beach in the city

On Saturday, Emi and Azusa and I went into Brisbane. Azusa and I are both leaving this week so it was an occasion for the three of us to go into the city and eat what Emi likes to call 'naughty food', meaning meat and junk food and anything non-organic and heavily processed (of course in the picture they are snacking on organic apples and homemade roasted organic pumpkin seeds).


We went to South Bank, which is a neighbourhood on the southside of the river where they have "Streets Beach" (used to be Kodak Beach but you know how corporate sponsorship goes). It's Australia’s only beach in the middle of the city. It's a man-made swimming beach overlooking the Brisbane river and downtown. It has lightly chlorinated fresh water, white sand, palm trees, rocky creeks and lifeguards, and, when we were there, they had a giant tv screen set up showing the Ashes cricket tournament.

Since it was a Saturday, the beach was crowded and there were many families there and the water was full of small children. I saw a little girl wearing a swimsuit with feet! It looked just like pyjamas with feet, but it was definitely a swimsuit (or as they are sometimes referred to in Sydney, a "cossie", short for swimming costume). As you may know, Australians are very conscious of the sun and the country has a high rate of skin cancer. It is quite common to see children swimming in rash guard shirts, which were originally designed for surfers. They now have them in lots of colours and sizes and varying levels of UV protection. Some children swim in hats, but this is the first time I've seen a swim suit with feet. Wish I could have gotten a picture to show you.

On Tuesday I fly to Sydney, back to stay with my friends Robin and Michael and their children. Dec 5th I fly to New Zealand - I need to get serous about writing my resume and thinking about what I want to do while there. I'm pretty much out of money, in part thanks to the dental stuff, so I hope to get a job pretty quickly.