Blue Book of Boats

The ship sails up the Brisbane River to the heart of the city. The last time I was here, in 1988, it struck me as a pretty but sleepy place with a lot of lovely Victorian era cottages. There has been simply tremendous development since then and Brisbane is now a vast modern metropolis. It has many tall buildings, parks and gardens, sophisticated culture, shopping malls and freeways. It looks affluent in an upper middle class way. I didn’t see any slums or signs of poverty, but not much sign of really high end wealth either. There are far fewer expensive cars like BMW and Mercedes than we see at home, and I saw only one Bentley.

We were picked up at the ship by a friend of Peggy and Mary, Aussie Dave, who they met on their Antarctic cruise. He is a tall, jovial guy with a bald head and a ready smile. He picks us up in a 1964 Holden Estate. It has about a million miles on it, but it is his daily driver.Later he tells me it has been restored twice, but it looks pretty original to me. Rough. It has 4X100 air conditioning. Roll down all four windows and drive 100 kmh. It works. Except the car is so old the speedo reads in miles.