Stephens Family Vacation - Australia 2025
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Pialba has two whale statues near where we stayed - the front and the rear. We enjoyed a short walk this morning before leaving to catch the train to Brisbane. |
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Caboolture from the Train: A cool geological bump we saw from the train |
Brisbane - Downtown and South Bank
Today was the Australian federal election, and Snag Fest in South Bank so Brisbane was hoppin’. Maybe it’s hoppin’ every day. Probably. But it was definitely hoppin’ today.
We took the subway downtown. Their transit system here is a dream - I like it very much. And Brisbane is a very appealing city. I remember thinking Melbourne was a very appealing city when we were in Australia in 2011. Good job on making nice cities, Australia.
We walked all over South Bank, and the downtown areas, and had coffee, then lunch, in South Bank. The temperature is a little cooler so I was able to stay out pretty much all day, which I wasn’t able to do when we were further north. |
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Kangaroo Point: Our first stop this morning was a walk to Kangaroo Point Cliffs. It gave us some great views of downtown Brisbane. |
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Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art: After Kangaroo Point,, we walked back through downtown to South Bank where we had second coffee. We had a bit of extra time before we were due at the brewery tour so we stopped in at the Gallery of Modern Art. Modern Art for us is very hit and miss, but today was a definite hit - we saw some really cool and interesting art.
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XXXX Brewery Tour
Our main plan for today was to go to a tour of the XXXX Brewery. When we arrived there it was extremely busy and chaotic. A couple of the staff complained to us that they had a private function there and they seemed very stressed about having a tour starting during the private function. The fellow who did the tour for us also ran the private function so he was torn in multiple directions but once he wrapped up the function we had his full attention and he was awesome (as was the tour). We got three small beer samples, and we had booked the version of the tour that came with burgers as well so we enjoyed beer and burgers at the end of the tour. We have had many many people mistake us for Americans. Curse our accent… |
If someone had challenged us to visit Australia during as many public holidays (and other special events) as possible, I don’t think we could have done better than this trip completely by accident. We were here for spring school break, Easter, Anzac Day, the federal election, the Magic Round Rugby tournament in Brisbane and today was Labour Day.
Today we were going to take the subway out to Boondall Wetlands and walk back, which would have been about 17km, but it started raining as soon as we set out and was not going to let up for most of the morning so we shifted plans and went downtown instead. Because today was a holiday, we had trouble finding an open coffee shop to wait out the time until museums started opening, but Sugar n Spice near the Central subway station was open and we had second coffee there.
When the Museum of Brisbane opened, we visited it and it was really interesting. The main display was a variety of collections that people had donated that were somehow representative of life in Brisbane. Some of my favorites were the Australia National Airline collection, the toy collection and the collection of photographs made from a discovered bunch of glass plate negatives from around the turn of the 20th century.
We then had a quick visit to the Queensland Museum and saw the display of the South Sea People. I am always drawn to, and horrified by, the history of European colonialism with aboriginal peoples.
We then considered going to see the Minecraft movie but noped out because I messed up on the start time, and instead went back to uSouth Bank for a drink where we had a delightful conversation with James (Irish) and Christian (Scottish), immigrant doctors who were also drinking away the afternoon. |
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