St. Helena Island

It's been a very busy 2 weeks in Brisbane!  The students have been studying full time at 'uni', and by full time I mean 4 hours of lecture a day - something none of us are used to!  Everyone seems to be getting along well with their homestays and adjusting to the peculiarities of OZ-life, such as the 4 minute shower rule, or outlets having on/off switches.

We were lucky at the end of this week to get a break from sitting on the hard historic benches of lecture hall 257 in the Goddard building, and go for a trip to St. Helena Island.  St. Helena is part of the National Parks system, and was a male convict island across Moreton Bay from Brisbane.  The Aborigines called the island Noogoon.  Of course, the British renamed everyone and everything, so after an Aboriginal named Napoleon was exiled there, they decided to name it St. Helena!  Got to love the Brits.  It was established as a penal colony in 1867, and closed in 1932.  One of the prisoners, while trying to steal a bag of flour or something, etched the first version of the Australia coat-of-arms in a wall.  There's a picture below.  We had a tour of the island from two comical fellows who relished in telling us gory tales of torture.  No one (prisoner) ever succeeded at escape.. except for a fellow with only one hand who managed to make it across the bay on a desk that he had stolen from the head warden (this was after he tried escaping in a bathtub).  How an one-handed man managed to pull either a bathtub or a desk down the hill for hundreds of meters, let alone paddle it across a shark-infested bay just adds to the mystique of the island.  The island was rather successful as penal colonies go, it was completely self supporting.  The prisoners worked to make goods that were sold and traded.  It was so successful as a business that others would come from afar to study it as a model for building their own prison systems.  In additional to the comedic-historians we had on the island, several times wild wallabies would hop across our path, or lounge among the ruins.  When we were returning to the boat, we even caught one going for a swim!  Apparently wallabies and kangaroos are very good swimmers, they just hate water.  Hmm... sounds like a few kids I know!  - Apologies for some of the pictures being overexposed.

After St. Helena we were dropped off at Southbank, where the Brisbane Festival has been underway. I took my children for a ride on the "Wheel of Brisbane" - it was amazing to see the city from that height!

We leave very early Monday morning for Lamington National Park.  Unfortunately there is no internet or cell service, however there are public phones for calling out.  Likely you will not hear from us until next weekend. Have a wonderful week!