Brisbane Day 4 - Markets

We decided once again that we needed a day of rest from the animal sanctuaries, and had to do some shopping for tourist crap...erm, nice lovely gifts for our friends. The local markets sounded like a sure thing. There were 2 large ones, one on the South Bank, and the other at Eagle Street Pier. We picked up our rental car for the rest of the week, then drove across the river to the south bank market. Knowing that we were going to be doing a lot of walking today, we grabbed some breakfast at The Point restaurant. The food was great, I had cocotte, a baked egg dish, and Anna had a risotto cake. However, the service was lousy. This was mostly due to under-staffing. Lauren, our main server, was very good. She was running around all over the place, mostly due to the fact that Belinda, the other waitress, was slower than a koala high on eucalyptus.

Having filled our tummies, we hit the market. We found a great wine stall where they made fruit wines. Instead of adding fruit juice to wine, the wine is actually fermented from different fruits. Anna picked up a bottle of garlic wine. It was a little too weird for my liking, but Anna thought it was good. One of the stalls was run by an aborigine, Murruppi (Daniel Murphy), who was from the Djirribal language area. Both his parents were removed from their homeland at a young age, and put on reserves in the early 1900's. His stall was selling original aboriginal art work, including canvas, boomerangs, and didgeridoos. We picked up a couple of items, and then headed off to the Eagle St Pier market.

This market was a little larger than the first one, running along the Brisbane river banks, but we didn't find many gifts. We purchased some hand made art for a couple of friends.

Our day ended back at the apartment and cooked dinner. Honey soy chicken, with boiled potatos and Asian noodle. We then settled down in front of the TV to watch Australian Idol, again.

Anna's Aussie Tidbits:

I saw the biggest toilet flush button at a shopping center today. It's so big I thought it was the opening of the sanitary bin. (It's about a foot by half a foot) I only realized it was the flush button when I couldn't find one.

Chocolate filled bananas? Yep, someone here has a device to hollow out the middle of bananas and filled them with various items such as chocolate, whipped cream and hazelnut spread.

Kangaroo scrotums?? Yep, they sell them. They make them into all kinds of things, from Beer Bottle opener to golf ball carrier to coin purses.