Adrienne Wilson, 2011 South Queensland student blogger, writes:

May 22

We started off the day with a lecture on the Aboriginal Australians. We learned a lot about the Dreaming and some of the University of Hawai’i kids drew connections with Aboriginal belief and ancient Hawaiian history.

After a lunch break, we made our way to the Queensland Art Gallery. While walking through the museum, pictured left, I realized that I had Internet connection through my phone! This is significant as Australian Internet is very expensive, I think.

I then realized there were bar codes on some of the plaques for the paintings. When scanned through my Droid, an extra video feature was revealed that talked about all sorts of things from restoring the painting (if it had arrived in bad condition), to finding the differences between a fake and the original, and to just how the artist felt (when interviewed, if it was someone current). I did get in trouble though, at one point. In each of the museum rooms there was a bench for visitors to relax and sit in. The very last room looked like it had the same feature – except it was actually a piece of art, and I got yelled at by one of the security guards… so… yeah. My bad.

Afterward, I got a chance on my own time to ride the Wheel of Brisbane and explore even more sections of Brisbane! Walking back to the hostel, I even saw bats flying near the City Botanic Gardens. It was quite intense.

Views of and from the wheel: