Brisbane, the River City

Though sometimes derided as “Australia’s Third City” (after Sydney and Melbourne), I found Brisbane to be a wonderful and livable metropolis. The twisting and turning Brisbane River, which runs through the heart of the city, is not just a strategic thoroughfare. It gives the city a sense of place. Every time you turn a corner, a new set of skyscrapers and bridges are revealed. The oddly shaped peninsulas between these hairpin turns have invited (or implied) an unusual city layout. My brief 2-day visit was barely time to scratch the surface, but I loved everything I was able to absorb.

At the start of my Queensland trip, I had flown into Brisbane but went directly to Gold Coast. My first taste of Brisbane was during a bus layover on the way up to Fraser Island. Since I had an hour to spare, I poked around the Roma Street Parkland near the bus station. It contained a lovely botanical garden with a Mother’s Day greeting spelled using flowers, a kangaroo shaped topiary, and was home to lots of birds and water dragons.

The proper Brisbane visit began when I got off the bus from Noosa. I was picked up by my Servas host Paul and his labrador Jersey. Paul was talkative and we immediately started getting to know each other on the drive home. His background was in IT and education; he currently worked for Griffith University and commuted by bike. He approached everything with a skeptical mind but was non-judgmental and open to any conversation topic. Before dinner, we had already gotten to the US election and the Israel/Gaza war. Not only was he an experienced Servas host, but he also was a root admin for the international Servas website. He had traveled to Servas conventions in several countries and mentioned some of the organization’s ideological challenges of balancing activism with cultural neutrality.

At their home in the suburb of Hawthorne, I got to meet my other host – his wife Vicki. She was kind, inquisitive, and generous. She worked as a podiatrist and was a talented chef. The first night, she set the bar high with a dinner of roasted chicken and pumpkin and continued to outdo herself. One morning, she explained the couple chose to not have children, as they both came from big families and already had dozens of nieces and nephews. Vicki was also a great driver, and found parking in tricky situations on our Saturday outing. It was funny to see her alternate between bad-mouthing other drivers and thanking them for making space. Indeed, most Aussies that I’ve met are passionate behind the wheel.

Both Vicki and Paul were born and raised in Brisbane. Their families knew each other growing up, and two of their siblings were also married to each other. Their fathers both served in WWII. Interestingly, Vicki and Paul had different political leanings, quipping that they didn’t vote in elections because it would cancel each other out (a joke, as voting is compulsory). Even if they were both close to the political center, it still struck me as somewhat uncommon, and I appreciated their openness to discussing it.

Jersey, the dog, was generally well behaved but extremely naughty regarding food. An unguarded bowl of soy sauce was an easy target. Paul and Vicki were enablers, offering table scraps and empty containers for licking. It was cute watching Paul vigorously clean the yogurt off Jersey’s nose afterwards. The house was decorated with dozens of labrador-themed jokes and pictures.

The next day was a Friday, so while Paul biked to work, I walked down to the ferry terminal for my own Brisbane commute. Unlike Melbourne, whose river isn’t used as a major mode of transportation, Brisbane has a fast and reliable ferry system that connects many places you’d want to go. The main vessels were called the CityCats, with smaller supplemental vessels called KittyCats. It was the perfect way to take in the city. On the way to the Southbank terminal, we passed under several car bridges and pedestrian bridges, including a new one under construction. We passed the CBD, where most people got off, as well as the botanical gardens, and the cliffs of Kangaroo Point.

My agenda for the day was visiting Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, founded in 1927 and high on my list because of some personal connections. Antonia, who I visited in Gold Coast, used to live across the street, and my own parents had visited the sanctuary on their Australia trip in 1988. Lone Pine is located on the outskirts of the city and is best accessed by a tourist cruise operated by Miramar.
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The cruise had a pre-recorded commentary that pointed out landmarks that we passed, like Coronation Drive which hugged the riverbank, or the Hanson concrete factory which used to dredge the river to make concrete. We passed the University of Queensland, where the CityCat range ended. At this point, the high rises were replaced with “Queenslander” style mansions with elaborate porches. The voice described the catastrophic flooding in 1974, 2011, and 2022. The most recent flood hadn’t gone as high, but was extremely destructive. The Miramar cruise had been closed for 6 months afterwards, because of dock damage.

Just because the commentary was canned didn’t mean it was dry - there were plenty of jokes thrown in. When we passed the Indooroopilly golf course, the voice cheekily claimed that its name was the Aboriginal word for “many missed putts.” Unfortunately, the voice fizzled out before we reached Lone Pine.

Lone Pine is more than just a koala sanctuary. They had just about every Australian animal you could imagine! All were presented in spacious enclosures with good viewing opportunities.
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I started my visit with three keeper talks. The first was on raptors, like the barking owl and the black kite. Black kites have been known to take burning twigs and use them to start new fires, in order to smoke out their prey. The second was a sheep herding demonstration. Since a trained dog can do the same work as multiple humans, they can be worth up to $40,000! The final talk was on koalas, of which they had around 130 in total. I ate my lunch in a picnic area surrounded by koalas - a veritable koala cafe.

They had many animals I’d encountered in other sanctuaries (or in the wild), like wallabies, kangaroos, dingoes, wombats, flying foxes, cockatoos, and Tasmanian devils. A few animals I hadn’t seen before were the tree kangaroo – unfortunately too high in the canopy to really appreciate – and the cassowary, an emu-like bird with a colorful crest (called a casque) and a fearsome dagger claw. The cassowary is native to Queensland but relatively rare. The casque looked fake, like a silicone Halloween mask. It was hard to believe it was a real animal, but there it was in front of me.

But the real star of my Lone Pine visit was the platypus. Calling the platypus “unique” is an understatement. They’re one of two monotremes (egg laying mammals) along with the echidna. They have duck-like bills with electrosensing to locate prey. They have two layers of fur and can release air from between the layers to adjust their buoyancy. Their feet are webbed for swimming but also have claws for digging tunnel-like burrows, up to 30 meters in length. The males have venomous spurs that can cause a human arm to be inflamed for 6 months, with pain that’s resistant to morphine. The females don’t have nipples, but instead sweat out their milk. And a baby platypus is called a puggle!

In their Platypus House, Lone Pine had two males in two separate enclosures, blissfully unaware of each others’ existence (to ensure they don’t fight). I signed up for a special “behind the scenes” tour with a keeper and one other couple. The room had long pipes wrapping along the walls which connected the public-facing aquariums to a cozy crate, to simulate their long burrows. The keeper explained that the lighting in the exhibit is flipped from the actual time of day, so that the platypuses will be more active during visiting hours. She showed us pictures of safely picking up a platypus, by their beaver-like tail to avoid the poisonous spurs, in order to place them on a scale.

The tour also included preparing and delivering a snack! The platypus diet includes yabbies (crayfish) which live in the aquarium, but the keepers also provide a mix of mealworms, earthworms, and fly pupae. We helped separate the earthworms from a bag of dirt, clean them off, and weigh out the appropriate quantity for each feeding bucket. The back door to the aquarium was opened, and we tossed this bug medley into the water.

One platypus was named Barak, and at 25 years of age, was one of the oldest in the world. Barak had a tendency to swim in circles nonstop, which baffled everyone who saw him, leading to speculation of a weak left foot. But the keeper explained that it was a behavioral quirk that Barak had when he was younger, and increased with time. When he wanted to, he could swim straight. Initially when I tossed the food into Barak’s aquarium, he continued swimming in circles, in no hurry to eat. But a few minutes later, he followed the food and spiraled down to the bottom to scoop it up.

The other platypus, a 12-year old named Aroona, had very different behavior. Aroona would swim the length of the aquarium and then disappear into the rocks for a few moments. He was quicker to go after the food, and vacuumed the bugs up with a side-to-side sweep of the bill. Aroona looked quite happy. I can now add “platypus chef” to my list of life experiences!

Still riding the high from this amazing encounter, I decided to stay for the final event on the Lone Pine schedule: the afternoon lorikeet feeding. I assumed this meant the keepers would pour some birdseed and let the tourists take photos, but it was a whole lot more than that! Once the pails were filled with nectar, we were encouraged to pick them up and become part of the show. The lorikeets absolutely swarmed the nectar pails from the moment they were filled. It was a mosh pit of rainbow flashes, screeches, and laughter. There were two types - the rainbow lorikeet, and the scaly breasted lorikeet. Even though they were wild animals, they were comfortable around people and perched on peoples’ heads, hats, shoulders, and arms. While taking a selfie, one perched on my outstretched phone. It was a bit of a sensory overload, but also insanely fun. My ears were ringing from all the close-range chirping, and took half an hour to recover.

The platypus tour and lorikeet feeding were in the late afternoon, so I had to miss the return Mirimar cruise, and instead take public transit to the city center. It was an hour on the bus and an hour on the CityCat, but the journey was full of pretty lights.

The next day was a Saturday, and so Vicki and Paul agreed to spend the day exploring the city with me. We had a lovely fruit-based breakfast on the back patio and collaboratively planned the day’s itinerary.

The first stop was the West End Market, a farmer’s market and foodie paradise on Saturday mornings. Vicki and Paul had never been, and were delighted to find a vendor selling Nepalese momos, a favorite of theirs. One of the more unusual stalls had dog chew toys with every imaginable cut of Aussie animal meat. Naturally, Paul got some for Jersey. The produce stalls were well stocked with Asian veggies, and I looked for the elusive feijoa fruit, but found none. We decided to have lunch there. I ordered the “Hungry Pirate” from a Hungarian garlic bread vendor, and sipped on an unusual iced tea drink, a carbonated hojicha with strawberry syrup. We sat in the grass and talked about fascinating minutiae, like the fact a tablespoon was 15mL in Australia and 20mL in the US.

The Brisbane City Hall is one of the best-known landmarks, with its Clock Tower forming the city’s logo. Our timing was lucky and we waltzed right into two free tours, one of the building and one of the tower. The building tour guide was a young guy who did a great job of explaining the checkered history of the construction process. From a sinking foundation, to a long-lost commemorative cornerstone, to an ornament made of improvised materials, it had a lot of hiccups along the way. But the main theater was impressive and is used for all sorts of events, from high school proms to press announcements for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. Paul and Vicki seemed to enjoy the tour, as they were familiar with some of these layers of Brisbane’s history, but still picked up new information.

The tour also touched on some fascinating WWII history. A significant number of American troops were stationed in Brisbane under the command of General MacArthur, and the city’s population swelled to a breaking point. Riots between the Americans and Aussies became known as the “Battle of Brisbane.” In the basement of City Hall was the Lucky Wall, where dozens of soldiers had carved their ID numbers while passing through Brisbane. When these numbers were re-discovered years later, it was found they had all miraculously survived the war.
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The second tour was an elevator ride into the Clock Tower, and ran like clockwork every 15 minutes. The guide explained that on most days, this avoids being right next to the bells when they chime every 15 minutes. The clock only chimes on weekdays between 7am and 7pm, so it was moot on a Saturday. The views were good, but we couldn’t enjoy them for long.

From the city hall, we walked across the river to the Southbank precinct. After the 1988 World Expo, this area was redeveloped into an entertainment precinct, including an artificial beach and botanic garden. Southbank was popular with tour groups and local families alike.

The final stop on our tour was sunset views from Mount Coo-tha. It can be done as a hike, but since the day was already late, Vicki drove us to the top. The views of the city were excellent. Paul pointed out the sand dunes on Moreton Island, just visible off the coast.

My last evening at the house, I was talking about my guitar upbringing via the Suzuki method. To my surprise, Paul and Vicki pulled out an old classical guitar for me to play, ironically a Suzuki brand. Despite its damaged and repaired back, it had a rich bass and full sound.

The next morning, Paul drove me to the airport for my flight to the Whitsundays. I really enjoyed my stay with Vicki and Paul, and they likewise seemed to have enjoyed our time together.
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On the way out, I was lucky to have a window seat with spectacular views of Brisbane and its winding river. It was hard to believe I had once considered skipping this city entirely! Between the animals at Lone Pine, the scenic river journeys, and sightseeing with my wonderful hosts, I ended up forming a lot of strong and joyful memories in Australia’s Third City.