ;) I'm hoping they'll give me a Falcon before the end of the project I'm working on so I can enter into the whole Ford vs. Holden debate. I like the aesthetics of the Commodore more than the Falcon. I'm averaging about 700kms a week (mostly on the open road) so there's plenty of opportunity to see what these babies can (and can't) do ;)

Saturday, 22 April 2006 - Totally addicted to bass!


One of the best things about travelling with work is we get a fixed amount of around $90 a day for food and incidental expenses, and what we don't use we keep! Now I certainly don't eat $90 worth of food a day, and so have accumulated quite a nice little profit over the last couple of weeks. I acquired the LG stereo above for dirt-cheap from Mo when she left Brisbane last yeat. Looks pretty styley, but at a measly 100 watts I thought "Fuck style", and went out and bought...		...this big 450-watt bastard - $500 worth of piss-off-the-neighbours Panasonic courtesy of work. Chur bro! Spot the subwoofer on the end hehe, now that's what I'm talking about! Bearing in mind the Skyline had twin 12" subs in the boot, 6 speakers of all shapes and sizes inside, all running off some bloody grunty American amplifiers, I've been missing my audio for the last 15 months hehe. Now, where's my hearing aid...

Monday, 24 April 2006 - Far too addicted to bass!

I just had this bloody fantastic idea! After buying the new stereo, I packed the old one up and advertised it on eBay. Then I thought why have a perfectly good stereo sitting in a box on my floor waiting to sell when I could hook both it and the Panasonic up to my laptop (from which I play mp3's) and have them both blasting out the decibels simultaneously?! Brilliant - upstairs for thinking! ;) I don't know if I really want to sell it now.

Tuesday, 25 April 2006 - Happy ANZAC Day!


Whoops, missed the ANZAC dawn service again. I'm heading north again with work tomorrow (I wonder what car I'll score this week) so thought I'd squeeze in a quick ride. The intended destination was the suburb of Chermside and surrounds, 10kms north of the city. Chermside's mall reminds me of The Palms back home :)


Just as an aside I'm thinking of doing a road-trip up to Cairns at some stage later in the year, and flying back. I have a mate up there who said she can put me up and show me the sights so I figured I might as well make the most of it and see the rest of the sights along the Queensland coast while I'm at it. Nice :)		Cashmere, felt like I was home :) (For those in Aus, Cashmere is a hill-side suburb in Christchurch's south.) Anyway, a 'quick' ride soon became anything but. While looking around Chermside I found cycle paths etc. and ended up around 20kms north-west of the city in Eatons Hill (and yup, it was hilly!).


Eatons Hill, besides being a really hilly bitch, is bloody nice! It's a bit too quiet for me though - it felt almost like a ghost suburb. I don't think I saw a single person and there was barely any traffic to speak of. Good views though - the photo on the right is looking back towards the city some 20kms in the distance.


Eatons Hill is on the edge of what could be classed as Brisbane city before everything becomes largely rural, and when you start seeing signs like this one, you know you're nearing the wop-wops hehe.		When you start heading back towards the city though, you start seeing signs like this haha :)


The next city-bound suburb to Eatons Hill is Albany Creek. Like Eatons Hill, Albany Creek is really nice spot, and was actually inhabited too. There were several road-side BBQ's going on, and at this stage it was 4pm and I was bloody hungry!


Albany Creek also has a shitload of cycle paths (sweet), and it backs on to Bunyaville State Forest Park which had several more weaving throughout it (bloody sweet! :) All in all another 80kms on the clock, another sore arse, another pair of stiff legs that'll be telling me about it in the morning, and thanks to those hills I'm pretty buggered, but I do love a good ride :)

Saturday, 29 April 2006 - Kingaroy (Australia's peanut capital)!


Check out the WRX they gave me for the trip north this week! ;) Well no unfortunately not, this is just one of the many cars that we get up our driveway when people we know go to the rugby at Suncorp Stadium up the road. Needless to say, I have to, ummm, move them occasionally (around the block several times in fact ;)		Anyway, I went for a wander around Kingaroy (30 minutes from where I'm working) during the week, and in a nutshell this is it - deserted (at 10pm). I passed only two people during the half hour I was out. One was a French guy who asked me if I knew where he could find some weed hahaha! Bloody rurals :)


So, Kingaroy: several houses sold veges straight out of the back garden...		People got bored and put wallpaper round their wheelie-bins...


There's a pub on nearly every street...		Crow FM rocks the town...


You can buy yourself a fag (hahaha)...		And you don't need to be shy at the Kingaroy Adult Shop! This only opened on Monday, and already has a smashed front window (not really visible here) after it apparently caused outrage from some of the locals.


Kingaroy always has a strong whiff of peanuts in the air from the roasters on the edge of town. The shot on the right is of the massive road-side silos packed full of the little bastards (I'm not big on nuts).


About 30kms out of Kingaroy is another little town in the middle of nowhere called Nanango. I'm not a nut man but most everyone else on the project is, so (because I love driving) I voluntarily drive the 15kms from the power station to the Nanango "Peanut Wagon" to pick up about 10kgs worth of nuts for everyone (dubbed the 'nut run' hehe). This fella would've made a small fortune from us over the last few weeks.


After raiding the nut wagon, Zina (another chick on the project) and I decided to have a little look around Nanango. Like Kingaroy, there wasn't much of interest and I really have no idea how people don't just get plain bored out here. I couldn't do it!


Spot the odd one out hahaha - I nearly pissed myself when I saw this! Farmer Brown whipped into town on the John Deer tractor to get some supplies ;)


Ok...		Oh gee, too bad I don't have any cash on me.


While the 'sale rack' didn't hold much of interest, I did try on a few cowboy / cowgirl hats hehe. What do ya think suits me best - Pink?		Aqua?


Plain and boring?		Or perhaps this $149 piece (yes that's the real price)?!

Sunday, 30 April 2006 - Piss, Plonk, Seafood, and Russell Crowe!


The Caxton Street Seafood and Wine Festival (100 metres round the corner from my house) is an annual event which "is a great way to celebrate our Queensland lifestyle with a cornucopia of the best local seafood, beer, fine wines and beverages and other fabulous foods which are available throughout the day and night" - hooray. From the peanut aromas of Kingaroy to the seafood stench of Caxton Street :)


As well as grog, plonk, and seafood there's also live entertainment such as Russell Crowe & The Ordinary Fear Of God hehe. After yelling at one of the technicians on and off for ten minutes between and during songs, Russell finally said, "We're just having a few technical issues guys", and someone next to me yelled out, "Throw the phone at him!" hahaha! (Story here).

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