Persuade me to visit Brisbane

Iron Weasel

Hello, H/A.

My girlfriend and I are planning a vacation to Australia in the next few months and while we have most of our itinirary sorted out, we have a few days (3 or 4) at the end of the trip that could conceivably be spent in Brisbane.

Now, I could go to wiki or to tourism sites, but I'm hoping that people who actually live there or have visited might be able to share thier unique insights into the interesting (and preferably inexpensive!) things to do in and around the fine city of Brisbane.

PhilthePill

Brisbane's nice.

I live there, it's a fantastic place to live - great weather most of the time - warm, sunny, occasionally just a little too dry, but generally good - and close enough to the beach.

Free Things:
-Walk along South Bank. It's quite pretty, there's a decent amount to explore, and it's right on the river, with a lot to see. Some nice pubs/places to eat.
-Art Gallery/Museum: Both fun to wander through. There's a great water pool with a thousand of these metal balls floating in it, which i could sit there for hours and poke/play with.
-If you can get up to Mt Cootha, check it out, it's got quite a view. Dunno if you have access to transport though. It's probably about 10-15minutes drive from the CBD, and a great view of everything. If you can, get up there for sunset/sunrise and admire the prettiness.
-Go see a local band. The Valley (Around Brunswick St Mall) on a weekend (or even most weeknights) has a thriving music scene, with a bunch of clubs and pubs for all your tastes. If you're there on a weekend morning, there's some great markets in the mall too. Pick up some street press and see if you recognise any bands playing, if that's your thing.
-There's some great cliffs just next to Southbank called Kangaroo Point Cliffs - they're cool just to walk past, and there's usually people rock climbing along there. There's BBQs and stuff along there, so have a picnic.
-There's a really cheap and run down bar in the CBD called the Down Under Bar - if you want a try Aussie pub experience, check it out. Usually filled with a ton of travelers.

Cheap Things:
- Jump on a CityCat (massive catamarans/ferry things that go up and down the river) - for a small fare you can buy an all day ticket and get a sweet tour of brisbane just by going up and down - the Cats do loops that take about an hour and an half, and will take you back to where you started.
-While you're doing that, jump off at New Farm Park, and wander around - it's rained recently, so the gardens are quite nice. Also another really nice spot is the Botanical Gardens in the CBD.
-Other end of Southbank there's a set of cinemas called the Cineplex (or Southbank 5) - used to be an IMAX theatre, but went out of business - someone else bought it, and now cheap movies ($5 for students) on a massive screen.

Slightly Less Cheap Things
-If you're into Warhol - we currently have the Warhol exhibit at GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) - though it's not particularly cheap - if you're into pop art, check it out. Right on Southbank. Around $20 to get in. Dunno if that's your style.


Edit: Feel free to PM me if you want to ask anything specific or have any queries - PA has helped me out about 1230439248 times with shit, and it feels good to give back.

Nataneko

I came back from a month long trip to australia a couple of days ago.

Philthepill has great suggestion, and has named pretty much everything I did there. Walking along the river is pretty great. If she really wants to go, I think 2 days would be a right amount of time. Personnally, I really regret having been there 6 days instead of more sydney time. Oh and it seems everything close at like 4pm. A part of me want to scream "don't go! dooooon't" but then I realise it wasn't that bad. but 1-2 day would be allright for the city.

PhilthePill

Actually, I'll second what Nataneko said. Brisbane is nice, it's pretty, but it's not a tourist haven like Sydney or Melbourne - they have ALOT to do, but I would say unless you have people to see and things planned, I wouldn't spend more than 3ish days here - otherwise you may get bored. I don't think you'll get bored in Sydney or Melbourne.

Iron Weasel

Thanks for your input, dudes - that list of things to do is mega.

As I said, we're trying to figure out what to do with the last 3 or 4 days of our trip, and it's down to either Brisbane or Melbourne. A friend of mine lived in Melbourne for a while so I'm picking his brains for input there (though feel free to sound off on that city as well!), but as I know little about Brisbane, I figured I should ask the friendly PA community for halp.

Phil, you mentioned that the city is fairly close to the beach. How close? How long would it take to get there in a car, for example? How much does it cost for parking/access when you arrive?

Ten thousand thank-yous!

The Cat

'Bout an hour's drive up the highway or down to the beaches - the city itself is just upstream from a river mouth going into a mostly-enclosed bay, so its all mangroves close by :P parking and access to the beaches is free - its basically a holiday zone from Maroochydore north to Noosa. Pro-tip though, if you're going to cruise up the coast, stick to the smaller road right next to the sea rather than the main one further in, its muuuuch prettier. The main one's faster, but all you'll see will be big-box stores south of town, it has a different feel - flashier, more highrises, less relaxed. I kind of hate the Gold Coast strip proper. Its nice inland, though. I'd suggest somewhere like O'Reillys or Binna Burra as a place to stay, the latter especially, but its a long and quite challenging drive up there. Depends whether you're up for that. on the upside, its much cooler and less humid in the hills. The city proper can get pretty godawful hot'n'sweaty in the summer, and I'm talking dripping-hair-after-walking-200m humid...

If you're up for driving around a fair bit, the sunshine coast (north of town) hinterland can be really nice. Up around Maleny and Montville, in the hills southwest of the beaches, there's a fair congregation of hippies and artists, so there's lots of quirky little shops and such in between the lookouts and picnic areas. Also, Australia Zoo (Irwin Central) is at the bottom of the road up to there, and you can see the Glasshouse Mountains, which are a series of ancient volcanic intrusions into the coastal plain. There are quite a few nice short walking tracks up in the hills too, all very well maintained.

The Cat

oh, have you fired up Google Earth lately? There's a thing on it now where you can see a lot of user-submitted photos attached to the locations where they were taken, which is really handy for checking new places out.

Iron Weasel

The Cat wrote: »

oh, have you fired up Google Earth lately? There's a thing on it now where you can see a lot of user-submitted photos attached to the locations where they were taken, which is really handy for checking new places out.

Uh no, I wasn't aware of that function. That's pretty cool, and I'll definately check it out. Thanks for the tip, and for the info on your hometown.

PhilthePill

Yeah, what Cat said. The main closest big beach is the Gold Coast (Surfer's Paradise) - but it's just REALLY commercial - not a bad beach though on a good day, and the highway down is pretty fast and massive. But yeah, just hundreds of high rises - I've had American friends come over and have a look and just compare it to Miami. I still like it for a day trip here and there, it's simple to get to and the water is great in summer. You can generally find free parking.

It just depends on what you're into really - I'd probably lean towards checking out Melbourne personally, but I'm biased cause I've lived here all my life.

And definately second Cat's call on it being humid and sweaty as hell occasionally in Brisbane. Summer is awesome if you have a pool.