ON THE ROAD/Rosita Boland: All this summer in Ireland, on every dull wet day, I dreamed about clear blue light and being hot. It's the light more than anything I longed for. There's enough blue sky and heat in Brisbane - 34° and rising - to content even the most sodden soul.
The friends I am staying with apologise for the heat, but my heart lifts at every blue morning.
Because of the climate, Ireland feels oddly further away here than it did in culturally different but chilly-weather Japan: far away at the end of some dark damp tunnel.
Like many Irish people, I lived in Australia for a year after college: worked in Sydney for a few months and then travelled.
Backpackers are still coming to Australia by the plane-load and these days, many also come with the idea of staying, rather than simply travelling around for an extended working holiday and then returning home.
Several times this week, it crossed my mind that I would be daft to leave Australia. There are so many things I love about Ireland, but the climate is not one of them.
Yasmin and Chris, the friends I've come to visit, are Brisbane born and bred. I met them travelling through Eastern Europe some eight years ago and later, we shared a house in London.
They both travelled extensively through Europe for a few years before returning home, and they have no doubt at all they are in the right place.
Brisbane (same population as Dublin) is not as interesting or attractive a city as Sydney or Melbourne, but, from spending time here this last week with Yasmin and Chris, it seems a very easy city to live in and I can see why they love it here.
It is a cliché, but the weather really does make a wonderful lifestyle possible. Year round, for example, Yasmin meets friends at her local outdoor pool every Sunday morning and swims lengths before brunch.
At 9.30 a.m. this Sunday, we were all in the water, and a couple of hours later, we were sitting in an outdoor café under a flowering jacaranda tree, looking at menus. For me such a morning only happens on holiday, but to them, it's a normal routine.
The same afternoon, their friends met in a local riverside park, bearing beer, salads and barbecue meats. More glorious clichés. There are free electric barbecues on picnic sites throughout Brisbane by municipal arrangement. I found myself looking at the barbecue we were using through the hardened eyes of someone who lived in Dublin. What about vandalism, I asked.
Are there no gurriers who go round wrecking the free barbecues for the hell of it, or, indeed, being creative and barbecuing stray pets on them? I got some very odd looks to that question.
After a couple of days, I realised I was looking at Brisbane from a different perspective to my friends. They see barbecues and think picnics: I see kids roasting kittens. They see buses with bicycle racks on front and think bike'n'ride: I see bikes disappearing when the bus stops at traffic lights. They see opened windows in an empty house and think fresh breezes: I see thieves unable to believe their luck.
They see clean pavements and think nothing of it, and I wonder, where on earth is the litter and the chewing gum?
This way of thinking was automatic, and it gave me a bit of a shock. I wondered was I being unfairly cynical or simply realistic about what the Irish gurrier is capable of. I still haven't worked that one out.
Meanwhile, I am getting used again to the luxury of living in a house where the primary idea is to keep cool rather than warm.
In between exploring the city, and swatting mosquitoes, I am aimlessly sitting out on the deck, happily reading and admiring the huge lush trees that grow in the back garden: poinsettia, oleander, jacaranda, frangipani, paw-paw, gum, palm and others I haven't an idea about.
Green and red parrots fly past, a bush turkey scratches furtively in the compost, and the unseen cicadas hum all day, like mini-generators.
My friends, who work during the day, are worried I'll be bored. I laugh at them.
Their main complaint about living in Queensland? The prolonged drought which started last year continues and is causing hardship to many farmers.
There is also the inherent threat of bushfires which comes with drought. "If it rained, it'd be perfect here," they say.
The visitor begs to differ.