Dreams of Burpengary

Fosco loves to learn about new places. And so today he inaugurates a new feature called "Where in the world..." As Fosco peruses his site traffic reports, he often comes across visits from strangely-named places all over the world. Consequently, every so often, Fosco will offer a brief report about one of these weird or wonderful places. This feature is his opportunity (and yours) to learn more about our large (and paradoxically small) world.

Today's focus is on Burpengary, Australia, which sounds like nothing so much as an uncreative nickname for some kid with gas. Here's the site report:

Fosco's interwebular researches have revealed that Burpengary is along the East Coast of Australia, within reasonable commuting distance of Brisbane (the third most populous city in Australia). According to the map, Burpengary is located between the towns of Caboolture and Deception Bay--neither of which will ever win any awards for name appeal (although you could probably set a daytime soap in "Deception Bay").

As far as I can tell, there is not much to be proud of in Burpengary (at least judging from its lack of interesting Google results). However, an image search turns up this pretty remarkable garden:

Fosco has no idea what kind of plants we can see in this picture, but he suspects that they eat koalas.

Also, apparently Burpengary is a bit of a destination for lovers of Christmas lights, including both an elaborate display ("Klingner's Khristmas Wonderland"--seriously--although why you need an "h" after the "k" in Khristmas is a mystery to me) and an entire street of lighted houses ("Blackbutt Court"--again, seriously). Judging from this photograph, however, Fosco is unimpressed:

Although, perhaps this is the height of Christmas Khristmas light ambition in a place where December 25 arrives in the middle of summer.

Unlike almost all of his peers, Fosco has never had a desire to visit Australia and, after writing this post, he wants to go even less. But hey, I still salute Burpengary, the inaugural town in "Where in the world..."

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