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Friday, 30 December 2005 (New Zealand) - My pride and joy!

 
Look what I got for Christmas ;) Well unfortunately no, not really. Prior to moving to Brisbane I owned this for over three years. I sold it to a mate who was nice enough to let me borrow it for a couple of days :)
 
 
This is a Nissan Skyline R32 GTS25 (5-speed manual facelift model - very rare ;) When I bought it, it was completely stock standard. During the time I owned it I modified the intake and the exhaust (along with many other minor tweaks), and threw in over a $1000 worth of audio as well as several other subtle additions and modifications. I was not a happy man when I had to sell it (I couldn't afford, nor justify, shipping it to Australia)!
 
 
For the petrol heads, under the bonnet is an RB25DE - a naturally aspirated 2.5-litre, inline-6 cylinder pumping out around 200 horsepower.
 
Me, Mum, Jared (younger brother, with his Willy Wonka hat).
 
All it needs now is a decent set of wheels - something I didn't want to fork out the money for.

Saturday, 31 December 2005 (New Zealand) - Happy New Year!

 
The last Christchurch sunset of 2005 :)
 
The city at sunset from the Port Hills.
 
 
I was in town at midnight. There had been some concert going on in Cathedral Square and they saw in the New Year with the usual round of fireworks.
 
 
Pop, pop, bang!
 
During my travels between the few parties I knew about I was keeping track of what else was happening via the police scanner. This place had around 50 Maoris all getting boozed up when one of them decided to take on every other brother at the party hehe. When I got there the cops had him cuffed over the bonnet of the car above and he was screaming, "I didn't do it, I didn't do it - tell them Josh or I'll kick your fucking head in!" Hahaha - I believe him ;)

Monday, 2 January 2006 (New Zealand) - The Canterbury Nor'wester

 
Canterbury's northwest winds are renowned for being very warm, and often very gusty. Today it was extremely gusty with gusts up to 180km/h recorded around the South Island! If I was flying back to Brisbane today she'd be a nice turbulent flight out the country, just the way I like 'em!
 
 
I don't think the horse (Telstar, or just Star) was enjoying it.
 
There's a hawk that often flies low over our paddocks looking for tucker. I managed to get a shot of him mid-air due to the fact he could barely fly into the wind - it was that strong!
 
 
Due to the intense wind I whipped out my scanner to listen for any carnage near by (as I do). Almost immediately I heard about houses being hastily evacuated just a few kilometres away. "I need to borrow your car please Mum!" ;) With the cops being distracted by their own conversion about how fantastic they are, I managed to find a way around the road blocks to get some shots (as I also do). This was the result of overhead power lines being brought down by the wind and touching, which not only caused a power cut at my house but also plenty of sparks.
 
 
You know it's bad when several random-looking rural fire engines that should be on display in museums turn up from towns as far as 30kms away.
 
You also know it's bad when the fire chief comes charging down the road like a hero yelling at the cops to move people back.
 
 
And Chief Hero wasn't wrong, two minutes later the flames came out of nowhere through the trees right near where we'd all just been standing. This was about as exciting as it got though as having so many of those random-looking rural museum engines on hand meant the entertainment was brought under control and contained pretty quickly, so we all went home again hehe.
 
After all that excitement we went to the beach. Waikuku Beach this time, about 10kms north of Woodend Beach.
 
 
This place is about a kilometre up the road from mine, and apparently won some nation-wide fantasy house of the year competition. Can you really imagine bringing your new girlfriend/boyfriend home to this?! There's about six cars, two boats, and a tractor on the front lawn (amongst other random junk), the bulk of which look like they haven't been used in years! The things we do.
 
It turns out the fire this morning wasn't my last for the day. On the way into town I noticed a shitload of smoke out towards the sea - you beauty! Thanks to the scanner it didn't take me long to find it. This is the southeast corner of Bottle Lake Forest where it meets the suburb of North Shore (shot from atop the sand dunes). No one knows how this one got started but it had been going strong for an hour by the time I got there, and continued throughout the night.
 
 
There was an incredible amount of smoke pouring out of the forest, and some very sorry-looking sand dunes (sorrier than usual) being hosed down. Apparently the fire broke out in the forest near its edge, and quickly spread to the scrub and tussock on the dunes which very rapidly burned out of control - all while a beach-full of spectators were standing on them watching the action not realising it was heading their way hahaha!
 
 
Four or five choppers were going hard at it overhead. The wind was still just as gusty as it had been all day, so much so that I (along with everyone else in the vicinity) got fairly wet from the refilling of the monsoon buckets, some two hundred metres away!
     
 
Why did the peacock cross the road? ...
 
I'm not sure but this one kept doing it, and he wasn't chasing a chicken :)

Tuesday, 3 January 2006 - Back to Brisbane
Well I'm back. It's been a long two weeks and a little too long for my camera; it shit itself last night. Good timing though as I didn't really miss out on any photos and was able to buy a new one from Duty Free. I bought the crapped one from Mo only three months ago for $250. I was had! Anyway, it was bloody great to be back home (albeit for only a fortnight) and it's made me miss it all over again. I can't say I'm entirely thrilled to be back; a year ago it was all new and exciting, whereas now I've seen the bulk of Brisbane and done a lot of what there is to do here. It's all become routine now and I'm feeling ready to move on. I do love it here - work's good, flatmate's are good, weather's good (massive storm happening outside as I write this - the thunder is making the house vibrate!), it's all good. But I'm in the travelling frame of mind and am very eager to get out there and do it. The only things holding me back are work and an IT certification I'm doing outside of work. I really need as much experience and as many qualifications as I can get to open as many doors as possible for me in the UK. Won't be long though and I'll be outta here, and this website will actually have some interesting stuff on it for a change from abroad!

 
From the sunsets of New Zealand...
 
...back to the slow people of Australia ;)

Friday, 6 January 2006 - Love the Brisbane storms!

 
Another ripper storm last night with continuous lightning flashes up in the clouds. It was a good show! At one point as I was walking down the hallway looking out the back door I saw a bright flash followed immediately by the most intensely loud thunder clap I've ever heard! Wherever it struck can't have been far away.
 
 
This is looking south from the back of Suncorp Stadium. Heaps of flashes in the distance.
 
And this is the torrential rain (just looks like haze here) on Hale Street as seen from my living room window, which I opened briefly just to take this shot and got saturated hehe.

Saturday, 7 January 2006 - Signs

 
Another weekend, another bike ride :) Today's theme ended up being signs as I happened to notice a few interesting ones. These two are in the grounds of the Brisbane Powerhouse performing arts centre and hence are pretty relevant.
 
 
Hehehe :)
 
My Mum taught me this when I was like three, but apparently the Aussies need to be reminded ;)

Wednesday, 11 January 2006

Finally got some better shots of these spray paintings done by the guy in Queen Street Mall (see here for the full story). The photos still don't do these things justice though - they really are pretty amazing! I bought the one on the right some time ago. Looks great on the wall!

 
When I arrived back to work after my daily lunch-time meander around town there was a bunch of Asians doing Yoga or something similar outside. As good a place as any I suppose.
 
Bahahaha - nice job! This was just around the corner from my house, and it's for sale too if anybody is interested?! ;)

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