Mt Gravatt Flea market

The least you need to know....  The markets are on every Sunday from 6am - 12 at the Mt Gravatt Show-grounds on Logan Road.  It costs $1 to get in, parking is free however if you turn up between 8.30 and 9.30 it can get pretty aggressive in the car park during that peak market time.

It's a very eclectic market and sells....

fruit and vegetables

Plants to make a vegie patch

Plants to remind you that it's spring

Amazing collections of stuff...

and ...

Ikea Logan

EVOLUTION OF A HOME  (Sibella Court - Etcetera)

"The rooms in a home should be forever changing and evolving to suit your mood, lifestyle and current obsessions, so my advice is not to decorate a whole house or a room in one day. It takes time and often a bit of effort to find the right pieces.

Write a list of things you need or desire and record the measurements of your floor plan and other nooks and crannies of your house in a notebook to carry with you when you're out and about. This takes the pressure out of manically looking for objects on specific days and leaves you open to suggestion when you stumble across new shops, markets or sales.  Years of shopping wisdom have taught me that your perfect piece does eventually turn up in the most unexpected places."

I love this.  She also suggests taking with you a tape measure and a camera ( but ask the owner before you photograph something)...so I decided to start with Ikea...it was actually quite a lot of fun and I could come home and see if the colours matched first

Make sure that you take photo's of the tags so you can see dimensions and names so you know where to find it again...oh..and the price too of course.

The other wonderful thing about shopping with a camera is that I could pick a theme (in my case Moroccan) and go take photo's of anything that suggested Casablanca 

Lanterns

Rugs

It was the first weekend of the new Ikea Family promotion...free coffee if you join up...so it was absolutely packed. Look at these over-caffeinated people at the checkouts...they look slightly grouchy at this point.

Brisbane City Farmers Markets

I really like these markets, though there must be some sort of weather curse on them.  I don't know how many times it's been rainy, with stall holders anxiously scanning the horizon for cyclones and this time it was so windy.  The markets are between the Treasury Casino and the Brisbane City Council main library building and this space must make some kind of natural wind tunnel.

I always like to see prices when I see market pictures.

Happy Bowl - Sunnybank Plaza

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink... ~Epicurus

 I love Vietnamese food.  It's so fresh and balanced.  Happy Bowl has become a bit of a stand-by now.  You can run in, they take your order very quickly and it usually costs under $30 for 2 (drinks and food)

I quite like the laksa, which is actually a Malaysian/ Singapore dish.  

This is the real treat...the beverage menu.  From Vietnamese iced white coffee (cà phê sữa đá) to Three Colour Bean Drink (Red kidney beans, yellow mung beans, green agar jelly strips with crushed ice, sugar and coconut milk)

Happy Bowl Vietnamese Kitchen

Shop 121 Sunnybank Plaza Mains Rd, Sunnybank QLD 4109(07) 3216 9311

Manly Boat Harbour

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

The jewel in the crown of Wynnum-Manly is the Manly Boat Harbour. This impressive harbour is the largest small-craft harbour in Queensland and is a safe haven for hundreds of crafts. It was established in 1958 and in 1964 the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron moved its clubhouse to the harbour. The stone breakwaters at the harbour entrance provide protection and a handy place to fish. At the point (end of the bitumen road beside the Wynnum-Manly Trailer Boat club) is the Rotary Club directory plaque. This is a great guide to the surrounding areas and Islands.- Thanks to the Wynnum Manly Heritage Trail

The QLD Art Gallery

I love the Art gallery, all the water makes my Cancerian heart beat that little bit faster when I walk in. It's the queen of places to go when you are broke and feeling blue.  Just take a notebook and write bad poetry while you're looking at the artworks but secretly people watching.

The gallery was officially opened in 1982.  I can remember that public consensus was that it was such a drab and plain building.  I only began to like it when an architect friend explained the concept of Bauhaus architecture to me one day over lunch. "it's meant to enhance the natural landscape" He said "The whole building is an echo of the river bank" 

It was immediately beautiful to me....

Juky and Beatrix - Handmade Stationery

More treasures at the Young Designers Markets - Southbank

http://www.jukyandbeatrix.com/home.html

Young Designers Markets- September 2010

All the beautiful spring colours....

What do we do on a rainy Sunday?

Have a devonshire Tea at T-Licious at Southbank

Make sure that you take lots of time to choose your tea....

I love that you are provided with a tea timer for every single pot of tea, so you know exactly how long it should steep.
http://www.tlicious.com.au/home.htm

Convict bones and orchids....

An ex-convict's notes of the 1820s appeared in the Brisbane Courier in May 1930:

"One of the most enticing spots within the Brisbane area was an immense jungle in the western portion of South Brisbane. It began at almost the spot where the Victoria Bridge now stands, and it followed the course of the river right away to Hill End, and along the whole length of what is now Montague Road. The jungle was a tangled mass of trees, vines, flowering creepers, staghorns, elkhorns, towering scrub palms, giant ferns and hundreds of other varieties of the fern family, beautiful and rare orchids, and the wild passion flower. While along the riverbank were the water lilies in thousands, and convolvulus of gorgeous hue... Parrots, blue pigeons and scrub turkeys could be seen in the rainforest itself, where the whip birds gave their distinctive call..." 


Around present day Montague Road, men clearing the tangled rainforest sometimes came upon skeletons with rusting chains still riveted around their bones to tell a tale of some unfortunate convict who had made a dash for freedom, lived a few days in this tropical garden and then died there. 

Tensegrity

The Kurilpa bridge is a multiple-mast, cable-stay structure based on principles of tensegrity, an architectural and engineering system in which the structural integrity is a synergy between balanced tension and compression components. This produces a lightweight yet strong and stable structure.

Ever wanted to be a tourist in your own city?

The William Jolly bridge from the Kurilpa Bridge