Christmas in Brisbane
As a special Christmas treat we had booked ourselves a 'deluxe double' room in a large Brisbane hostel appropriately (or perhaps not in our case) named Bunk. This gave us the status of 'level 5 customers', which sounded quite exciting until we realised that our room was on level 5. Nevertheless it was a huge room with en suite, fridge and kettle so we felt very spoilt.
We found Brisbane an attractive city, if not the most festive place to spend Christmas. The city centre is deceptively small, making it easy to forget the miles of suburbs we had driven through on the way in. The architecture is a mixture of older colonial buildings (including some really beautiful houses) and very modern tower blocks, which works surprisingly well. The river cuts through just south of centre with landscaped walking/jogging/cycling routes established between the two bridges, which appeared to be very popular with both locals and visitors.
Christmas day got off to a slow start for Chris as I went to church in the morning at St. John's Cathedral, Brisbane's largest church which boasts the title 'the last Gothic-style cathedral in the world to be finished'. I won't start picking holes in this claim (although the fact that it isn't finished seems an obvious starter!), except to say that to me it appeared very small and rather boringly new. Still it was nice to sing some carols, even if Australians do get many of the words and pronunciations wrong.
We had decided against paying for an expensive Christmas day lunch at a restaurant on the basis that we could get more for our money on another day. Instead we went Aussie and joined in the hostel barbecue, before heading out to see what the locals do for fun at Christmas. It turns out they walk around, which luckily we were already very good at. We brightened up our walk by taking our new presents to each other, a koala (from Chris to me) and a wombat. Chris was a little self-conscious about carrying soft toys around with us but I wouldn't take no for an answer; you'd think by now he'd be used to being stared at.
There are plenty of nice places to walk in Brisbane including two large botanical gardens which are very well laid-out and have lots of public barbecue spots. Strangely though these seemed more popular with Asian people than the locals, who had instead flooded to the 'beach', a seriously over-populated artificial swimming area. Suddenly we understood why Noosa and the other beaches just outside the city are such expensive areas.
Another popular place to visit are the mangroves lining the river bank around the gardens. These are vital to the eco-system of Australia as many fish and other river-dwelling animals rely on the roots of the trees to act as 'nurseries' for their offspring. Unfortunately this was only discovered some time after the majority of the plants had been ripped out; they aren't particularly scenic, making the river banks overgrown and muddy, and so aren't popular in residential areas. Here a walkway enables visitors to walk among the trees and view the many species of crabs (at low tide) and birds. I also met a slightly crazy old man who spent half an hour discussing the pros and cons of daylight savings time in Australia.
While exploring the city we stopped off at some of the free museums for a little learning. Unfortunately the clock tower of the town hall, with views over the city, was closed for Christmas, but we did learn alot about the 'Miss Australia' competition at the exhibition downstairs. We also visited the Queensland Museum, which runs through the history of Queensland from the dinasoars to the present day. There was a bias towards extinct and endangered animals, which was made slightly macabre by the illustration of each example with a stuffed version of the creature. We finally lost interest in the large 'suck-up to the Aboriginies' gallery so don't ask us about that.
We enjoyed Brisbane but it was probably not the best place to spend Christmas, being pretty quiet in terms of both backpackers and locals. On the other hand I'm not sure Christmas would ever have been quite right in the heat, and we had already decided to save our real celebrating for New Year in Sydney.
Emily
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