Brisbane Botanical Gardens (Toowong)

This is an overdue post! Pictures from our little trip to the Botanical Gardens in Toowong on June 8th (it was the "Queen's Birthday" public holiday).

I quite like nature but I'm deathly afraid of lizards and snakes, just thinking about them gives me the heebie jeebies! Once, we went to the Roma Parklands during the summer and there were so so so so so so so many lizards/water dragons just basking in the sun, I burst into tears midway because I just couldn't take it anymore. Yes, I'm THAT scared of them! 

Anyway, because it is the winter season now, we figured that most of the lizards would be hibernating somewhere else. Also, I had just gotten my16-50mm f2.8 Fujinon lens and wanted to take it for a spin.

It was quite crowded that day, because it was a public holiday. There were heaps of young families and it did liven up the mood. Our first stop was the indoor garden dome thing. I really loved the cactus display! I loveeee cacti! They are so cute.

Especially love these ones! They look like they have pink "eyes"!

These look like cinnabons! They grow individually and look like random cinnabons sprouting out from the ground everywhere. 

Trying my best to get an "artistic shot" haha!

Mad love the fixed aperture on this lens!

We then encountered the Fern House, which was just a separate area within the Gardens which houses different species of ferns. It wasn't all that interesting though. 

We continued walking along, trying to look for the Japanese Garden, which my boss had talked a lot about before.

How do you know that you are near? When you start seeing heaps of bamboo! How typical, haha!

Mad love the cute arch way, looks pretty authentic.

A giant "cherry blossom" tree greeted us when we stepped in! It was simply breathtaking! The pink contrasted really well with all the greenery around it. Oh, and it really isn't a cherry blossom tree. It's some species from South America, I forgot the name. Good substitute though.

Caught a picture of the Husband across the wee lake. 

How picturesque!

We sat down on the grass knoll for awhile and I started taking some shots of my ONA camera bag. It was an anniversary gift from the Husband for our 6th year together. I love this bag, I can keep a lot in it: my Fujifilm X-T1, my large instax polaroid camera, spare film, my phone and keys, and more. The only downside is that it is quite heavy as it is made of pure leather, including the entire strap.

This is the newly constructed area in the Gardens, it still looks a little unfinished. Lots of good spots for picnics! 

It was about 4 or 5pm when we decided to turn back and head home. On the way to the car, we snapped more shots of random stuff growing along the pathways, such as this weird purple berries:

Then we saw this bee hovering around some purple plants, and I must have taken like 74369523802 shots!

Caught some bits of the setting sun on the way home too. Love the brightly colored poinsettia flowers, the fading afternoon haze added some mood to the photo, which was great.

Ending this post with a photo of me and my pretentious camera gear + bag, hahahaha..

We had a really nice time out that day, and had sweet and sticky KFC (korean fried chicken) for dinner, which is always a good ending to any day really.

Oh and a quick and simple review about the lens! It is indeed a great piece of glass, but it is big and heavy as hell! I mean, this thing is just massive. I can't see my camera with this lens on, haha. And there's no way I  can shoot with just one hand. I used to think the standard kit lens (18-55mm) was big, but this is a monster. It's a trade-off I guess, weight vs. image quality.