Travel Eye on Brisbane (Queensland, Australia)

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Overview:

Australia's Queensland is renowned nationally and internationally for it's idyllic weather and predominantly outdoor lifestyle and the capital of the sunshine state, Brisbane is no exception. Brisbane has a wide, undulating cityscape that combines nature's beauty, Brisbane's interesting heritage and the unique cosmopolitan lifestyle that is continuously evolving.

The city is now the third largest in Australia with a population of over 898,000. The city centre straddles the river and is a fairly compact 2 mls from N to S and 1 ml from E to W, but it has no great architecture or natural sights to attract the international tourist. The old Expo '88 site on the S bank of the river has left a pleasant parkland area (South Bank Parklands), but there are no iconic city sites worth flying halfway round the world to see, especially when compared with its rival, Sydney. It is often used as a transit point for tourists arriving or leaving Australia and is the gateway to the Gold Coast resorts to the S and the Sunshine Coast to the N. The hilly suburb of Spring Hill to the N has various parks and views over the city and river but little else. Fortitude Valley to the NE offers a Chinatown district and downmarket shopping by day but is probably best avoided at night unless you go prepared for a seedy red-light district which may not be entirely safe for unwary tourists.

Locality:

Brisbane is situated halfway down the E coast of Australia, in the SE corner of the state of Queensland, of which it is the capital. It is 470 mls NE of Sydney, 58 mls N of Surfers Paradise, 12 mls SW of the airport. The city centre sits on a flat N-shore promontory in a tight loop in the Brisbane River, which at this point is about 250 yds wide. The open sea at Moreton Bay is 10 mls downstream. The surrounding plain is flat as far as a small range of hills dominated by Mt Coot-tha, 5 mls to the W.

Entertainment/Facilities/Attractions/Things to do:

Brisbane's visitors are mostly corporate people on business, those visiting friends and relatives, backpackers, Gold Coast visitors and those on transit to other areas of Australia. Brisbane's accommodation consists of 4- and 5-star chain hotels catering almost exclusively for business people along with 2- and 3-star accommodation for short-stay transit passengers, hostels, self catering apartments etc.

Brisbane's biggest disadvantage is it's lack of real beach, something that its rival cities all tend to boast over. However, the artificial beach by the swimming "lagoon" in the South Bank Parkland satisfies any urge to build sand castles. Those after a shopping experience have the Queen Street Mall and Myer Centre department store which offer all the things that could be bought in any shopping mall or department store in the UK, plus bush hats and toy koalas. A weekend market operates in South Bank.

Attractions to the city consist of a visit to the botanic gardens, Government House, art gallery, river cruises. Street entertainers seem to abound, especially at weekends in South Bank and Queen Street Mall. South Bank also offers a re-creation of a rainforest and various other attractions to pass the time.
By night there are a number of discos, some jazz clubs, a casino, cinemas, occasional concerts. Local excursions consist of a catamaran trip to Moreton Bay Island National Park for dolphin feeding, sand tobogganing and whale-watching (June to Oct). Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to see Aussie animals. Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, rainforest and planetarium.