Well not really big lights, big city. Brisbane is actually a relatively small city, but for us, not having been in a city since Hong Kong this was quite a culture shock.

We arrived by train and headed towards our hostel. We were going to be staying at the Brisbane City YHA. We were able to check in early and had been given a disabled room so there was an ensuite giant wet room. We weren’t going to complain as we expected shared bathroom facilities and had only paid for that.

Simon gets frustrated with me as I am always super eager to head out and start exploring straight away. Reluctantly he was dragged out within about 30 minutes. We signed up for a free walking tour the next day and also for $2 taco night that night before we left. Freebies and cheap food is the way forward at the moment.

We had heard that the Southbank area of Brisbane was a good place to walk, so we headed off that way. Brisbane is a river city, cut in half by Brisbane River, so we needed to cross a bridge first to get over to Southbank. We walked along the promenade and enjoyed taking in the views of the CBD on the other side of the river, as well as the pretty parklands of Southbank. I won’t talk about this area too much as we went back to Southbank on our walking tour the next day, so i’ll explain more then. However, we did bump into a man, who took our photo in front of the Brisbane sign and then proceeded to tell us about a free ferry we could take! Yay! Free!!

The Jacaranda trees are blooming at the moment in Australia and they are so beautiful. You’ll see that a lot of our pictures have a lot of them snuck into the photo somehow.

By this point, Simon was hungry… we were at risk of hangry Simon appearing so we went to 7/11 and got lunch snacks (sausage rolls, muffins and coffees). We sat by the lagoon on Southbank (I think it might be called the beach) and enjoyed our food. Fortunately, we were only about 5 minutes away from one of the free ferry stops so walked towards that in time to get the city hopper ferry. Our plan was to ride the ferry up as far as we could go and then take it back to the CBD (central business district) to meet up with our friend from Magnetic island, Sophie.

The ferry took us under the Story Bridge, up to New Farm and then turned around and came back. We were on the ferry for about an hour and it was a great way to see the city and to get a feel for the layout. I would recommend this to anyone who is visiting Brisbane. After the ferry we walked from Eagle Pier up to Queen Street Mall to meet Sophie. We would need to visit Queen Street Mall again later on as we both needed jeans, it was getting a little chilly in the evenings and soon enough we would be in Melbourne, which is far chillier, and then new Zealand.

We met up with Sophie and headed off for a coffee. This coffee shop was so posh!!! Even Sophie said ‘I’m so sorry if this coffee costs you $45’. Haha. It didn’t. It was actually one of the more reasonably priced coffees we’d had since being in Australia. Looks can be deceiving. We had a lovely catch up. It’s really interesting to us to hear about ‘life on a working visa’. I have to admit i’m glad we’ve done it this way as it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun having to find work.

After our coffee, Umi had recommended that we take the city cat ferry up to Bulimba further up the river. Off we went, using our go cards to save us money (like an oyster card). We arrived in Bulimba and thought… Oh there’s nothing here… but there was, you just had to walk quite a way up the street. I couldn’t believe it, there were restaurants and cafes selling every type of food you could imagine! Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, Japanese… the list goes on. I found it hard to believe that wuite a small suburb would need so many retaurants. We decided to stop and have a little sushi snack which was very tasty. After a good walk around Bulimba we headed back to the city cat and got off at the CBD to go shopping. We said goodbye to Sophie for the day, but we would be seeing her again tomorrow for an open air viewing of Sully on Southbank.

Simon and I proceded to spend the next hour and a half looking for jeans. Those of you who know me well, know that I HATE shopping with a passion. I have no desire to walk around the shops and waste my time. As it became increasingly obvious that we were going to be unsuccessful that day, we gave up and went back to the hostel. Spotting a few sights on the way.

The sunset from the YHA rooftop.

We had each purchased 2 $2 tacos so went down to the cafe to enjoy those. Tacos in Australia are actually fajitas. I have no idea why they call them tacos, it’s just confusing for everyone. Fajitas are quite expensive to make here as you need to buy a lot of bits and usually the wraps cost at least $4 for a pack so we were definitely on to a winner. We enjoyed our tacos, I mean fajitas and headed back to the room. We’d walked a lot so decided to have an early night ready for our walking tour the next morning.

The next morning we woke up for our free walking tour, completed by the Brisbane greeters. The Brisbane greeters are a volunteer group of Brisbanites (as they like to call themselves) who want to show off their city to visitors. The YHA had organised this tour for us so all we had to do was go downstairs at the right time. We were split into groups of 5 or 6 and off we went for our lady guide. I can’t remember her name…whoops. We were with 2 German girls and 1 Dutch girl, who were the most unchatty people I think we’ve met during our time here, so we got the guide pretty much to ourselves and they just followed us around.

We headed through the CBD, this time with a fresh pair of eyes, being shown interesting things and being told interesting facts. Every new building that’s built in Brisbane has to invest 2.5% of the cost of the building into art on, in, or around that building. We had a look at a few pieces on our way around, including this giant kangaroo.

We were also told to look at all the signal boxes on the road. Local artists can pay the council to paint on the signal boxes and their art will stay on the box from 4 weeks to 4 years. There were some interesting boxes around, but I didn’t take a photo of any of them. Whoops. I was saying to Simon today, it seems like Australia are trying to create landmarks and buildings that will last and that are really appealing to look at. The result is a very modern looking city, which in 20-30 years will be absolutely full of art. It would be so interesting to see Brisbane again in the future as it is a city that has come so far in such a short space of time. More on that later.

We crossed over to Southbank again crossing over on the Kurilpa bridge. This bridge won the award of world transport building over the year in 2011. Fun fact for you. We think it looks like a Spider, but the shape has a purpose, the bridge supports itself by leaning onto itself in multiple places.

Our lady guide told us about a display in the library that was showing aboriginal possum ‘blankets’. I’m not sure if that’s the right word. When an aboriginal person is born they are given a decorated possum skin and throughout their lives more possum skills are added at monumental life stages and events. When the Europeans settled in Australia, a large number of these were taken from the aboriginal people (not sure why). This display was to share this tradition with visitors, but also to the descendants of the aboriginal people so that they can be more in touch with the history of their families. We went in and had a quick look, but were unable to take many photos. They were stunning though and you could see how these would create an amazing memento for the person of their life events.

We walked along Southbank, looking at the beach, the cultural centre, the rainforest, the nepalese pagoda and so much more along the way. We had seen most of this previously, the day before, but were happy for a little bit more information. Apparently the Nepalese pagoda (pictured above) was built for the World Expo that took place in Brisbane in 1988, the people loved it so much it has become a permanent feature. The site of Southbank used to be where all the warehouses were in the city, this was then rejuvenated as the site for the World Expo and has since been made into the current parklands. We saw a lot of school students around the area and the guide explained its because they will be talking about urban development and this place is perfect, as most places have only been built on once so far.

We also heard a lot about how Brisbane came to be a settlement at all. Many convicts and criminals were sent to Australia as a form of punishment from the British, but also other European countries. These people were sent to Sydney primarily, but if they were still ‘naughty’ (secondary offenders) they decided they needed somewhere new to send them. Someone headed North and determined to area of Brisbane to be suitable and he then named the river after Sir Thomas Brisbane the Governor of New South Wales, the area then adopted the name because of its location. The first secondary offenders arrived in 1824 and the city was opened for settlement in 1842. I just CANNOT get my head around how recent all of this was. It has been an ongoing realisation of mine during our time here, how new all of their history is here. I’m still not sure I fully appreciate it, having come from a continent with so much history.

We then headed back over the river to the CBD and went into the Queensland University of Technology. I thought, ‘this is a bit strange! why are we going here?’, but actually it was really interesting. The University backs onto the Botanical Gardens (I didn’t inflict this on Simon this time) and houses the old Governors House. The most interesting stop though was to this giant interactive screen inside one of the buildings where they display information about space, dinosaurs and all sorts else. Really good fun.

We said goodbye to our Brisbanite lady guide after this and headed to the Queens Street Mall where we both were able to buy jeans successfully this time. YAY!! I was fully expecting to pay $50 for mine, got to the tills and they were $10!! So happy!!!

We somehow bumped into the City Hall and knew that you could go up the clock tower for free, so in we went. There is a museum in the City Hall as well, so we had a look around that for about 45 minutes before our allotted time to go up the clock tower. The museum was really interesting and had a display about the population of Brisbane, telling us lots of interesting facts about the demographic of the city. Going up the clock tower was surprisingly interesting and we had some great views back out over the city from up there.

We quickly headed back to the YHA to get changed as we were heading out to meet Sophie and to go to the open air cinema (sponsored by Ben and Jerry’s) to watch Sully. We had an email saying that we could get free Ben and Jerry’s. Apparently the email lied but we managed to get some anyway!! Wooo! Also, they had some wine tasting so we partook in that as well. The wine was awful! We definitely won’t be visiting that vineyard in New Zealand. We had a really lovely evening, eating nibbles, watching and movie and then having some drinks afterwards with Sophie in the West End. The views across Brisbane that evening were beautiful too.

Our time in Brisbane had come to an end and we were leaving the next morning for Byron Bay. We really enjoyed Brisbane and after all the small towns and coastal spots of the last 6 weeks, it was a welcomed changed. Bring on Sydney and Melbourne.