2020 Far North Queensland
 

Brisbane - Fri and Sat 24/07/2020

2020 Far North Queensland
Today is a long, irritating and slow drive. There are lots of touristy things between Rocky and Brisbane but all too commercial for us, “Fun for the family” kind of stuff. We leave Rocky without having breakfast and stop for a coffee and sandwich at Mt Larcom, 50 km to the south. Then we drive another couple of hours to Gin Gin which is a very nice town that we had stopped at on the way up. As we get towards Brisbane it starts to rain again. I change the wiper rubbers because they make so much noise. The single lane road continues until Gympie, 150 kms north of Brisbane, where the M1 Motorway begins. We drive straight through 350 kms from Gin Gin, over the Gateway Bridge, to Joan & Roger’s place and arrive at 16:30 . . .
. . . where Joan, Roger and Bailey welcome us. Next morning, we decide to spend the day exploring Brisbane. Joan drives us in her car and we stop at a shopping centre car park. This is definitely not my idea of how to spend our holiday. We exit the car park, cross the road and see that there is method in Joan's madness. On the other side of the road is a new hamburger chain called Betty’s Burgers. Their burgers come highly recommended by the whole Cooper clan.
Betty’s Burgers has a rather unique business plan: clean surroundings, civil staff and a hamburger based on fresh, tasty ingredients. Seems destined to fail but maybe not. For Covid contact tracking, Jenni signs us in using the iPhone App. We order our burgers and we have to agree: they are incredibly good. It's even worth the hassle of parking the car. After finishing our hamburgers, we cross the road back to the car park and it is now raining quite heavily.
Second highlight is a drive through a wet Brisbane CBD. No need to go to Sydney for a traffic fix, lots of traffic. We travel SW down Ann Street, one of the CBD's main roads. I haven't been to Brisbane for a long time, perhaps a couple of decades, but it seems very different now. It used to have the feel of a large country town but it is now, in every sense, a huge modern city. We're at the top end of Ann Street. The older buildings to our left are facades with multiple apartment blocks built on top of them. We drive south-westerly down Ann Street and turn into Edward Street. We cross Adelaide Street. At the bottom of Edward Street we turn into Alice Street and park outside the Brisbane Botanical Gardens. The futuristic building opposite is the Abian Apartments, 41 floors above ground with 150 apartments.
The botanic gardens occupy premium land right up to the Brisbane River. We walk towards the river. Me and me little sister. I haven't had a picture taken of the two of us for I don't know how many years. The gardens are beautifully maintained. One of our lasting images of Queensland is the number of gardens in every city and how immaculate and tidy they are.
Brisbane has had two serious foods recently (1974 and 2011) when warm ocean currents find their way across the South Pacific to the Australian coast during "La Niña" periods. Another La Niña event is forecast for summer 2020/21 so we shall see. There's the Abian Apartments again. An "ordinary" 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 car apartment in this complex is around $2,000,000. A bambusa cave. I think these may be Hawaiian Ti plants. Very colourful.
At the end of the path through the gardens we find ourselves on the Goodwill Bridge. The bridge is also shared with high speed pests on bicycles and in-line skates. Bah! Humbug! The bridge does not carry any motorised traffic. This is the M3 Pacific Motorway Bridge, the Captain Cook Bridge. It is four lanes in each direction and is Queensland's busiest traffic bridge with more than one million vehicles crossing it weekly.
This is the M3 Riverside Expressway dating from 1972. Back then, elevated freeways through a city were considered to be futuristic; nowadays new expressways go underground including here in Brisbane. This is Old Government House and it is part of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The building was constructed to accommodate the first Governor of Queensland, Sir George Bowen, and his family. On 22 May 1860, the first Queensland parliament met and, one month later, voted to fund a new government house. There was an issue with the building being built in Brisbane, as the capital of Queensland had not yet been decided. We wander back to the car via a different path.
This is the Queensland Parliament building housing the Parliament of Queensland, the legislature of Queensland. As provided under the Constitution of Queensland, the Parliament consists of the Monarch of Australia and the Legislative Assembly. It is the only unicameral state parliament in the country. The upper chamber, the Legislative Council, was abolished in 1922. The Parliament was founded 22 May 1860, less than a year after the Colony of Queensland was created in June 1859. It was convened at military and convict barracks converted for the purpose located on Queen Street. Immigration was an important issue for the early Parliament and population growth was encouraged with new settlers enticed by land ownership. Strangler vines and we left the tropics in Rockhampton. Joan then drives us to the Summit.
We chuckled about the time we took Joan, Roger, Grant and Lee to the Grand Canyon and it was completely whited-out by a snow storm. They've been to the Grand Canyon but they haven't seen it. The mist clears enough for us to get a reasonable picture of the Brisbane CBD. Brisbane has a population of over 2.4 million and a mean age of 35 years. Brisbane's GDP was $170.5 billion in 2017-18, contributing to around half of Queensland's overall economy and 9.4% of Australia's GDP. It's GDP per capita was $67,300 in 2015-16. Median house prices are around $400,000 but inner city house prices are about $900,000.
Same sad old story. At night we go to "Fielders", a local Rugby League club, for dinner. It is our treat to Joan and Roger for their hospitality. There are strict spacing, Covid tracking and time limit rules because of the virus. 2029-07-13FNQld-19
2029-07-13FNQld-20    
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