Pacific Tonz

New Blog Domain

pacifictonz — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:12:14 +0000

As you may have noticed I haven’t posted to this blog for a while. I’ve been consolidating my website and blog at my own domain www.branto.net and we are now live. Please visit me there.

Witches Falls and Eagle Heights

pacifictonz — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:56:36 +0000

Winter in Brisbane isn’t really like winter so it is sometimes nice to wrap up and go up into the hills of the Gold Coast hinterland for the day. On Sunday we put on the hiking boots and headed for Witches Falls on Tamborine Mountain Road, just after the Eagle Heights turn-off coming from the Brisbane side. It is June and it’s been dry for quite a while so we didn’t really expect the falls to be dramatic but the fresh air and a bit of exercise climbing down into the gully and back out again was fun. It is only about 3.5km so nothing serious but varied habitat, some piccabean palm groves, huge strangler figs and rainforest along the way and plenty of birds. We saw a superb lyrebird as we were climbing back out, they aren’t rare but we hadn’t spotted one before and they have a really distinctive tail when they display so are easy to identify, a pair of spotted quail-thrush chasing each other around a fallen log and in the leaf litter at the bottom of the gully were also a good spot . The falls will be worth coming back to see in the wet season and the track is good enough that it should still be fairly easy, huge columns of vertical lava formed thousands of years ago were dry at the moment with only small quantities of water coming over the rock face and the seasonal lagoons along the track were empty.

One of the good things about the hinterland (both Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast) is the fabulous places to eat, whether you want to settle in for the afternoon or sit outside and grab something to warm you up. In Eagle Heights if you just want a reasonable coffee and one of Brisbane’s best pies (with awards to prove it) you can’t go past the Mt Tamborines Winery and Homestead. Of course no stop at Tamborine Mountain is complete without a couple of cheeses from Witches Chase cheesemaker and a stop at the fudge shop for a little treat to take home.

Japan Album: Philosophers Walk (2 April 2010)

pacifictonz — Thu, 13 May 2010 07:36:37 +0000

Japan Album: Toji temple in Kyoto (1 April, 2010)

pacifictonz — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:04:22 +0000

It was a wet afternoon but we couldn’t sit around waiting for dinner so headed out to see the Toji temple near the hotel. The photos were pretty bad, not being used to photographing in rain we didn’t wipe the lense nearly often enough so many were ruined by rain drops and other were shaky from balancing the umbrella over the camera and low light. Still it was a beautiful place and I’m pleased we decided to slot it into the plan for the day.

Japan Album: Ryoan-ji in Kyoto

pacifictonz — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:44:10 +0000

Japan Album: Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto

pacifictonz — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:46:15 +0000

Japan Album: Kasuga Grand Shrine in Nara

pacifictonz — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:43:22 +0000

Japan Album: Kofuku-ji in Nara

pacifictonz — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:52:04 +0000

Japan Album: Todai-Ji in Nara

pacifictonz — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:48:42 +0000

Day four of the trip and 21 pages into the album, I hope this isn’t boring already I really am trying to summarise but I had almost 6500 photos, at least some have to make it into print. We loved every day and every place we went, it is hard to break it down to a handful of pictures to capture my feelings and experience of these amazing places.

Japan Album: Himeji and the Hotel

pacifictonz — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:33:44 +0000

After deciding to go with the large square album after all I needed to redo these pages of our third day in Japan at Himeji and around the hotel.