I've been mulling over something the last few days...so I came up with this short list. Feel free to agree with me, or to tell me I'm a complete idiot. Better yet - I encourage everyone to come up with their own Top 5!!

Top 5 Cover Songs (Remakes) - In no particular order because I can't decide which one deserves to be number 1

1. Nonpoint - In The Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
2. Marylin Manson - Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics)
3. Guns N Roses - Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney & Wings)
4. Metallica - Astronomy (Blue Oyster Cult)
5. Evans Blue - Possession (Sarah McLachlan)

Closest Runner Up: Megadeth - Paranoid (Black Sabbath)

Mt Tamborine

We took a drive up to Mt Tamborine this weekend. It's pretty nice, and jam-packed with National Parks. There are Seven all within 3km's of each other. And Lamington National Park is just a half hour drive to the south! The entire south-east corner of Queensland is a veritable bevy of National Park goodness - and all right in my back door :). We weren't there for long, and the bushwalking was limited to a 'mere' 5km's. But I snapped a few decent pictures, first at the Botanical Gardens, followed by the Witches Falls circuit, and lastly the Curtis Falls walk - so here we go...

Botanical Gardens. Above: Japanese Bridge Below: View of the pond.

Above: A view back towards where the above-above picture was taken.

Left: Chilling out in a hut.

Lots of cool huge trees with crazy trunks. Definitely larger and cooler than it looks in the picture.

I reckon these look pretty cool with the exposed roots and everything...its almost like the ground is a foot below where its supposed to be - I don't think I've seen anything like it before. (Not that I can remember anyway)

Kathryn and I in front of Curtis Falls.

A final shot of Curtis Falls.

That's all for now.

Gold Coast Indy 300

Had a great time on Sunday! The day was jam packed with events! First we got to see the Champ Cars do their warmup laps, then came the Porsche Carrera Cup, followed by first of two races for the popular V8 Supercars, after that was the Indy 300 race itself, with the day closing on another V8 Supercar race. As a result of the busy day, I had plenty opportunity to hone my skills at taking pictures of moving targets! I hope everyone likes the results!








These are a few of my Porsche Carrera Cup pictures, the ones that I reckon turned out the best. I hope no one is going to get bored because most of my pictures are taken from the same viewpoint and the only difference is the cars.

Some n00b waving down at us from a chopper overhead.




The V8 Supercars come out to play...













...Followed by the very fast (and very loud) Champ Cars.

The Aussie team was (of course) extremely popular, and managed to take third place - eliciting much glee from the fans.

oops...turns out the day was jam-packed with accidents. The Gold Coast track isn't forgiving, especially through the chicanes.











And the V8 Supercars return for their final race....and just so everyone knows Holden cleaned up on the day - quite handily defeating Ford. The Ford supporters were disparate (Maree, Susan), but the Holden supporters (Kathryn, Cheryl, Myself) were quite pleased with the result. Seems to me there was more Holden supporters so it was for the greater good. :D Much to Marees chagrin I've also managed to convince Kathryn that cheering for Holden is the way to go - thats my girl!































The rear end of the Holden raceleader - this is all the Ford drivers ever got to see.

Lamington National Park

We went to Lamington National Park on Saturday as planned, we visited the Binna Burra section (Green Mountains is the other) and did about 20km of bushwalking. It was brilliant, and I took over 150 pictures. We were fortunate in seeing an impressive plethora of wildlife as well!! At least a half dozen Rock Wallabees, 2 Snakes, a good sized lizard, an Echidna, and countless birds. The first snake I saw was a black one that was hiding on the other side of a rock about a foot away from me, as soon as we saw each other we both went the other way. Its a good thing too, because I went through all the snake descriptions on the the LNP website and that one was classified as "dangerously venomous". Happily, the second snake was a good 10 feet away - and we could see that it had just recently ate as well.

Anyway, enough talk...onto the pictures!


This is the beautiful town of Beechmont (at least I think that's what its called lol) built along the top of the mountains along the way to Lamington.

This is me posing like a tard.

One of the first lookouts we saw as we walked along the Caves Circuit.

There were steps cut into the rock on occasion, coolish.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I can't resist posing like an idiot on occasion.

Path cut into the rock.

A Kookaburra in the tree.

I took a bunch of pictures of the various Rock Wallabees we saw, but most didn't turn out, luckily the best one is actually pretty good. They're so small that at first I thought they were babies and that a mother was going to jump out of nowhere and kick me in the head. Luckily this is actually about as big as this particular species of Wallabees gets. So no getting my head bashed!

The view from the Bellbird Lookout. Later on in the day we passed by the lookout again on the return trip, only we were about 300m lower.

Here's the second snake we saw, it had a good bulge in its belly leading us to believe it had recently fed.

This guy showed up right in the middle of our path, and then came right at us. At first I thought it was a bad idea when Kathryn started kicking at it to scare it away, but apparently their eyes are really bad and if you don't move they're liable to think you're a tree and climb right up your legs! And those claws are sharp!!

The Koolanbilba Lookout was basically the same view as the Bellbird lookout, only about a km further along the ridge. So I decided to post a picture of the signpost for everyone instead.

Sitting on Picnic Rock. Were I to fall over backwards I likely wouldn't be sitting here today. The rock is basically jutting out the side of the ridge and the dropoff on either side is quite fatal. But it offers great views of the surrounding area.

Typical bushwalking, even though it was early afternoon much of the time it seemed almost nighttime in some areas thanks to the thick cover. It was also much more humid in these areas, like stepping into a completely different climate zone.

The further we descended into the valley, the more palm trees we saw.

More cool viewing.

Palm Trees Galore!!











We made out way to the Lower Ballunjui Falls by taking a 3.4km detour from our route along the Lower Bellbird Circuit onto the Ships Stern Circuit. There wasn't a lot of water because its still the drought season, but the falls were pretty tall and we reckon when the rains come in the summer they'll be very cool.












More palm trees :)














A few hours previous we were up above that ridge, climbed down, and now had to get back up there. 20km and 5 1/2 hours of bushwalking left us pretty beat, but stoked to do it again nevertheless!




A last view as we headed back towards Gold Coast for the night. We definitely plan on coming back - next visit will be to the Green Mountains section of the park. And we've already picked out a few of the trails we plan on going on. Anyone who wants to take a look at the park and the plethora of paths available can goto the website here.


And finally... a few pictures I snapped from the hotel balcony at Gold Coast. And another from an area known as "the spit" where we went for lunch and had some excellent seafood!!

More Pictures!

I shot a few more pics last week when I was wandering around downtown Brisbane applying for jobs. We also went to Gold Coast on Sunday for the afternoon. It was good, but it'll be even better this weekend and next weekend because we'll be staying at a hotel in the area and driving out to Lamington National Park. The following weekend is the Gold Coast Indy!






To the left is a church that looked pretty cool perched upon the edge of the cliff.












This tree has some good memories attached to it. Back in 2001 I posed for a picture in it one night when we were out for a night on the town. I had the misfortune of falling out of it as well, a scene described in animation style by a series of pictures. First with me sitting in the tree, second with me falling off a vine as I attempted to Tarzan my way down, and third about 45 minutes later when I came back to find my glasses.

(Left) I thought this looked cool...





I may pretend to be artistic from time to time, usually with pictures. But I'm just wondering how much someone was paid to put together the art below....



















Here I am, livin it up at the coast!















Q1, the tallest building in Australia and dubbed the "World's Tallest Residential Tower" stands at 323m in height and boasts 80 floors with 526 apartments.





Standing on the beach, looking to the south and to the north...