20th Anniversity World Expo 88 Celebrations

This is Part II of Expo 88. The previous post covered
the period from June to October, 1988 and this post
covered the 20th Anniversary held on the Expo site
on 10th May, 2008.

We started our walkabout around the old Expo site
and one of the first things we came across was the
Kookaburra Queen, a paddle boat, which was offering
1988 prices of $5.00, for a one hour cruise up the
Brisbane River. The first cruise left at 11.00am so we
were lucky enough to board just in time before the
cruise departed.

The next cruise was at 1.00pm and when we returned
there was a large crowd lined up waiting to board, as
you will be able to see in the photo. I’m pleased we
caught the first cruise as I would not of been too thrilled
to be caught in this line up.

During our cruise down the Brisbane River we
passed by the centre of the CBD.

The CityCat vessels are catamarans. Services
began in 1996 with 6 vessels, each capable of
carrying 150 passengers, with two further vessels
being added to the CityCat fleet in 1998 due to
increased demand. This is very popular with
tourists as it is a pleasant way to travel past
such Brisbane icons as the Story Bridge and
South Bank Parklands.

There were 45 minute concerts held at the Suncorp
Piazza, a huge under cover area that has been kept
as is since Expo 88 and many free events are held
there all year round.

There were 3 free movies shown on a huge outdoor
screen. At 1pm there was “The Neverending Story”
(a film my daughter Olivia loved when she was young,
and coincidently I brought this film on DVD for Olivia
last November when I visited her in Mackay).
At 3pm there was “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” and at
5pm there was “Back to the Future”.

A photographic display of over 30 images was
showcased throughout the bougainvillea arches.

A Kids Expo was held with free outdoor art activities,
including face painting, kite making and musical workshops.

One of the acts in the Piazza was of two lovely ladies
doing a balancing performance on a hoop over the
audience and fortunately we were quite close to where
they were, so I was able to take a number of photos
of their act. They were excellent.

There were roving entertainment of street performers,
and this was one of the most hugely popular events at
Expo 88. You could be assured if there was a large
crowd somewhere it would caused by one of the street
performers “doing a crowd stopping” act. These were
extremely well acted performers and we saw three of
these today.

Three different types of Street Performers...all were great.

There is not a lot one can do to try and make
these performers move, no matter how hard
some people attempt to persuade them.

Another attraction was the Human Factor Sculptures,
and it was these that attracted me to go back to
re-visit again. Some of the original sculptures were
sourced and restored and these were featured
throughout the parklands, but unfortunately these were
hard to find. We found three of them, but I’ve cheated
and I’m showing some of these I’ve “found on the net”
(there were nearly 80 sculptures) and it is these I am using.

Busker

…………..................................Campfire

...............A Quite Moment

..........Old Lady

..........American Tourist

Balancing Act

.........Astronaut's..................................Balancing Act

Some More Street Performers

We stayed until 4.00pm and
all in all we had a enjoyable
time and some great memories
were relived.

Revisiting Expo 88 held in Brisbane

On Saturday 10th May 2008, there was a 20th
Anniversary World Expo 88 Celebration, so
Rosalind and I decided to attend. We caught
the train at 10.35am and then walked the short
distance to recapture our memories of
20 years past.

Before I do the post on the 20th Anniversary of
Expo 88, I thought I'd revisit the time I spent at
this marvellous event with some memories and
photos I have "captured" from researching this
period.

Wazza and Rosalind at South
Bank, the site of Expo 88

Expo '88 ran for seven days a week, between the hours
of 10am-10pm, for six months. From the opening on
30 April, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, and 30 October
1988, the Expo attracted 15,760,447 visitors, the target
attendance had been set at 7.8 million. The opening
ceremony was broadcast to an estimated television
audience of 800 million people internationally. The majority
of visitors were Australians. Most of the international
visitors were Japanese, but 100,000 came from the
United Kingdom and Europe, with 150,000 visitors from
the United States. A total of 36 nations, two international
organizations, 14 state and regional governments, and
34 Corporations had exhibits. The exposition averaged
100,000 visitors a day, with highest day of attendance
being 184,000 visitors on October 29, 1988 - the last day
before the Closing Ceremony.

.................Expo 88 during the day.

..................Expo 88 during the evening.

Situated on a 40-hectare site on the southern bank
of the Brisbane River, a former collection of disused
railyards, light industry, residential and parkland directly
across from the Brisbane central business district, World
Expo '88 was the largest single event commemorating
the Bicentenary of European settlement to Australia
(1788-1988), and a Australian competition was sanctioned
as an international exposition to the City of Brisbane
- Australia's third largest city.

The Monorail passing above the Canadian Exhibit.

A monorail was constructed for Expo '88 to take visitors
quickly around the Expo site. Costing AU$12 million, it
consisted of 2 stations at either end of the site,
2.3 kilometres of track and 4 nine-carriage trains.
The route included going through the Queensland Pavilion,
across the Pacific Lagoon and beside the Brisbane River.
The system was able to carry 44,000 passengers per day.

...........The Nepalese Pavilion.

The only remaining traces of the Exposition on the former
site are: the Nepalese Pavilion, a traditional three-storey
hand-made wooden replica of a famous Pagoda in Kathmandu,
the board walk at the South end of the parklands, and
two pubs (hotels).

Crowds outside the Australian Pavilion.

As 1988 began I purchased a season pass so that I
could attend Expo ’88 at any time on any day. A friend
also purchased a season pass and we decided to go
every Wednesday after work. We also went on week-ends.
In the six months we would of attended all the different
exhibits, some more than once. I had a Super 8 movie
camera, but video cameras were taking over from movie
cameras, so not far from South Bank (where Expo ’88 was
held) was a camera store that hired out video cameras.
This was well before the advent of today’s small digital
video cameras. The camera I hired took the full sized VHS
tape, so this unit was huge. To operate the camera was a
battery pack and this was HUGE and weighed “a ton”.
When the battery ran out of charge you could take the
battery back to the camera store and they would replace
the battery pack with a fully recharged battery at no extra
cost. The VHS tape had three hours of recording time on
the tape. Now this is a long time. We were there from
10.00am until 5.00pm when we had to have the video
camera back to the shop. Now that’s 7 hours walking
around or over 2 and a bit times of VHS recording using
over 2 VHS tapes. If you’ve never used a video camera
I can tell you that you are not using the video continually.
One would take a bit of video here and a bit more there.
You would not be filming all the time. It seemed to me
that I was doing a real lot of filming, but I did not get
through one VHS tape (and I knew from previous
recordings that there was no way I would use up the
3 hours of the tape). Finally maybe the next day I loaded
the tape into the video machine to view what I had taken.
If memory serves me correct there was maybe
20 minutes of video. Now that doesn’t seem like a lot of
video, but let me tell you that is properly the average
amount of time one would take doing this time of filming.
At days end my shoulder was so sore from lugging this
very heavy battery pack around the Expo site.

Daily concerts were held at the River Stage.

Strolling through some of the exhibits at Expo 88.

Sunset overlooking the Expo 88 site.

The Kookaburra cruising pass the Expo 88 site.

I was going to do one post on the 20th Anniversary of
Expo 88, but after researching this event I realized that
to do this I would have one heck of a huge post, so I’ve
decided to split the post into two parts.
I will continue this in a few days.