Summer in the city 2: Burleigh Head

The visitor guide to Burleigh Head National Park calls it 'an island of green in an urban sea'. In fact, it's a bloody miracle. That these 27 hectares of littoral 'dry' rainforest have survived attempts by developers – and banana growers – to divvy up the Gold Coast's last green stand is a testimony to the foresight of those who fought, first to make it a Reserve for Public Purposes (as long ago as 1886), and then to declare it a National Park, in 1947.

Burly Head was named by an English surveyor, James Warner, in 1840 because of its appearance: it is massive, and today conspicuously green along this concrete coast. Thus he followed a tradition of Australian place naming – what you see is how you name. Sometime during the 1880s the spelling changed.

Unfortunately, very little of the wildlife that once inhabited the headland is still to be found. The Park is surrounded by big roads, domestic animals and far too many people. Koalas haven't been seen here for at least a couple of years. We only spotted one sea eagle. We did, however, see Brush Turkeys up a tree – a first – and many Eastern Water Dragons sunning themselves on basalt slabs.

The following natural wonders were photographed by my friend using his new, super-duper digital SLR camera. He now thinks his close-ups are better than mine: he may well be right.

Geologically, Burleigh Head is very interesting. Twenty-odd million years ago, molten lava from the erupting Mt Warning flowed to the sea. The slow cooling of the basalt resulted in it shrinking and cracking into hexagonal columns. Some slid or rolled further down to the sea as heavy rainfall destabilized the ground; others fell as underlying sedimentary rock was wave-eroded. The fallen columns form a barrier at the foot of the cliffs, helping to prevent erosion of the headland. Column remains can clearly be seen along both tracks through the Park.

We left Brisbane at 8 am. It's 90 kilometres to Burleigh Heads, where we stopped for a coffee before driving up Goodwin Terrace to the northern end of the Park. Lots of people were out and about in the hot sun.

Having found a coveted spot in the shade in the small car park, we took the high track along the dappled rainforest circuit. There's a Water Dragon in the bottom right-hand corner, below.

We soon reached the Tumgun lookout, which is a good vantage point during whale-watching season. As always, Surfers dominates views along this coastline.

At the southern end of the Park is Echo Beach on Tallebudgera Creek (don't forget your swimming gear). There's a sand bar at the entrance to the Creek, and we watched a small boat negotiating the tricky crossing. It was, however, not in the same class as that of Brunswick Heads.

The Gold Coast Highway is awfully close to the beach, but not a lot seems to spoil the Aussies' enjoyment.

We headed back along the Oceanview track. The vegetation here consists largely of Pandanus groves and a small pocket of coastal heath, which unfortunately had caught fire earlier that morning. Everything is very dry at the moment, and it only takes a glass bottle carelessly tossed from the path.

Burleigh Head National Park is an easy half-day excursion from Brisbane. The walk we did is barely three kilometres but there are lots of points of interest. Echo Beach offers plenty of shade for a picnic and water that is clear and inviting. Go see.

Troubled waters

You cannot please the people of Southeast Queensland any of the time, if you happen to be in charge of water resources.

Even before January's floods had receded, people with zero experience of water resource management, including me, were pontificating about how water should have been released from Wivenhoe Dam long before it coincided with abnormally heavy rainfall over an already saturated catchment area. It was obvious, wasn't it? And conspiracy theorists joined in, opining that it hadn't been released because Seqwater wanted to maximise their profits from selling their excess water to needy drier regions.

The Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry's interim report* determined that there was room for improvement in all areas: dam management; disaster frameworks, preparation and planning; forecasting, warnings and the distribution of information; the co-ordination of local and state emergency responses; and the maintenance of essential services.

So far, this November has been without rain. People are already commenting on how dry everything is. I suppose it's a novelty: ever since we got here virtually, all they've been talking about is how wet it's been.

So, in line with flood mitigation measures and reservoir** capacity management, the Wivenhoe Dam today started to release 57,000 megalitres (8,000 megalitres a day for a week) – I have no idea how that relates to the volume of Sydney Harbour, before you ask. This will reduce the reservoir's capacity from 80 per cent to 75 per cent, the level recommended by the Flood Enquiry if a wet summer has been forecast. Which it has†.

But the people aren't happy. Fuelled by the Courier Mail's scaremongering this morning††, talk-back radio callers expressed their concern that security of water supplies was being compromised by flood mitigation.

Queensland's Natural Resources Minister, Rachel Nolan, is advised by the Bureau of Meteorology, the Water Commission, the Department of Environment and Resource Management and SEQ's Water Grid Manager. And I'm sure she's learned by heart the Flood Commission's recommendations.

Ms Nolan claims that the security of Brisbane's water supply is higher than would normally be in place for a city of its size, and that flood mitigation and capacity management are reasonably balanced in the decision to release water this week. She has been advised that there is a one in 25 chance that reservoir levels will fall to 60 per cent in the next five years. A DERM spokesperson adds that it would take until 2017 for levels to reach critical (40 per cent), necessitating water recycling and the activation of the Gold Coast Desalination Plant.

These figures are based on probability (which in turn is based on rainfall and water use records). Few people understand probability adequately: they think that if the probability of an exceptional flood is one in a hundred, then it will only happen once in a century. So if there's one now and another in 50 years, they tend to conclude that the figures were wrong.

Forecasters failed to predict the continuation of La Niña beyond last autumn; topsy-turvy drought-flood cycles are characteristic of Australia's climate; and climate change is making predictions far more difficult for statisticians.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group of the world's leading climate scientists convened by the UN, has just released a 'special report on extreme weather', compiled by more than 200 scientists over two years. The report's findings were summed up by the policy and communications director of The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, Bob Ward:

'This expert review of the latest available scientific evidence clearly shows that climate change is already having an impact in many parts of the world on the frequency, severity and location of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and flash floods.

This is remarkable because extreme events are rare and it is difficult to detect statistically significant trends in such small sets of data. What is more, these trends have been identified over the last few decades when the rise in global average temperature has been just a few tenths of a centigrade degree.'#

On the whole, I think we have to trust Ms Nolan's judgement. She must be a tad relieved, however, to see that heavy rain is forecast by next Wednesday.

* www.floodcommission.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/8792/QFCI-Interim-Report-Recommendations.pdf

** 'dam' if you're an Australian reading this

† Eastern Australia is still experiencing a La Niña event

†† www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/wivenhoe-water-release-ignores-warning/story-e6freoof-1226198363461

# source: The Guardian online

This post was last updated on 20 November 2011

Art in the streets: the sequel

A few weeks ago, I went on a walk with friends through the city centre to look at various bits of street art. This alerted me to a phenomenon I must have walked past loads of times but had never noticed until that day – decorated Traffic Signal Boxes (TSBs).

I won't go so far as to say they became a bit of an obsession, but I did go out of my way for a while in order to find more. Now I just snap them when I see them. And I have seen them in New Farm, Bulimba, Hawthorne, Norman Park, Mt Gravatt, Fortitude Valley, Spring Hill and Milton, as well as the CBD. But my collection so far is just a drop in the ocean: there are hundreds throughout Brisbane. Here are a few of my favourites.

Summer in the city 1: Mt Gravatt

For me, a quintessential Australian experience is to walk through open eucalypt forest in the heat of the day, with occasional blue-view glimpses and the loud chirruping of insects and birds. Smell the eucalyptus; feel the heat; squint in sudden sun bursts through the canopy.

Mt Gravatt is less than 10km southeast of Brisbane's CBD. You can see it from the top of Mt Coot-tha in the west and from the Gateway Motorway in the east, and ahead of you when you go shopping at Carindale. From the city centre, it's quickest to take the M3 (Pacific Motorway, from the CBD to Eight Mile Plains*). Turn off on to Klumpp Road, Logan Road, Shire Road and, finally and obviously, Mt Gravatt Lookout Drive. You are immediately in eucalypt forest and climbing steadily to the top.

The Aboriginal name for Mt Gravatt meant 'place of echidna', of which there were once many but not any more. The hill was named by white settlers about 1840 in honour of Lt George Gravatt, who had been a Commandant in Moreton Bay for just three months in 1839.

The first Lord Mayor of Brisbane City Council, William Jolly, was responsible for several civic improvements, including transport (hence the bridge that takes his name) and the acquisition of vantage points that not only citizens but tourists might enjoy. These beauty spots included Mr Gravatt, which had previously been extensively cleared as a timber reserve. Bush regeneration was therefore in order.

This is a term used in Australia to mean the restoration of remnant vegetation areas. In practice, it includes the removal of invasive species and weeds so that the seeds of native plants already in the ground are encouraged; replanting and the introduction of new species; the prevention of erosion; and the continuing protection of native plants. At Mt Gravatt, you will find bloodwoods, ironbarks, tallowwood, grey gums and mahogany eucalyptus, cheese trees (aka button wood) and soap trees (aka Red Ash), with wattles in the grassy, shrubby mid-layer – if you can distinguish between similar-looking trees, that is. (I wish I were better at identification.) There were also fabulous curving ferns.

Unfortunately, the beautification of Mt Gravatt didn't preclude the erection of radio antennae on the summit.

Just look the other way, for a different view of Brisbane's CBD. Further to the north and east on a clear day you can see the Glasshouse Mountains, which you can't from the top of Mt Coot-tha.

Inevitably, everyone's peace was disturbed by the arrival of bogans, who saw fit to leave their flamboyantly decorated ute with windows open and music system blaring while they walked away to have a fag. We escaped down the Summit Track for a little way: mercifully, bogans don't venture far from cars parked.

Mr Gravatt is also the name of a suburb that strings along the Logan Road and displays all the signs of an affliction coined by architect and social commentator Robin Boyd in The Australian Ugliness. The appearance of many commercial and retail areas in suburbs across this land borrows heavily from the very worst of American urban sprawl.

But let's finish on a gloriously green note.

* Even after living in Brisbane for almost two years, I still can't get to grips with motorway numbering. Go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_

Australian_freeways#Queensland Brisbane region

Autumn leaves

It has reached a high enough temperature in Southeast Queensland for me to swim within my comfort zone. It's a beautiful clear blue day today, with a breeze to take the edge off an expected high of 28. The pool is lovely, too: it's right by the river and is maintained at the right level of refreshingness, without being chilly if you stand around chatting.

One of my neighbours was swimming this morning, too. Many Australians ask me how I like living here. I tell them I love it, which is true. How could you not, I feel as if they want to add. In fact, sometimes I think they pity me as we relish the things they assume were missing from my former life – frequent hot sunshine, empty roads, wide open spaces, manageable cities, hundreds of the world's best, invariably deserted beaches, weird and wonderful landscapes with amazing or adorable creatures in them, and so on.

But, ye gods, I miss autumn leaves. I didn't realise quite how much until recently. I think it must be a good year for colour; perhaps something to do with the Indian summer the UK enjoyed a few weeks ago, so the leaves are turning later. They were magnificent. Luminous lime green and burnished gold and burnt orange and flame red and deep claret. I couldn't snap the best examples, alongside the M25, because I was driving.

Even more than these, I miss light nights. I've criticised daylight saving many a time in the UK in the past, but even without it we'd have light evenings and lingering twilights. Having a beer and a barbie just isn't the same in the dark.

The night after my return to Brisbane at the weekend, I was awakened at 04.05 by crows squabbling. There was little chance of me going back to sleep. I cursed the crazy Queenslanders, too, for their refusal to change their clocks; it was already coming light. A tad cranky, I grabbed my camera – as the sunrise provided another colour drama. It was wonderfully peaceful: there were no shouting rowers or cyclists; no dog- or power-walkers; not even purring CityCats at that hour. The birds and I.

It occurred to me that the grass is just as green on either side.

That man again

On a recent long-haul flight I lost myself in a book about a man on whom, followers will already know, I have a bit of a fixation (see Leichhardt, hinterlands and places beginning with M, May 2011). The book was Into the Unknown: the Tormented Life and Expeditions of Ludwig Leichhardt, by John Bailey. Drawing on the Prussian explorer's detailed diaries as well as those of his fellow travellers, Bailey describes Leichhardt's successful first Australian expedition – to find a route from still-fledgling settlements in the east to Port Essington in the far north of what was to become the Northern Territory. There were diaries, too, to throw light on Leichhardt's agonising abortive first attempt to cross this vast continent from its east to west coasts. Nothing but speculation, however, fires the imagining of his fateful second mission or the reason for his demise.

Leichhardt was an obsessive man of science. All natural phenomena fascinated him, whether they were plants, animals, weather, rocks, landscapes or indigenous people. He tried his hand at medicine, navigation, surveying and animal husbandry. He kept detailed records, collected thousands of samples, discovered several important rivers and named many geographical features. He was easily distracted from his primary task or diverted from his intended course if a new specimen caught his eye.

In his time Leichhardt was greatly criticised for his bad planning, poor choice of expeditioners, lack of bushman skills and inadequate leadership. But in the end he was, and is, judged on his fanatical drive to make geographical sense of this harsh continent and his resilience in the face of impenetrable thorny scrub or dank dense forest; precipitous escarpments or serried ranges; arid plains or rivers in flood; hostile natives or recalcitrant companions.

I have yet to travel even into the deepest interior of Queensland on this visit to Australia, but I have scanned enough vistas to wonder how early pioneers must have felt as they ventured into what was for the most part an inhospitable if starkly beautiful environment. And to be the first European to set his sights upon such a monumental unknown must have been a daunting as well as exhilarating prospect.

I shall forever think of Leichhardt as I marvel.

Welcome to Brisbane

I apologise if my back-in-Brisbane blog sounds like a whinge. My return last night, however, was marred by an immigration marathon that was as tiresome as it was unexpected.

I had flown to and from the UK with Singapore Airlines, whom I would highly recommend. They flew me from LHR to Brisbane in less than 22 hours and 35 minutes. That must surely be the shortest time possible for that route*. Singapore cabin staff are smiley and calm and they bring hot flannels as well as headphones and a menu and a pouch containing flight socks and toothbrush, and they will make you a cup of tea in the dead of a night flight if you ask them as nicely as they serve it.

But their great efforts to bring me back in the least possible time and with minimal stress were undone in about an hour and a half of airside... let's call it bureaucracy rather than the b word that springs to mind immediately.

Unfortunately I'd had to delay my return by 24 hours, so my seat on the second leg of the journey was pretty near the back of the Airbus 330 (which can carry 335 passengers, although this one wasn't full). Disembarkation took a while. I didn't dilly-dally in the toilet or have to drag an overtired toddler in my wake or stroll to passport control, thinking my bag wouldn't have reached reclaim yet. I walked briskly and with purpose. Alas, many people were there before me. So many, in fact, were already waiting in the non-Australian passport holders' queue that they stretched as far as the Australians-and-their-families line, and there was some confusion among latecomers as to precisely which end we should join.

By the way...

• As far as we know, no other flight arrival coincided with mine.

• It was 7.30 in the evening, not 3.30 in the middle of the night.

• There were just three officials dealing with non-Australians.

• To my knowledge there was no longer any industrial action affecting immigration at airports.

• When our international visitors have arrived before, it has taken them on average about 30 minutes to appear. Forty, tops.

Progress was extremely slow. Despite a pronouncement by Singapore Airlines on landing that Australian law forbids the use of mobile phones until passengers are beyond passport control, I rang my friend to tell him not to leave home if he hadn't already because I was going to be a while. Too late.

Once I reached an official, he quickly passed me through. I am a temporary resident who leaves and returns to Australia every now and again. But other visitors took far longer to be processed. Would it be silly of me to suggest that one of the several officials who scrutinised my Incoming Passenger Card** in the further long queue for customs might have been spared to identify passports at an earlier point in order to distinguish between the likes of me and, how shall I put it, more exotic first-time visitors? Brisbane is full of Brits after all, and I suspect New Zealand visitors might get hacked off in such an interminable queue, too.

Time was when, if you were entering the country with drugs (certain combinations of vits and mins that are unobtainable here) or food (Waitrose English Breakfast tea bags), which you'd identified on your IPC, you would be channelled in such a way as to be questioned and passed through quickly as long as it wasn't cocaine or a banana. Not any more.

And Australia must be one of few countries in the world that insists on security screening all your luggage as you enter the country. Visitors wearily lift heavy cases on to the belt.

I was short of sleep and all I wanted to do was see my friend on the other side of the sliding doors. I commented politely to one of the many officials that this was the longest time I had ever had to wait on my return to Brisbane. He wisely waved me through the middle of the scanning machines rather than towards the lines for them.

A quarantine department beagle lurked in my path, but was momentarily distracted by a box of what looked suspiciously like dog biscuits. I was through.

If ever you feel the need to vent your frustration in such circumstances, or to exhibit puzzlement or facetiousness at the reaction you get if caught in possession of an inadvertent apple: don't. Not if you want to get into Australia. The following incident might give you a flavour of border security in this land. I caught sight of the notice below as I waited for the Manchester Chapter at Brisbane Airport back in July. I took the picture because I am an editor and I liked the tautology of prohibited goods being prohibited. Armed police appeared at my side out of nowhere. I was not allowed to photograph a sterile area, you see.

* This included a short (two-hour) layover in Changi Airport. And we did have a tail wind all the way on the second leg

** This requires personal, travel and contact details as well as declarations relating to customs and quarantine