Brisbane, Queensland

On one of our days in Ipswich we thought we would get some city exposure in and take a drive into Brisbane, the ‘River City’. Queensland’s capital city was named after the Brisbane River it was built around, which was named after a Scotsman Sir Thomas Brisbane Governor of New South Wales 1821-1825. The area was a prime location for Sydney’s Colony of secondary offenders, which formed a penal settlement in 1824. Today ‘Bris-Vegas’ has a population of 2.4 million; remains of its early 1800’s architecture are still around. The city is reputable for it’s unique ‘Queenslander’ style architecture which is present in a lot of the earlier original suburbs closer to the CBD.

Our drive into Brisbane was a bit of a culture shock, piled up peak hour traffic and navigating through unknown streets with an uncertain destination reminded us of what we’ve been missing out on for two years. We arrived happily at the car park and were excited to put our best shoes on and explore the urban delights.  The start of the day we went on a quest to find a Reuben Sandwich, a few Google bum steers finally got us in the right direction, leading us to a walk from Fortitude Valley over to South Brisbane. The South Brisbane area has changed dramatically over 10 years; more eateries, supermarkets and boutique shops have filled up Grey Street. We found our eating destination, Pourboy, not far from the South Bank train station, this place cured our hunger with a pretty decent sandwich.

With some fuel back in the tank we caught the train down the road to browse through the Gallery of Modern Art. The GOMA is the largest gallery of contemporary and modern art in Australia, it was filled with many displays of cinema, photographic and painted forms of arts. It was a nice surprise to see a display of Torres Strait Island Art, easily assumed to be similar to Aboriginal art, it is a completely different form of artwork and unique to the remote island life that is embraced there. Gumby visited Horn and Moa Islands and a Torres Strait Island Museum back in 2016. After getting our fix of art, we took the train back to Fortitude Valley for something completely different, Mini Golf.

The Valley is reputable for being a suburb of hard partying through the night and rancid odors of hangover in the day. During the day there is an old Church that opens at mid-day, that offers a blessing of pizza, rounds of mini golf and a jukebox loaded with rock and roll, it goes by the name of Holey Moley. We dropped in for a round of nine and putted our way around holes themed with Pac-man, The Simpsons and even through the legs of a donkey with Donald Trump on its backside. We ended our day with a KX Pilates session in a trendy suburb called Newstead, which had a lot more nicer feel (and smell) than its neighboring Valley suburb. Although classy, it still had a good vibe with people out exercising, clean streets and well-manicured apartment buildings. Gumby introduced me to the reformer pilates, I had a ball and she was lit up with excitement doing her first session in two years.

Although a huge day trying to keep up with the pace of the city, we had a lot of fun in Brisbane. We were enriched with food, art and a diversity of atmosphere. The Pilates session was the perfect way to top off the day, we walked into the relaxing city night after the class feeling beyond fulfilled from today’s excitement.