Hiking in the mountains, cycling to the shore
Just back to Sydney from a very, very busy long weekend in Brisbane. Before I dive into the frenzied weekend, a bit of background for those interested in learning a bit from this blog:
Brisbane is the capital of the Australian State of Queensland, which comprises the northeastern quarter (or maybe more accurately about 1/6th) of the entire continent; the states here are very, very massive. Located in the southern portion of the state, not far from the border with New South Wales (where Sydney is located), the flight from Sydney only takes a little over an hour.
Brisbane is the most populous city in the state, and the third most populous in Australia (falling very far after Sydney and Melbourne), the city is the northernmost of the major cities in the country and therefore enjoys somewhat tropical weather. Defined by the eponymous river, which wends its way between cliffs and lowlands, the city and its urban suburbs (oxymoronic, if not for the Australian usage of "suburb") sit on fantastically narrow peninsulas linked by bridges and ferries. It is a beautiful place (though my Brisbane friends may not agree), with easy access to mountains and the coast.
I had been to Brisbane twice previously. The first time was in 2013, when I presented my Masters Thesis at a conference in the city. I returned two years later to visit friends I had made through the years before heading off to a conference in Sydney. Having hit a lot of the tourist sites during my previous trips, this visit gave me the chance to hit some places further afield and hang out with my friends.
Now that the scene is set, here's how we filled a whirlwind weekend:
I arrived in Brisbane on Thursday afternoon—shockingly 20 minutes earlier than scheduled—and caught the train to the inner-city suburb of Fortitude Valley, making the 15-minute walk down into New Farm where my friends live.
New Farm sits on the same side of the river as the city, but is separated from the high-rises of the exceptionally narrow Kangaroo Point, formed by two turns in the river. Once I had dropped my bag, Ashley and I made the 20-minute walk up into the city, passing the Story Bridge (which links the city to Kangaroo Point) as the sun went down.
In the city, we met up with Brant to attend an architecture event at St. John's Anglican Cathedral—the largest Gothic structure in the Southern Hemisphere. We spent a few hours catching up with others we knew and milling around the soaring stone building which took more than a century to complete. After we had our fill of architecture (and canapes), we headed back to New Farm by way of Fortitude Valley for the night.
With a bit of time to kill on Friday morning while Brant had a meeting, Ashley and I wandered around the New Farm peninsula, walking along the river to a small adjacent suburb called Teneriffe. While it is winter here, the sun stayed out and it was in the mid-20s (nearly 80F), making it ideal to spend as much time outside as possible.
At 10:30, we drove into the city to pick up Brant and hit the road out to Ipswich, a suburb about an hour from Brisbane. Along the trip we stopped at a park to see a former garbage incinerator that has been converted to a theatre. While that is admittedly a very strange attraction for most people to visit, the incinerator was designed by Walter Burley Griffin, an American architect who is most famous for designing Australia's capital of Canberra. For anyone who has traveled with me, you know that I tend to drag people to obscure architectural sites; as all three of us in the car are architects, it should really come as no surprise we went to see an incinerator.
From the incinerator, we headed into the heart of Ipswich which comprises a few blocks of historic buildings and an assortment of new buildings. We found an amazing restaurant housed on the lower floor of a beautiful old classical TAFE (trade school), where we sat and had a fantastic lunch in the shade of a huge tree.
After lunch, we got back in the car and drove to the other side of the city to finally make it to our ultimate destination: the Workshops Rail Museum. While it may seem shocking to go to an incinerator, it should come as no surprise that I dragged my friends to a railway museum. It took a few hours to wandered through the old workshops and take in all the exhibits, and in the end I think they enjoyed the experience as well.
The drive back to the city wasn't too bad, and we managed to get in before Friday afternoon traffic really picked up. Brant went back into the city to do a bit more work, and Ashley and I headed out on a riverside run, following the boardwalks along the water, providing an excellent view of the city. We then met Brant in the city and went to meet up with a large group of people for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in the heart of the city. There ended up being 14 of us in total (we knew two others there), and we had a great time getting to know everyone else.
Once we had our fill of gyoza, we headed down the street to a bowling alley where our friend Jas had booked a large karaoke room for the night. It was an incredibly entertaining, exhausting three hours, and by 11:00, we were all ready to head home.
Saturday morning started out early, with a trip down to the riverside New Farm markets. The people watching was great as it seemed the neighbourhood was out enjoying the fantastic weather. We picked up some scrolls (basically cinnamon roll-type pastries), one with banoffee filling and one that was a raspberry lamington—both were delicious, but very, very sweet.
Amped up on sugar, we wandered the markets a bit more before making the 20-minute walk back to grab the car and head out on an adventure to the north of the city. The drive out toward the Sunshine Coast took us on packed major corridors leading to the main motorway to the north, which doesn't directly tie into the city.
Eventually the traffic-y surface streets gave way to the M3 Motorway, which merged with the M1 after a short drive. I was surprised by the six-lane interstate-type road which took us the hour or so to Beerburrum, where we got off onto back roads for the rest of the journey. As I don't drive (or ride in a car) all that often in Australia, I hadn't really seen the highways that serve the cities; it was definitely the most American-feeling piece of infrastructure I had ever seen here. However, looking at the distances covered by the motorway network, there's still very little comparison between Australia and the US in that regard.
Once off the highway, we were quickly driving through forests and grasslands, offering amazing views of the Glass House Mountains (where we would be heading later in the afternoon). But we were after lunch in the mountain town of Maleny. The town, which reminded me a bit of Helen, GA, was packed with tourists, but we were able to snag a table with a view at the appropriately named "The Edge" restaurant.
Once we were decidedly full, we loaded back up in the car to return half an hour south to the Glass House Mountains. The range is very distinctive, featuring steep, angular peaks jutting from the surrounding flat lands. Many of the mountains are tough to climb, with near vertical ascents in places.
Wanting a less rugged experience, we headed to check out Mount Ngungun, and were admittedly surprised to find the carpark along the road at the base of the mountain pretty packed. The climb itself was very nice, a little steep in some points, but easy enough to ascend in under half an hour. And when we reached the top, we were rewarded with an amazing view of the other mountains in the range.
The trip back down the mountain only took 20 minutes or so, making the entire excursion less than an hour—far shorter than the two hours a guide on the internet had said it would all take. The timing worked out for the best, as we were able to get back to the city in just about an hour, arriving home to clean up before sunset.
In the evening, we caught a bus through the city and over Southbank, a booming area that has seen a spate of new restaurants pop up around the museums and civic precinct as residential towers go up. We first went to the banks of the Brisbane River to check out a permanent art installation on the facade of the Queensland Art Gallery that Brant had spent the last year working on. Comprising four stories of lighted panels, wrapping the corner of the building, it was quite a sight to stand and watch part of the ever-morphing lights show.
From the Queensland Art Gallery, we headed over to a called Wandering Cooks, where different chefs can rent out stalls for a night to run a pop-up restaurant or food truck. We enjoyed some bites from two of the places before wander a bit further south to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant they like.
Full and happy—the Japanese place was fantastic—we caught a bus back to New Farm to call it an evening before a very early Sunday morning.
While waking up before 7:00 on a weekend while on holiday isn't normally my idea of a good time, that's exactly what we did on Sunday. After a quick cup of tea, we were out the door on our way to Kalinga Park on the north side of the city. Once there, a few others joined us, with bikes in tow, for what turned out to be a 50km (31 mile) morning cycle to the oceanfront suburb of Sandgate.
Now, I haven't biked in a few years, so I wasn't sure how things would go, but it turned out to be a great morning. The trip was almost exclusively on bike trails, wending their way through a range of landscapes. We paralleled the Brisbane River, zipped across grassy flatlands, traversed marshes on a series of elevated wooden boardwalks, passed down quiet suburban streets, and skirted along cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Shorncliffe before diving down to the beachy coast at Sandgate.
The trip out to the shore was complicated a bit by construction and diversion of the trail at a few points along the way. Temporary signage wasn't all that accurate (or in some cases completely nonexistent), so we ended up having to double back on ourselves a few times. By the time we hit the heart of Sandgate we had logged more than 27km and even though it wasn't even 11:00, we were ready for lunch.
We stopped for an early lunch at a seafood restaurant along Sandgate's main drag. I was excited for lunch as I had been wanting to have Moreton Bay bugs (a variety of lobster that is found off the Brisbane coast) during my visit.
The ride back was much speedier, with the group knowing where we were going. We covered the 24km return at a pretty good clip, making it back to Kalinga in just over an hour. The car ride home didn't take too long either, and we were all too happy to waste the afternoon away relaxing on the couch, even going so far as to order in dinner.
As it was my last night in Brisbane, we rallied around 7:00 and headed down to Brunswick Street, the main street in New Farm and Fortitude Valley, to visit a rooftop bar with a view of the city. We enjoyed taking it easy and soaking in the view of the Story Bridge and skyline, before we went back and called it a very early evening.
Finally, this morning we all got moving to face the realities of the work week. Before we parted ways, we stopped into a cafe down the street to have breakfast. They said the breakfast was good, and they weren't lying. It was a massive, massive portion, but I definitely wasn't disappointed.
Once we were done with breakfast, Brant jumped on his bike to head to work in the city while Ashley and I caught a bus, parting ways in the city. I worked from their city office, grabbing lunch with Brant in the late afternoon, before heading to catch a train to the airport from Central Station around 5:00.
The flight home was uneventful, and I manage to get a lot of Uni reading done on the journey. I am so glad that I got to spend such a great weekend in Brisbane, and am looking forward to going back in just a month as we have tickets to see a comedian we've all wanted to see for a while.
Now, it's back to reality with a Uni meeting in the morning and work in the afternoon tomorrow.
Brisbane is the capital of the Australian State of Queensland, which comprises the northeastern quarter (or maybe more accurately about 1/6th) of the entire continent; the states here are very, very massive. Located in the southern portion of the state, not far from the border with New South Wales (where Sydney is located), the flight from Sydney only takes a little over an hour.
Brisbane is the most populous city in the state, and the third most populous in Australia (falling very far after Sydney and Melbourne), the city is the northernmost of the major cities in the country and therefore enjoys somewhat tropical weather. Defined by the eponymous river, which wends its way between cliffs and lowlands, the city and its urban suburbs (oxymoronic, if not for the Australian usage of "suburb") sit on fantastically narrow peninsulas linked by bridges and ferries. It is a beautiful place (though my Brisbane friends may not agree), with easy access to mountains and the coast.
I had been to Brisbane twice previously. The first time was in 2013, when I presented my Masters Thesis at a conference in the city. I returned two years later to visit friends I had made through the years before heading off to a conference in Sydney. Having hit a lot of the tourist sites during my previous trips, this visit gave me the chance to hit some places further afield and hang out with my friends.
Now that the scene is set, here's how we filled a whirlwind weekend:
I arrived in Brisbane on Thursday afternoon—shockingly 20 minutes earlier than scheduled—and caught the train to the inner-city suburb of Fortitude Valley, making the 15-minute walk down into New Farm where my friends live.
New Farm sits on the same side of the river as the city, but is separated from the high-rises of the exceptionally narrow Kangaroo Point, formed by two turns in the river. Once I had dropped my bag, Ashley and I made the 20-minute walk up into the city, passing the Story Bridge (which links the city to Kangaroo Point) as the sun went down.
 |
| Looking toward the CBD and the Story Bridge from New Farm. |
In the city, we met up with Brant to attend an architecture event at St. John's Anglican Cathedral—the largest Gothic structure in the Southern Hemisphere. We spent a few hours catching up with others we knew and milling around the soaring stone building which took more than a century to complete. After we had our fill of architecture (and canapes), we headed back to New Farm by way of Fortitude Valley for the night.
With a bit of time to kill on Friday morning while Brant had a meeting, Ashley and I wandered around the New Farm peninsula, walking along the river to a small adjacent suburb called Teneriffe. While it is winter here, the sun stayed out and it was in the mid-20s (nearly 80F), making it ideal to spend as much time outside as possible.
At 10:30, we drove into the city to pick up Brant and hit the road out to Ipswich, a suburb about an hour from Brisbane. Along the trip we stopped at a park to see a former garbage incinerator that has been converted to a theatre. While that is admittedly a very strange attraction for most people to visit, the incinerator was designed by Walter Burley Griffin, an American architect who is most famous for designing Australia's capital of Canberra. For anyone who has traveled with me, you know that I tend to drag people to obscure architectural sites; as all three of us in the car are architects, it should really come as no surprise we went to see an incinerator.
 |
| The Incinerator Theatre Complex in Ipswich, |
From the incinerator, we headed into the heart of Ipswich which comprises a few blocks of historic buildings and an assortment of new buildings. We found an amazing restaurant housed on the lower floor of a beautiful old classical TAFE (trade school), where we sat and had a fantastic lunch in the shade of a huge tree.
After lunch, we got back in the car and drove to the other side of the city to finally make it to our ultimate destination: the Workshops Rail Museum. While it may seem shocking to go to an incinerator, it should come as no surprise that I dragged my friends to a railway museum. It took a few hours to wandered through the old workshops and take in all the exhibits, and in the end I think they enjoyed the experience as well.
 |
| The clerestory lighting of the saw-tooth roof of one of the former train workshop buildings. |
The drive back to the city wasn't too bad, and we managed to get in before Friday afternoon traffic really picked up. Brant went back into the city to do a bit more work, and Ashley and I headed out on a riverside run, following the boardwalks along the water, providing an excellent view of the city. We then met Brant in the city and went to meet up with a large group of people for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in the heart of the city. There ended up being 14 of us in total (we knew two others there), and we had a great time getting to know everyone else.
Once we had our fill of gyoza, we headed down the street to a bowling alley where our friend Jas had booked a large karaoke room for the night. It was an incredibly entertaining, exhausting three hours, and by 11:00, we were all ready to head home.
Saturday morning started out early, with a trip down to the riverside New Farm markets. The people watching was great as it seemed the neighbourhood was out enjoying the fantastic weather. We picked up some scrolls (basically cinnamon roll-type pastries), one with banoffee filling and one that was a raspberry lamington—both were delicious, but very, very sweet.
 |
| Enjoying out morning scrolls. |
Amped up on sugar, we wandered the markets a bit more before making the 20-minute walk back to grab the car and head out on an adventure to the north of the city. The drive out toward the Sunshine Coast took us on packed major corridors leading to the main motorway to the north, which doesn't directly tie into the city.
Eventually the traffic-y surface streets gave way to the M3 Motorway, which merged with the M1 after a short drive. I was surprised by the six-lane interstate-type road which took us the hour or so to Beerburrum, where we got off onto back roads for the rest of the journey. As I don't drive (or ride in a car) all that often in Australia, I hadn't really seen the highways that serve the cities; it was definitely the most American-feeling piece of infrastructure I had ever seen here. However, looking at the distances covered by the motorway network, there's still very little comparison between Australia and the US in that regard.
 |
| Riding up the M1 from the M3 toward Beerburrum. |
 |
| The view from The Edge, looking across the hinterlands toward the Pacific coast. |
Wanting a less rugged experience, we headed to check out Mount Ngungun, and were admittedly surprised to find the carpark along the road at the base of the mountain pretty packed. The climb itself was very nice, a little steep in some points, but easy enough to ascend in under half an hour. And when we reached the top, we were rewarded with an amazing view of the other mountains in the range.
 |
| Views from the top of Mount Ngungun. |
In the evening, we caught a bus through the city and over Southbank, a booming area that has seen a spate of new restaurants pop up around the museums and civic precinct as residential towers go up. We first went to the banks of the Brisbane River to check out a permanent art installation on the facade of the Queensland Art Gallery that Brant had spent the last year working on. Comprising four stories of lighted panels, wrapping the corner of the building, it was quite a sight to stand and watch part of the ever-morphing lights show.
 |
| The outside of the Queensland Art Gallery. |
Full and happy—the Japanese place was fantastic—we caught a bus back to New Farm to call it an evening before a very early Sunday morning.
While waking up before 7:00 on a weekend while on holiday isn't normally my idea of a good time, that's exactly what we did on Sunday. After a quick cup of tea, we were out the door on our way to Kalinga Park on the north side of the city. Once there, a few others joined us, with bikes in tow, for what turned out to be a 50km (31 mile) morning cycle to the oceanfront suburb of Sandgate.
Now, I haven't biked in a few years, so I wasn't sure how things would go, but it turned out to be a great morning. The trip was almost exclusively on bike trails, wending their way through a range of landscapes. We paralleled the Brisbane River, zipped across grassy flatlands, traversed marshes on a series of elevated wooden boardwalks, passed down quiet suburban streets, and skirted along cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Shorncliffe before diving down to the beachy coast at Sandgate.
 |
| Looking out over the Pacific at Shorncliffe. |
We stopped for an early lunch at a seafood restaurant along Sandgate's main drag. I was excited for lunch as I had been wanting to have Moreton Bay bugs (a variety of lobster that is found off the Brisbane coast) during my visit.
 |
| Moreton Bay bugs: not the most appetisingly named food, but pretty delicious. |
As it was my last night in Brisbane, we rallied around 7:00 and headed down to Brunswick Street, the main street in New Farm and Fortitude Valley, to visit a rooftop bar with a view of the city. We enjoyed taking it easy and soaking in the view of the Story Bridge and skyline, before we went back and called it a very early evening.
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| The view from New Farm. |
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| Quite the way to start the day. |
The flight home was uneventful, and I manage to get a lot of Uni reading done on the journey. I am so glad that I got to spend such a great weekend in Brisbane, and am looking forward to going back in just a month as we have tickets to see a comedian we've all wanted to see for a while.
Now, it's back to reality with a Uni meeting in the morning and work in the afternoon tomorrow.
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