Friday 18^th September – Brisbane Festival

Day

I dropped Bronwen off at her parents’ place in the morning.

Arc

I drove into South Bank in the afternoon—parking at Kangaroo Point—and meeting Bronwen just in time to watch “Arc”—a pile of dancers who danced on the grass at River Quay, surrounded by a handful of people who had bothered to arrive early enough and were allowed into the fenced-off area, safe from coronavirus—and the rest of us, who stood outside the barrier, covered in coronavirus, and ignored both the coronavirus health directives and the constant pleadings of the disorganised organisers who apparently hadn’t thought that putting a large advertised event on only twice during the whole month of Brisbane Festival might attract a crowd and were now wandering around telling us all we had to leave a 1.5 metre gap between groups. Fortunately no one died, so it seems coronavirus might be a myth after all.

Avoidable Perils

After contradicting the Chief Health Officer by surviving South Bank, we drove to West End and watched “Avoidable Perils”—a simplistic, but surprisingly engaging, series of cartoon characters who die horribly unless people SMS them enough.

Rainbow Circles

We also took a stack of photos at the Rainbow Circles installation nearby, though it began to rain.

Sing’s Asian Kitchen

After buying many, many 89¢ “Limited Edition Caramel Sundae Cooling Sensation” Mars Bars from what little is left of West End Coles as they undergo their refurb, we rushed to Sing’s Asian Kitchen and had a delicious Thai Green Curry with Tofu and Coconut Rice for dinner.

Saturday 19^th September – Brisbane Festival

Brisbane Festival

It being quite boring, what with coronavirus having killed all the fun and all, Bronwen and I decided to go out and finish looking at the remainder of the free Brisbane Festival things we’d not yet seen.

Curious Arcade

We drove into The Powerhouse to have a look at “Curious Arcade”—which turned out to not only be quite small and boring, but it had a limit of 10 people so as to avoid terrible death by plague, and the most interesting thing there was being hogged by a group of people so we got sick of waiting for them to finish and left.

Messenger Birds

After this we drove to South Bank to look at the boring Messenger Birds—inflatable birds with party hats that have been put up in a few locations around Brisbane, to hammer home the fact that this is as exciting as life gets nowadays. We took a shortcut through the art gallery—which now requires registration to enter, on the off-chance a viral outbreak occurs and we all need to be hunted down and terminated.

Having looked at the birds and been unimpressed, we decided we were hungry. For some reason Bronwen didn’t want delicious hot chips with unlimited tomato sauce and vinegar, so we walked to Subway and had a veggie patty subway instead—however, as with everything else, this too had been ruined by coronavirus—they were experiencing a shortage of mayonnaise so I chose sweet chilli sauce instead and it was not very good.

Silhouettes at the Gallery of Modern Art

On the way back to the car to get my tripod for the upcoming laser light show, we stopped to take some photos of Bronwen silhouetted against the gallery of modern art’s backlit walls. This turned out to be much more interesting than anything Brisbane Festival seems to have managed to come up with.

Sunsuper Night Sky

As it got dark and the laser light show started, Bronwen and I began making our way back along the river. We started at Kurilpa Bridge, but it turns out the lasers aren’t very good from there. We got to the old art gallery, and found that they’re much better there. After a while—and a bit of rain—we got sick of the lasers there and continued on to South Bank, hiding out in the little archway beside the Victoria Bridge for a bit, before heading down to the Brisbane Sign. Then, as it suddenly began to rain again, we rushed to QPAC and the ABC building to hide from the rain—and discovered that the lasers are a lot brighter in the rain.

Overall, the most impressive of the few nights I’ve gone to photograph the lasers—but still quite underwhelming. I can’t help feeling that the laser light show in your average night club is much more impressive, and something on this scale should have really been a lot better.

Halim’s Indian Taj

After taking an absurd number of photos of lasers (483 all up) Bronwen and I drove to Halim’s Indian Taj, and had a delicious curry dinner.