Weekend in Brisbane

A few weeks after my trip to Byron Bay and Surfer’s Paradise I headed back up to “warm and sunny Queensland” to get away from Melbourne’s gloomy winter. I went with my friend Elena, who was another AIESEC intern in Melbourne, working as a marketing analyst at a software company. She’s from Moldova and we met when we both got here through some AIESEC gatherings. We get along really well and decided back in the fall that we would have a fun weekend away in Brisbane when we got sick of the winter in Melbourne. We had it planned for the weekend of August 21^st to 23^rd but right before we were supposed to go Elena had a lot of troubles with her work place and ended up having to quit and move to Adelaide with her boyfriend. I was worried we were going to have to cancel the trip, but luckily she was able to change her flights to leave from Adelaide and meet me in Brisbane instead of flying there with me from Melbourne.

I took a day off on the Friday so we could have a long weekend up there. I had worked late throughout the week so that I was able to leave work early on Thursday for my flight at 6. I was at the airport by about 3:30 pm and sat there writing postcards and letters. The flight was supposed to leave at 6 pm but was delayed by an hour so we didn’t take off until 7. That was pretty normal for TigerAir since they are a budget airline that is often running late, but once we were in the air I quickly realized this flight was not going to be “smooth sailing”. We had been in the air for about 20 minutes when they made an announcement asking if there were any medical personnel on the plane, and if they could come up to the front. That is of course never a good thing to hear while in the air, but luckily there was a woman who stood up and went to the front. I could see that they had laid someone down at the front and there was a group of people standing around with the curtains closed. We had no idea what was going on but I was hoping for the best. The flight to Brisbane is only about an hour and a half long and we had already been in the air for an hour when they made an announcement saying we had to turn around and go back to Melbourne to get the person to a hospital. That seemed weird since I knew we were closer to Brisbane but I didn’t question it. Once we landed back in Melbourne we waited on the plane for about 30 minutes until emergency personnel showed up to take the person off the plane, then we de-planed about 30 minutes after that. We then had to wait in the TigerAir terminal, which is a temporary metal hangar with no heat and no food places open for another hour and a half until we could get on another plane. I was really hungry because I was meant to be in Brisbane by 7:30 and it was already 10:30. We still didn’t know what was going on either…they hadn’t said much or when the next plane would be. We finally got on the new plane at 12:00 am and made it to Brisbane by 1:30 am. I was supposed to be in Brisbane a few hours earlier than Elena, but instead she had been there waiting for me since 11:00! Once I got there I met up with her and she told me that the people waiting had all been told that the man on our plane had actually died of a heart attack while in the air, which was why we had to return to Melbourne since it’s their policy to bring the body back to where they started. I was so shaken up by that because I had tried to hope for the best the whole time, and the flight attendants had done such a good job of staying calm, which kept everyone else on the plane calm that we just had no idea that had happened! The trains into the city weren’t running at this point so we had to take a taxi into the city and we didn’t get into our room at the hostel until about 3 am. I was exhausted and sad about the whole thing….it was such a weird thing to happen on a plane I was on and it took me a bit to fall asleep with all of the tragic thoughts hanging around in my head.

The next morning we slept in a little and then walked into the city which took about 15 minutes from our hostel. Brisbane is known for having beautiful sunny and warm weather all year round, so it was such a bummer to wake up to pouring rain! We rugged up though and had our umbrellas close by, since we weren’t going to waste our time sitting in the hostel. Our first stop was the beautiful town hall, where we met an old friend of Elena’s. When Elena was 12 years old, a woman named Kim who worked for Lonely Planet came and stayed with her family in Moldova for some time while she travelled around Moldova and wrote about it. Elena’s family showed her all of the Moldovan sites and taught her some of their language and culture. She had stayed with the family for a while and Elena hadn’t seen her since. Kim is Australian and is now living near Brisbane, so she took the train into Brisbane to meet up with Elena. It was a really heart-warming moment when they saw each other because it had been 12 years since they’d last seen each other and they had been very close. I felt a little bad intruding on their reunion, but they insisted the more the merrier! The three of us walked to Queen Street Mall, a pedestrian shopping street with some cute cafes to grab a coffee. It was so fascinating talking with Kim because she really had the coolest job in the world for so many years! Once she turned 40 she stopped working for Lonely Planet so she could settle down. But before that, she had literally travelled all over the world to discover countries and cities and write about them, telling tourists about the must-do’s and see’s and what they absolutely had to avoid. She had amazing stories from Africa, South America, Europe and everywhere in between! After we had finished our coffees, Kim’s cousin and his wife came to join us so we could all have lunch together. They live in France but were travelling in Australia and were in Brisbane the same weekend we were. The 5 of us walked across the Brisbane River and along Southbank to find a spot to eat lunch. Southbank is a beautiful walkway all along the south side of the river. There are ferry quays all along where the city ferries and tour boats stop to pick people up so there were tons of people waiting at those as well as people like us wandering along the river. Part of the walkway has a metal arch over it with the most stunning purple flowers entwined all throughout the arch so it feels like you’re walking in a gorgeous flower tunnel! 

The flower tunnel along Southbank. I can only imagine what it will look like in the summer!

We stopped at a great restaurant and got several delicious dishes to share. We also shared a bottle of wine, and when you have a glass of wine on a Friday you really know you’re on holiday so I was a happy gal. Once lunch was finished we said goodbye to the group and Elena and I hopped on a CityHopper, which is a free ferry that takes you all along the river, stopping at many places along the way. We had wanted to do something outside, but it was pouring rain and quite miserable so we sat in the boat and got to see some of the city while still staying dry. We went past Kangaroo Point, which is and under Story Bridge, Brisbane’s most famous bridge. Seeing the city from the river was a nice vantage point and a good way to get a feel for Brisbane on our first day there. We got off the ferry at Eagle Street Pier, a high-end restaurant and shopping district. Since neither of us are nearly rich enough to spend any time there, we scurried out of that area as fast as we could. We walked through the city for a while, stopping for a coffee before heading back to our hostel. Even though we hadn’t done much all day, we were pretty tired since we didn’t get to bed until 3:30 the night before. So we went to our hostel, showered and got ready to meet some people for dinner.

Story Bridge as seen though the rain streaked windows on the ferry 

My roommate Kevin has a friend from home named Kate who lived in Brisbane for a year as an au-pair. Kate was still in Australia until the beginning of August and had come to Melbourne a few times so I had gotten to know her fairly well. Unfortunately she was already back home in Wisconsin when we were in Brisbane, but she had some friends there that she put me in contact with. She was friends with an American couple, named Andrea and Kevin, and she told them we were coming for the weekend so they contacted me to see if we wanted to meet for dinner on Friday night. We planned to meet in West End, a trendy and “hipster” area of Brisbane. There were night markets there on Friday nights, with tons of International food stalls where you could get delicious multicultural food. It took Elena and I about 30 minutes to walk there, and it had continued raining the whole way so we were cold and ready for food by the time we got there! We met Andrea and Kevin at the entrance to the markets. The night markets are in an old parking lot, with many food stalls so we wandered along until we all found something we wanted to eat then we congregated under a roof to eat it, protected from the rain. Andrea and Kevin then took us to a cool bar along the same street. There were book shelves full of books and cool posters all over the walls…definitely a hipster bar. It was great chatting with the two of them because they were kind of in the same boat as us. They were American and had moved to Australia around the same time I had, in January, although they had 3 year visas so will be here for a lot longer than I will. They both have their PhDs in engineering and are working at the university in Brisbane. My friend from Melbourne, James happened to also be in Brisbane for the weekend. He has his own fishing lure business called Balista and he had been on the road for the last few weeks doing sales and fishing. He had driven up the east coast from Melbourne and was coincidentally in Brisbane the same weekend we were there. We had figured that out the week before so he booked himself into the same hostel as Elena and I for the Friday and Saturday night. James came and met us at the bar and the 4 of us then moved on to another cool bar that Andrea and Kevin like. It’s always fun to go out with people who have been living there for a while because they can bring you to the local favourites, which often aren’t the “tourist” bars you read about in the guide books. We went to a few really awesome places that night and the 5 of us had a great night out in the city.

One of the funky rooftop bars we went to

The next morning, Elena, James and I all crammed into James’ car and went into the city for breakfast. After breakfast, James dropped Elena and I off at City Hall and he went off to visit his distributors in Brisbane and work for the day. Elena and I went into City Hall and headed up to the Clock Tower. Kate had told me that you can go up the clock tower for free and you get an awesome view of the city from up there. The clock tower is 70m tall and the design was based on St. Mark’s Campenile in Venice, so it’s quite beautiful. To get to the top you have to take a really old elevator-it’s the service elevator that has been used for years to wind the clock and do maintenance on it. Because it’s old and ancient, it needs to be driven by someone; you can’t just push a button to get to the top like with the elevators now a day. This meant that they only have one group up there at a time and they only have tours every hour. Elena and I had to wait 45 minutes until the next one, but we didn’t mind because they have a really cool museum where you wait for the tour, so we spent the next 40 minutes there. There were different sections of the museum and they were all really interesting. One of the sections talked about the history of the Brisbane River and all of its uses which was pretty fascinating. The part that I really liked explored Moreton Bay and all of the islands in in. Moreton Bay is the bay just off the coast of Brisbane that the Brisbane River flows into. It has more than 365 sand islands. The reason I found this so interesting is because Earthwatch has just developed a new expedition since I’ve been here and it looks at the health of Moreton Bay. It’s called “Snorkel for Queensland’s Marine Mammals” and it looks at the effects of metropolitan Brisbane on the bay including the pollution flowing into the bay from the city, the freight traffic due to the city’s port and the tourism around the bay since all of the islands are popular vacation destinations. The teams will be snorkelling and boating to collect seagrass samples, as well as map the extent and condition of the seagrass. They’ll also take sediment samples from the boat and will wade in intertidal rock pools and mudflats to collect small fishes and marine creatures living there. There are 4 expeditions a year and 2 of them will be based on Moreton Island and 2 on North Stradbroke Island, so the researchers can have sites at different locations in the bay. I’ll be going as a team leader on the team in January which will be on North Stradbroke Island, so it was pretty cool to read about the island and the bay since I’ve done so much work to get this project up and running. All of the islands have such cool history-some of them were penal colonies, one of them was a quarantine island, so the people who were very sick got sent there so as not to infect the rest of the city, and the others were used for different, equally interesting purposes.

City Hall with the beautiful clock tower 

Once the 45 minutes were up, Elena and I went to join a small group to go up the clock tower. Our tour guide (the glorified elevator driver) told us the history of the City Hall and the Clock Tower and took us to the small walk way around the top of the clock tower where you could see all of Brisbane with the meandering river flowing through it. It’s quite a beautiful city, and is set up similarly to Melbourne with the river flowing through the centre. Unfortunately it was another rainy day, so we couldn’t see as far as you normally would be able to but it still gave us a good sense of the layout of the city. On the way back down to the museum, the tour guide stopped the elevator at the level where we were in line with the ancient clock face which was really awesome to see close up! It’s the largest clock face in Australia so it was cool to be right behind it and get a sense of how big it really is. 

The ancient elevator that took us up to the clock tower.

After the tour, Elena and I walked down Queen Street Mall toward the river, stopping for some fresh fruit and yogurt along the way. We crossed the river and went to the Queensland Museum, on the south side of the river. We were pretty disappointed with the weather since they almost always have beautiful warm and sunny weather in Brisbane year-round. It’s known for that, and everyone in Melbourne was telling me how great it would be there since Melbourne had been so gloomy and rainy all winter. We had a massive stroke of bad luck though because it rained basically the whole weekend we were there, and people in Melbourne were texting me telling me it was plus 20 and sunny there! Such a slap in the face! It meant that Elena and I couldn’t do a lot of the fun outdoor things people do in Brisbane, so we went to the museum instead.  The Queensland Museum was free for us to get into and is a really cool natural history museum! It had a section on dinosaurs that used to live in this area as well as many other cool Australian animals. It was a really nice afternoon wandering through the museum and the gloominess of the day wore off. 

Elena about to be stepped on my a dino!

After the museum we stopped for a coffee to rest our legs then headed along Queen Street Mall to do some shopping. We didn’t buy much but a girls weekend isn’t complete without at least a bit of shopping! We then stopped at a grocery store on our way back to the hostel and picked up some munchies so we could have a picnic back at the hostel with James and his friend. James knew a guy in Brisbane who fished with his lures and sent pictures in, helping him to promote his business so the 2 of them met up that day. His friend’s name is Jesse, and the 4 of us sat on the deck outside our room in the hostel and ate a delicious dinner. We had crackers, dips, cheese, veggies and fruit, complete with a glass of wine. The hostel was high up on a hill so we could see down into the city from our second story patio. It was a lovely Saturday evening. The 4 of us then walked about 45 minutes to get to Fortitude Valley, a suburb in Brisbane known for its club scene. We’d heard lots about it and weren’t in the clubbing mood, but wanted to see it anyway. There were the longest lines outside of the clubs, and if we hadn’t already been uninterested in clubbing, that would have really turned us off from it. We walked a little further and found a much more relaxed bar that we stopped to get a drink at before heading back to the hostel.

The nice balcony outside of our hostel room where we had a picnic feast on Saturday night.

The next morning, Elena and I slept in again then walked into town to South Bank where we met up with Andrea. We were planning to go to Kangaroo Point which is another suburb of Brisbane, on the south side of the river atop of stunning cliffs. I had been told it has amazing views of the river and city, as well as the iconic Story Bridge. Kate told me that they have a great restaurant there called the Edge which sits on the edge of the cliff (as you would have guessed) and you can look over the river and city while you eat. It was our first nice day there, so we decided to walk there along the river instead of taking the ferry which took us about 30 minutes. It was a beautiful walk because we got to walk all along South Bank with its beautiful gardens, cafes and restaurants. It even has a man-made beach and swimming pool where people flock to during hot summer days since the river is too dirty to swim in. Once we got past the South Bank area we were walking right beside massive cliffs. When we made it all the way to Kangaroo Point we had to go up some steep stairs to get up the cliff and the restaurant was right there! As promised, we had the most incredible views from up there while we enjoyed delicious food and coffee and great company…it was a lovely start to our last day there!

The wheel of Brisbane located along southbank

A taste of some of the beautiful flower gardens along the southbank walk

The stairs up to The Edge at Kangaroo Point 

The view of the river and city from the restaurant.

After lunch the 3 of us walked back toward South Bank but we walked up on the cliffs instead of along the water, giving us beautiful river and city views the whole way. When we got to South Bank we stopped at the South Bank markets, which are local craft and art markets set up along South Bank every weekend. There were some amazing things on display and for sale there, but unfortunately we couldn’t buy anything because our flight back was that night and we couldn’t fit anything else in our carry-on bags. We then went to check out the man made beaches along South Bank..such a weird but cool thing! We didn’t have too many other plans for the day, because we had seen and done most of the things on our list already. So when Andrea invited Elena and I over to her and Kevin’s apartment for an afternoon glass of wine we happily accepted. They live in West End which is the funky suburb where we had gone out with them on Friday night. Kevin was at home working but he took a break when we got there and the 4 of us sat on their balcony and enjoyed the sunshine and a glass of wine. They had been so nice to us the entire time we were there, taking us out places and giving suggestions on what we should see and do. They’re planning on coming down to Victoria at some point before I leave so I hope I can reciprocate that hospitality then!

The beach on the side of the Brisbane River.

After Elena and I left their apartment we walked back into the city and stopped for an ice cream at the Copenhagen Ice Creamery...Elena’s favourite ice cream shop from when she was living in Adelaide. We walked to the Roma Street Parklands where we found a nice patch of grass and ate our ice cream. The gardens are so beautiful and they had an exhibit on called Parks Alive where there were activities set up all throughout the gardens to get more people to spend time in them. 

Elena enjoying her ice cream in the gardens

The Roma Street Parklands with a kangaroo-shaped shrub!

After we had wandered through the gardens for a while we headed back to the hostel, packed up our things and hung out with James and Jesse who had just gotten back from a day of fishing. We then took the train to the airport and flew back to Melbourne on a much more relaxed and calm flight than on the way to Brisbane. We got back to Melbourne very late so were exhausted but it was a great trip, despite the rainy weather! Elena moved back to Adelaide the week after because her internship in Melbourne was finished, so it was nice that we got to spend a weekend together before she left.