Up at a leisurely pace and caught bus into Brisbane. Total cost for the family to do the 20 minute journey was 15 pounds for a single ticket. They no longer do "day rider" type tickets as they have introduced a "go card" akin Oyster card system - which gives slightly cheaper fares - but for this each of us would have had to pay a 5 dollar deposit for a card - and as we won't need it after tomorrow we would have then be stuck unable to get a refund unless we travelled to the city centre (etc etc)
However there was a silver lining. The single bus ticket, allows "transfers" for up to 2 hours (ie 2 hours until you begin your last journey) ie - whereas the go card is the cost of just one journey. We realised that we could legitimately sneak onto the city cat - the super fast sleek catameran bus that runs up and down the river. So we had a free cruise up river for 40 mins and a free cruise back. If we had used a go card we would have paid 3 dollars or so per person each way - so in the event we were quids in.
The idea is that tomorrow we will do exactly the same - only this time travel the river in the opposite direction.
Brisbane is great from the river (we could have paid 28 dollars each for a river cruise) - with the high rise CBD - much of which has only gone up in the last 15 years, the older public buildings, riverside parks and posh houses and apartments - each with their own mooring point and sometimes with boats outside that would have comfortably cost more than an average house in the UK!
No sign whatsoever that we could see of the floods that engulfed the city centre of Brisbane in January. Sarah, Jeff's daughter works in a 40 floor hotel - the hotel kept operational - but the lifts were out of order for several weeks and hotel staff were expected to help guests with their bags up and down the stairs.....
Following our cruise we arrived at Street Beach - in the South Bank area (museums, art galleries, theatre, coffee shops and bistros area). They have created a fantastic artificial beach - with several swimming areas, (patrolled by lifeguards) and loads of water features which would have kept the kids amused all day. Unfortunately we had not brought swim stuff - but Joseph was undeterred and swum in his underwear. It was a great picnic spot, and helped by the 23 degree sunshine. While eating our picnic an 18 inch skink lizard wandered past. On dragging the kids away we promised to come better equipped tomorrow.
Then we continued a walking tour of Brisbane. The guidebook said that great views were to be had from taking the lift to the top of city hall (free - so we were straight off there!). Unfortunately its shut for renovation for the next year - so next time. The other alternative would have been to climb Story's Bridge - but at 80 pounds per person, we decided to give those views a miss!
Brisbane felt like a lovely clean city and we are looking forward to completing some of the sights tomorrow.
We passed a lovely ice cream shop (4 pounds per ice cream), so left the chocolate chip, and raspberry in that shop and bought ourselves a plastic tasting McDonalds cone instead. At 30p a cone this we have decided is the only bargain in Australia.... (except for the scenery that is!)
PHOTOS TO FOLLOW
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