Brisbane: The Whole Story

The edge of the world

Poor Brisbane. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Actually, that’s not even accurate. Brisbane is more like that awkward old maid near the back who is desperately hoping that someone will notice her. People really don’t talk about Brisbane, even in Australia. Before I got here, I asked a couple people about Brisbane, and the response was a near universal “Meh, it’s a city.” 

I initially decided that I liked Brisbane very much, but this was solely because of the breathtaking flight in. You come in along the Gold Coast, and you can actually see the little stretch of beach beneath you, glowing white against all the blue. But it is this blue that is so extraordinary. The sea is so impossibly blue, and dotted with little white clouds that float peacefully between you and the earth, that it's impossible to tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. You feel like you're flying along the edge of the world.

The city itself and I, however, did not start out on a very good note, due to the inconvenient hill that hangs out right in the middle of town. For some reason that I doubt I will ever fathom, they have decided to put all of the hostels on this hill. In case you can’t see why that’s a problem, imagine slogging up a not-insignificant hill in 90 degree weather with the sun beating down on your head and a 40 lbs pack on your back. By the time I got to the top, I wanted to be cursing Brisbane, the entire Youth Hostel Association of Australia, my pack, the sun, my flip-flops, more or less anything and everything, but I was too busy sweating out most of the liquid in my body and panting like a sad old dog. The lovely people at the hostel gave me a popsicle. Clearly they got the memo on how to win me over. 

I wandered a bit around Brisbane that afternoon and decided that the descriptor “a city” fits it perfectly. It was a city, not particularly pretty or ugly or big or small or memorable in any way. Luckily, I met up with some lovely friends of a friend that evening who took me to the south bank (because, like all good Australian cities, Brisbane is built on a river) and I was reassured that Brisbane had slightly more soul than advertised. The south bank is quite pretty, with a beautiful winding tunnel of bougainvillea that runs parallel to the river and is flanked on the other side with trendy restaurants and bars. A little further in is an area called the West End, which is full of hippies and hipsters and other cool kids, and because of this, lots of cute little boutiques and painfully cool bars with lots and lots of live music. There’s a free ferry that runs down the river and gives you a flattering view of the city. All said and done, it is a city with promise; that’s about as much as I can say after only 2-ish days here. My only regret is that I couldn’t find the Aboriginal man that the dread-locked gent at the hostel told me about. Dread-Locks told me this man holds court in front of a particular bar in the West End, and will talk to anyone and everyone about his culture, his adventures, and lost secrets of the bush. It sounded like a great night to me, but sadly, his court was empty when I walked by. Instead, I went into a bar and listened to what I can only try to describe as reggae-thrash metal fusion, which may have also been a lost secret of the bush, for all I could tell.