No Coaching, Please!

Posted byrandy@letters-to-rachel.memorialPosted inAlong the Way, Updates From the Abandoned PlanetTags:, , , , , , , , , , ,

Dearest Rachel –

I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of coach tours, where you spend all of your time on a bus going from place to place, and being told about this building on the left or this structure on the right. On the other hand, when the city center is twenty or thirty minutes away from the cruise terminal by motorized transport, there’s not a whole lot else in the way of choice.

Especially given the bipolar weather foisted upon us by the day; one moment, the sun had come out, and shortly thereafter, we were dealing with what our guide and hostess throughout our trip referred to as “liquid sunshine,” a phrase I’d heard before somewhere…

In any event, I certainly had no intention of staying on the ship when it was somewhere I’d never been (and most likely will never be again); I only have these few hours to take the city in, and I won’t let it be said that I let the chance slip past me. I got out there, and on the bus, hoping we’d have a few opportunities to look around, and maybe even take some notes about the things we were seeing.

Because that’s the thing about these kind of tours; even at a relatively slow pace of twenty or thirty miles an hour, it’s hard to keep up with the sights that pass by.  Our guide was constantly talking about something on one side of the coach, and something else on the other.  She’s a fount of information, no doubt, and it’s nice to know what you’re passing through during that half-hour trip into the city center, but it’s hard to focus on which sight is important – or, for that matter, if any of them are, as the road in starts with a lot of industrial functionality.  Not exactly the stuff of tourist attentions, to be sure.

But we eventually move on past the ‘Boggy Creek’ district adjacent to the terminal, and real, multi-story buildings come into view. We’re getting closer to what I’d consider to be ‘the city’ now – but it’s also at this point that the descriptions start coming thick and fast. I took notes, and pictures, but matching them and making an actual story out of any of them is rather a big ask, I’m afraid. Here’s what I got down, though…

This is the last remaining structure of the old Gasworks, which now has become a landmark within the neighborhood (or, I suppose I should say, ‘suburb,’ as Brisbane is structured much like Sydney, where both none of it is actually Brisbane and all of it is at the same time)
It’s a rather exclusive neighborhood, with modern apartments over boutique shops and restaurants.
Further in, there’s the Chinatown mall; the shopping arcade pictured here is merely the front of the neighborhood.
This cluster of fig trees is, according to our guide, ‘the smallest park in Brisbane’; a great place for city office workers to take lunch or afternoon tea. 
I don’t recall if she actually named it – only that she mentioned it was on Margaret Street – but the tallest building in Brisbane stands at around 900 feet, literally towering over everything else in the area.

In mentioning the street the building was on, she also added that many of the streets of the city center were named after kings and queens. The queen streets, I believe, run east and west, while the kings run north and south.

Built as it is on a river flood plan, Brisbane is prone to flooding.  The last major one was in 2011, and some areas are still trying to rebuild and recover.

Our guide talks about this building or that being “heritage listed”; nearly every structure dated to the 1800s is so listed, preventing them from being taken down or modified.

Seventy-five percent of high-rise space is used for residential housing, as opposed to office space.  Apparently, people just prefer to live in the city, where everything is supposed to be. At the same time, shopping has dwindled in the city center, as stores built outlets and markets in the outer suburbs.  Now people don’t go into the city, unless they need to visit a professional, like a doctor or lawyer. Personally, I wonder if the ‘heritage listing’ process renders it prohibitive to establish retail locations in certain places,; it’s just more attractive to set up shop in the hinterlands.

Speaking of attractive…

Murals are put up, throughout Brisbane, not just as a boilerplate beautification measure, but also as a graffiti preventative.  It turns out that, at least here, graffitists don’t tag another artist’s work; thus, the murals prevent actual graffiti from taking place.

Art is fairly common in the city center. Apparently, one of the former Lord Mayors decreed that every new business opening up would be required to put up some art in front of their establishment.  This was repealed by their successor, and, while I don’t have an example offhand, there were several businesses, we passed that had a few examples of, let’s just say, modern art out in front of them, that seem to be more a case of following the letter of the Lord Mayor’s law, as opposed to the spirit.

If I understand our guide correctly, Brisbane seems to suffer from a slight inferiority complex of being the ‘country cousins’ of the real urban centers like Sydney and Melbourne.  

Even their local beer, XXXX, is derided by the other cities as getting its name because Brisbanites couldn’t read or write.

One of the only stops on our tour, that was actually advertised, turned out to be rather a bust; when we went to the overlook on Mount Coot-tha, it was raining rather hard. I took shelter under the awning of a café by the overlook, only to find myself joined by what seem to be an entire class of Japanese high school kids. it would seem like a long way for them to go for a field trip; maybe this was one of those private schools for wealthy families to send their kids. How else would they afford such a trip to Australia?

Toowong is another exclusive suburb, which is still considered part of Brisbane. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.
The West End, on the other side of the river 
The William Jolley Bridge over the Brisbane River (which, as it happened, we were just about to turn onto)

South Bank was built up for Expo88, which turned Brisbane from a sleepy city that pretty much shut down by 10 or 11 o’clock to an actual cosmopolitan metropolis.

At the end of the South Bank Parklands is an old Queenslander style mansion that has served as an exclusive girls’ school for decades.

Scout Pank at the Cliffs Boardwalk overlook at Kangaroo Point.

A small park in Cathedral Place; while the place is surrounded by churches, our guide tells the story of money raised by a group of nuns to build an actual cathedral that was sent to the Vatican, and disappeared mysteriously somewhere along the way. so the cathedral never got built, but the place itself is still named for where the cathedral was supposed to have been

A couple blocks down was ANZAC Square, where the shuttle was to pick those up who just wandered around the town for a couple of hours.  I took so long to gather myself up, that by the time I was ready to leave, the bus had moved on.  I asked again at the next stoplight, they actually offered to go all the way around the block to drop me off a second time, when I had simply thought I’d just walk back the block or two.  However, since there was always the likelihood, I could get myself lost, the fact that they were willing to do so, was appreciated nonetheless.

Needless to say, however, this is where my written notes leave off. At least I have some video of that portion of my trip.

Which is pretty much where I have to leave off this letter, then. Hopefully, I’ll have more to relate to you as the days wear on. Until then, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.

Published by randy@letters-to-rachel.memorial

I am Rachel's husband. Was. I'm still trying to deal with it. I probably always will be.

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