9/02/2026 Catching up

 

Our hotel is somewhere in the bottom right, I think.

Another cracking day in Brisbane, temps getting up to 32c and two tourists on the loose with some sensible shoes and a tube of sunscreen.

This may look like a standard coffee but it was up there with the greatest coffees served to me, along with the one from the other day. Bloody hell, what counts for excitement these days is a bit desperate.

Breakfast - a Turkish version of eggs Benedict. I think they used Turkish bread, it was a bit of a stretch.

We realised that we haven't really had streaky bacon here, it's all been the big rasher cut. Now you too can keep ahead of the food trends. 

It looked like these buildings were ganging up on the church. This is the site of a photo of me back in the early 1980's standing in front of the fountain. I was hoping to recreate it but there were two issues. Firstly I couldn't find the original to match, and second they removed the fountain years ago.

The City Hall and Brisbane Museum, with a clock tower you can go up.

The museum was a bit shit, and the clock tower tour was booked out so it wasn't a great start to the day.

I think the view is pretty much the photo above, but from a higher angle so we weren't missing much.

The "museum" seemed to be mostly art galleries and collections of tat, some even vaguely related to Brisbane. Most not. There wasn't really any thing that told the story of the city, the history, how many Aboriginal people were displaced and alienated etc. Instead there were collections of glass pipes from a chemistry set, trading cards from around the world and pretty much any other collection a hoarder had "donated" to the museum to help keep their houses from overflowing.

There was a cool painting of the tiger shearing season.

I have no idea what the bottom creature is supposed to be, I wasn't aware there was a tusked stoat we were famous for. It does sum up the museum quite well, just chuck any old thing in there, nobody will care.

Sir Erstwhile Harrumph Brisbane, founder of the city and an avid fan of the Jamaican Red Stripe beer.

Yeah, this was traumatic. Another thing I remember from my childhood in a museum.

We were meeting up with the old A team from Watties, Brisbane chapter, so we had a tight deadline to meet. And of course there was always time for a detour through an interesting arcade. Melbourne isn't the only one with them.

Had an awesome time catching up with Lisa - it was just like old times. With less petfood, but pretty much the same amount of work was done.

Feeling energised and full of strength we set off up Mount Coot-tha. Thankfully we had good shoes, some water and a good hat and made great time on the journey to the corner up from the restaurant where we waited for an Uber.

The cafe at the top probably has one of the best views in the city, although it was a little hazy today.

Here it's either Ibis or Bush Turkeys crashing onto tables and picking their way through leftovers. These birds are pretty big and make a hell of racket as they bash their way around. 

Average tourist cafe lunch. Mystery meat and bread.

Brisbane City

Brisbane City with a bit more sky.

So we missed the bus down and were looking at an hour wait for the next one. There are a bunch of walkways all around the area, and we were kind of thinking about taking one down to the Botanic Gardens. After examining maps and signs we discovered the path was described as "Hard" which gave us a bit of a pause. Then we spotted the sign (not shown) that said the distance to the gardens was more than 2.5km through some pretty sterotypical Australian trees and grass, hiding all manner of snakes and spiders. Plus it was stinking hot.

Yeah, we Ubered.

Somehow I am blind to these Water Dragons. I have almost stood on so many this week, they're pretty big so I'm not sure what's going on. They are all over the gardens and the paths and seem to be quite used to people which is why they don't really move when I come lumbering towards them.

Thanks to the 1988 Exposition of Leisure there is quite a collection of bonsai trees, to our surprise. I honestly never knew there were so many different trees that are used for this! 

In a reversal of yesterday's events, we decided that this was a real alligator. It absolutely was not. Yep, we are useless and telling the difference between wildlife and building supplies, in this case - wood.

And these, I was excited, Louie horrified to see bats! They were holding guitars and it took us way to long to realise they weren't real.

The Dome of discomfort.

Just a bubble of the most humid air you can imagine. You step out into the high humidity of normal Brisbane and it's like a cool rush.

This is what I imagined Rio to be like.

We are loving it here, it feels so tropical and different, but with enough similarities to New Zealand it's not a complete culture shock. 

Dinner tonight was at a nearby Colombian restaurant. It felt like what I imagine Colombia feels like, thankfully without the insane insects and bugs.

Cheesy bread balls. They were very different, and could have used some sort of sauce but it made a great starter.

My lemonade and Louie's guava juice. These were fantastic, made from freshly squeezed juice. 

A mix of carbohydrates and protein. I did ask where his veges were and Louie vaguely waved in the direction of the rice. South American cuisine loves the brown.

Milanesa de frango, pretty much a top rated version of our chicken schnitzel, without the gravy. Chicken was so good, somehow they managed to avoid the woody chicken we seem to be plagued with.

Yes I ate all of the salad and left the rice.

5 minute walk back to the hotel, along the way there are some interesting sights. Absolutely no idea what this is, maybe some sort of abstract bug, it did remind me of Plankton off Spongebob.

Now I'm just a naive small town boy, but I always thought massages were on your back or feet. This sort of massage is usually called something else.

8/02/2026 Crikey, it's the Zoo

We were planning to head to the Zoo later in the week but since today (Sunday) was going to be the coolest (31c!!!) day until we leave, we decided to head North. This was going to be a thorough test of our abilities to read a timetable and get on the right train out of many.

First stop was a bus into the CBD and find some breakfast. Brisbane central closes down on the weekend, almost every cafe was closed. Luckily the one we walked past just off the bus turned out to be fantastic. The streets around the train station have kept their old Australian country town style.

  

Sugar n Spice was helmed by possibly the most pleasant man I have ever met. The coffee he made was exactly spot on, perfect. The butterscotch muffin was pretty damn good as well.

Breakfast of champions.

In front of the central train station is ANZAC Square and gardens. Leading from the square to the station is a passage filled with all sorts of information and side galleries with records and artefacts related to different wars. Australia does this so much better than New Zealand, they actually honour the past and sacrifices made. We kind of give it a prod with a toe once a year and have a mossy cenotaph in small towns. Not without significant problems, but relatively Australia has much more of a national identity and pride.

George Michael would have been happy with the style of the train station, it definitely had a tiled porcelain look to it. Happily it didn't smell like a public toilet, even if it looked like one.

Simple folk we are, used to one train going on one line, the fact there were many train services running off the one track caused a bit of nervous checking of apps and maps. As it turned out, the train arrived on time (yes the trains actually run here on weekends - Auckland trains are really a bit shit) and off we set for a 80 minute journey for 50c. The bus and train journey might have been 50c all up, I haven't quite worked that out yet. All I've been charged is one $3.50 holding fee for all our trips so far so it's a bit of a mystery.

 

As we worked our way North out of the city there are a variety of walls facing the line, and by the looks some pretty wild times are to be had. Otherwise, it's a completely unremarkable journey.

"The countryside". Mostly new developments and a lot of blue sunny skies. Gum tress, but no sign of snakes, kangaroos or anything else.

Going by these signs I'd be fine for a set, ticking four of the five boxes.

I guess we have missed the high season, we weren't exactly queuing up to get in. At $75 per ticket it's a bit pricey and they are leaning heavily on the Irwin name, both Steve but more so with Robert, Bindi and her husband heavily featuring all over the place. Terri seems to have very much taken a back seat, other than her presence in photos and mentioned in passing she wasn't a prominent as she used to be.

When we visited in 2010, the three of them were in the show but Terri was the main personality in the Zoo publicity.

It was a bit of a stinking hot day so a lot of the beasties were hiding in the shade, but those with pools in their enclosures alternated in the water and in the shade. The Zoo is based around the animal hospital so they end up with all sorts of different animals from all over. Not as random as the Museum of the Desert in Tucson having a stingray exhibit, but otters kind of stuck out a bit. It would be weird if Australia Zoo had stingrays, but not as weird as Tuscon having them.

Kimono Dragon - awesome lizard but a nasty, dirty bugger. He seemed to be happy with the heat.

This chap caused a bit of a scene with some young English tourists since he was sporting a startling pair of dangling gonads. "Look at the ball sack on that" I think was the phrase. Another of them wondered when it would start spinning around, and I glanced to see if she was joking but worryingly I couldn't tell.

There were a few dingoes around and they looked far too cuddly and nice to be going around taking babies and random tourists. 

Yeah, typical Australian stoned out of their minds and lazing about.

This one was a bit more photogenic and alert.

So I have decided that I will never go into the wilds with Louie, his identification of animals leaves a lot to be desired, and I am far too willing to believe him.

We walked past this chap and he said "that's just a concrete crocodile, fake." I took this at face value and carried on walking, but realised some others were taking photos of it. And back we went and yep, it was real. So on some future expedition we could be fooled into being eaten by a wild animal, thinking it was made of concrete.

They've made the kangaroo enclosure a lot bigger and more shaded, and from memory there are quite a few more kangaroos. It's a big area so it is by no means crowded.

This one was giving me the side eye and it took me a minute to click what was different about it.

Wisely I moved on to others, and we both got to give kangaroos scritches behind the ears. 

The Crocoseum show was without any of the Irwins but the format remained the same, birds charging around the area doing bird things. 

Thankfully for a zoom lens and fast shutter burst, you can play spot the birds.

Ferocious wild dingo doing exactly what it wanted to do and that was play in the water. I suspected this was a part of the show but it took a bit too long to get her to come out so it was definitely natural dog shenanegins.

 

The keeper called Bruce giving Murray lunch. Yes, they are nothing if not consistent in their names.

I hyped up the bone shaking *Crack* of the crocodile's jaw snapping shut we heard back in 2010, but Murray seems to be a bit on the quiet side which was a disappointment. That's a sound I will never forget.

What culinary delights awaited us at the five star cafe of Australia Zoo?

Views of the not-concrete crocodile ponds for a start. I wonder if any of the many Ibis have wandered too closely to a set of jaws in front of the dining public?

This is what awaited us. Tasty but flaccid chips and an okay pizza. Not much has changed in the past 15 years, other than the prices.

Elephant. No notes.

They have two here in a massive area. From my uninformed eye, it seems they give all the animals as much room to roam as practical, and it looks like it is much more than other Zoos I've been to.

 

I couldn't really hear the keeper doing the presentation, but I think this tiger is blind. It was doing weird things including reversing into the water.

On Bindi's Island you can walk amongst Lemurs, but you have to stay 2m away from them.

This is such a fantastic experience, just being able to be in the same space. The Zoo is all about creating a sense of caring about the animals and this is an effective way of doing this. So many different people were just standing there, completely engrossed in watching them up close.

Another common sight was staff doing work with the animals. Since most of them are there because they have had an injury, they need animal rehab to be able to animal things. This Echidna is blind, so the staff member was getting it used to having in close contact. That worm is not it's lunch, that is it's tongue!

Meercats - always fantastic.

As with everything, I learn the easy way right at the end. Today we learned there is a free shuttle bus that you can take to get around the Zoo. After two visits, some pretty damn sore feet and a lot of sweaty walking the revelation was made when we were just about to haul ass back to the front to catch the bus back to the train. The air conditioned ride was just luxury. 

Helpful hint - read the website of places you're going to go to. Don't be like David.

Still great, but still leaning very heavily on the cult of personality of the Irwins. It's a private business, they can do what they like and it seems to be working, but it is a bit much.

On the ride back to the train, probably the nicest road I've ever been on.

After a long train journey back, we took a walk through evening Brisbane. It's so different from Melbourne and Sydney, not a lot of places are open and there weren't many people about. A bit closer to the Queens Plaza area it livened up a bit, but otherwise things were quiet.

Not pictured were the bats flying about, screeching and squabbling, giving the church a very strange tone.

One of the list dinner places, this was not as it looked in the website photos. I was expecting a proper deli, but it was just a themed outlet. And they were out of so many things, we ended up getting a "classic" sub. 

Other than the overly spicy salami, this thing blew the socks off any Subway sandwich I've had. If we had this in Auckland, I would be here every day.

A quick walk up the street to the Town Hall and onto a bus back to the hotel. 

A big day, fantastic Zoo and so many cool animals! 

This holiday so far has been a lot more fun and interesting than Melbourne.
It has been very hot, especially today and we were pretty stuffed by the end of the Zoo. The heat and humidity is a lot but we have both enjoyed just being here. Easy to say when you're on holiday but we have a recent Melbourne visit to compare, and it is better here. 

Way fewer flies as well. I have literally seen three since Friday.

In summary after pretty much three days - Brisbane is great, even in the heat of February. I'm guessing it's not as humid as it could be but we are really enjoying it. Getting to sleep is really easy as well when you are on the move all day. Maybe I need one of those treadmill standing desks...