AusTour 3: Brisbane Day Dos

After setting out for breakfast with a small group, we soon made up 18 and pulled about 6 tables together to fit everyone. After breakfast we broke up, Barry and I had decided to do the walking tour from the Lonely Planet—a 5 to 6 km walk that takes anything from a couple of hours to a whole day. It took a whole day. Back to Roma Street Station (where we were last night), this time with only certain trains actually stopping at the station (great!). After being persuaded by Barry that I had the map (and my orientation) upside down we set off in the wrong direction. It was a circular tour so it didn’t matter much, but I just want to point that out because I’m sure he’ll blame me for some easily understandable misdirection in Sydney in his blog. As we set off (and as we sat at breakfast) we learned we weren’t the only people walking the city today. In fact it was the Brisbane Romp, so we were joined by a myriad of costumed teams, families and coworkers. Our first stop was Town Hall, including a stop at the misinformation desk (thanks to the Romp), a walk around the great hall in the centre with a MASSIVE organ and up the top of the clock tower for some views of Brisbane. Next we headed across the Victoria Bridge to the museum district. On the way we discovered that it was unbearably hot compared to Melbourne and happily took shelter in the GoMA (gallery of modern art). Here we saw some aboriginal art (coincidentally, a paper I should be writing instead of this blog), a giant doughnut, a seal and a piano, an arch of boxes and 16 audio video synched spectrum of people singing Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. After leaving the GoMA we continued the walk down South Bank through massive arches of pink flowers, past a giant Ferris wheel, a Nepalese Pagoda, Brisbane’s man made beech and the Maritime Museum. Extending the walk slightly to cross the goodwill bridge and cut through the botanical gardens (not as impressive as Melbourne’s) we made our way up to the Queen Street Mall. At this point we were pretty much dead as we finally snakes our way around to St Stephens Cathedral, post office square and the shine of remembrance. We’d probably doubled the walks length in the end. That night we hit up Brisbane’s most famous cocktail bar. It was interesting to say the least, but again made ever more interesting by the friends of Barry. I also saw a couple of friends who I knew from uni melb/rmit village who just happened to be staying at Bunk too.