Brisbane 2024

The base for the whole week, out on the bay side east of the city.

Not somewhere I went so much as somewhere I came back to every evening - a house with a dog that met me at the door, and a paddock behind it that did something worth photographing most nights. Everything else on this trip is a day trip out from here.

If you are doing Brisbane properly, staying out this way is not the compromise it looks like on a map. Straddie leaves from down the road.

A day at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, and I remember the animals more than the rides! Went in meaning to do the coasters and spent the whole morning in the animal half instead - dingoes flat out in the shade, a crocodile doing an impression of a log, koalas asleep in the fork of a tree, and a kangaroo that came over and ate out of my hand. By the time I had finished with that it was afternoon and I was happy to leave it there.

About an hour south of Brisbane. Go early, the animals do less as the day heats up.

Back at the house for the night.

One photograph, the paddock going orange behind the fence, which is what most evenings this week looked like.

A morning up at Redcliffe, north of the city, mostly for Bee Gees Way.

The brothers grew up here and there is a laneway off the waterfront with the three of them cast in bronze and the walls covered in the story. It is a small thing and it takes ten minutes, and it is the kind of small thing I like. The foreshore is a good walk afterwards.

First evening in the city proper.

Up through Queen's Wharf to have a look at the new building, which is all atrium and hanging plants and is quite pleased with itself, and then out along the river after dark. The Story Bridge is lit blue at night and the whole skyline sits in the water underneath it, and the Riverwalk puts you close enough to the surface that you get the reflection and the bridge in the same frame without trying.

Walk the Riverwalk at night rather than during the day. It is a different thing.

A quiet one.

Nothing much photographed and nothing much needed.

The best day of the week, and all of it within about a kilometre.

Up to the deck at Queen's Wharf in the late afternoon and stayed until the sun had gone - the river bends right through the middle of that view, South Bank and the bridges below, and the hills behind go from blue to purple to orange while you stand there. Then down into the lanes for dinner and on to Death and Taxes, which is a bar with a hooded skeleton painted on the wall outside and several hundred bottles stacked floor to ceiling inside. You tell them roughly what you feel like and they deal with the rest.

Walk between the two rather than getting a car. The lanes are covered in murals and half the fun is finding them.

The day on Straddie, and the best day of the trip.

Ferry across from Cleveland and straight up to Point Lookout for the North Gorge Walk, which is a short loop that took me hours because there was something to stop for every fifty metres. The gorge itself with the swell pushing into the gap, Main Beach running away to the horizon on one side, and water that is properly turquoise rather than the colour people are being polite about. Dolphins came through under the rocks while I was standing above them. There was an osprey on a dead branch close enough to photograph without a long lens, and kangaroos on the grass at the end of the walk, lying about like they had been told I was coming.

Take the early ferry and give it the whole day. Hat, water, and shoes you do not mind on sand.

Back off the ferry and back to the house.

The last photograph of the day is from the boat, low sun on the water and the yachts out in the bay, which is a decent way to finish a day like that.

Last morning, spent at South Bank.

The BRISBANE sign with the city behind it for the obligatory photograph, then the Arbour - the long curling steel walkway with bougainvillea growing all over it - down to Streets Beach, which is a man-made lagoon in the middle of a city and is a much better idea than it has any right to be. Sand, palms, and office towers over the top of them.

A good place to spend a last few hours with a bag you cannot put down anywhere.