What do you do in Brisbane?

Shopping, shopping and more shopping. Am working on keeping Roxanne under control in the Queen Street Mall, which consists of more than 600 shops, 45 cafes/restaurants, two cinema complexes and 11 shopping malls!!

Suss out the sightseeing opportunities. Some nice photos at this site, although we have to confess that we didn't go to the Maritime museum nor to the Casino. We seem to have taken heaps of our own photos - yay for digital cameras but haven't downloaded any yet to put up here ourselves.

Visited South Bank Friday evening for the markets and then again on Saturday afternoon - markets still there, loads more people at the manmade sand beach - swimming and sunbathing.
Roxanne got freaked by the ubiquitous ibis - long beak and inquisitive nature. Lovely gardens, flame trees, bougainvillea arches, frangipani and nice places to sit/walk/enjoy a coffee (Karen) or mango smoothie (Rox). The Cultural Area is great too. We enjoyed an hour or so browsing through the Queensland Art Gallery.

Our accommodation at City Backpackers is near Roma Street Parkland, which we visited for several hours (more photos) and enjoyed wandering round the lovely gardens. As well we went to the Botanic Gardens at the foot of Mt Coot-tha and then up to the lookout over the city.

Several times up and down the river. Have come to grips with the Brisbane Translink system and hop on and off buses and ferries with gay abandon. Sitting on top of the ferry in the breeze is just lovely, and we did it at night as well - enjoyed watching the great big Kookaburra River Queens - paddle steamers, and all sorts of other different river craft.

Want to know what the climate is like right now in Brisbane and how hot we are finding it?! It's actually very pleasant, not particularly humid and as long as you're not out in the full sun, 'no worries'!

Here's an interesting 'festival' - Saturday 20th to Sunday 28th of Nov - Schoolies Week 2004 Queensland. It was interesting when I was booking accommodation on the internet - a number of places had Schoolies dates/prices or were booked out by Schoolies. What is Schoolies? Is there any chance of this celebration taking off in NZ? Does it exist in other places?

Next stop - Gold Coast!