It's 7.30pm on a Wednesday evening, and I've just arrived in Brisbane ahead of a conference tomorrow. I'm staying at the rather flash Quest River City serviced apartments. It's fully loaded: lounge, terrace, two bedrooms, even a 50" flat screen TV. I only ended up here because the conference hotel, the.charmless.Hilton.com is fully booked out. Amen to that.
I've about two free hours to myself, and a decision to make. I could go and seek out some fellow suits for an all expenses paid nosh up. Nothing wrong with that, they're not a bad bunch all things considered. Or I could lose the specs and the suit, grab my runners and go exploring. It was never in doubt, I'm changed into my runners before you can say 'Viva Brisvegas.'
Thanks to the modern day heroes of Google and a Smartphone, I've found a map for the Brisbane River Run, which looks like a series of connected running and bike paths alongside the river. The plan is then to take the city cat ferry back to base. I could just ride the ferries for a couple of hours, and frankly, I'd have a ball, but there's a couple of sights I'd like to take in, and it's a beautiful summers night. The sun's already gone down for the day, but there's plenty of light down by the river. I hope....
Thanks to the modern day heroes of Google and a Smartphone, I've found a map for the Brisbane River Run, which looks like a series of connected running and bike paths alongside the river. The plan is then to take the city cat ferry back to base. I could just ride the ferries for a couple of hours, and frankly, I'd have a ball, but there's a couple of sights I'd like to take in, and it's a beautiful summers night. The sun's already gone down for the day, but there's plenty of light down by the river. I hope....
Two hours: just me, my selfies, and I. And my i-phone of course for the blog.
Somewhere amongst the coloured lines on this map is a circular route. Coloured maps really are crap when you're colour blind, but I've become very good at guesswork. It does state River Run, but I'm going for a run, then a walk, maybe another run, then more walking, and finally for a sit down on a boat. The reason is not down to my lack of fitness or pure laziness, just the fact that it's still 30 degrees out there with a stinking 80% humidity.
The River Run is a good way for me to test whether Brisbane lives up to its marketing as Australia's New World City. A big part of that marketing claim has been to position the Brisbane River as one big River Adventure. The proof will be in the pudding, so I'll dive straight into it to check out the flavours.
It's only a 5 minute walk down to the Eagle Street Pier from the CBD area to pick up the river trail. It's a large bike and footpath that runs north to the Story Bridge. I run the 15 minutes to the bridge, it's a well lit and signed path. The bridge looks great at night and there's a wide pedestrian path to cross the bridge with terrific views of the city nightscape. So far so good.
My run peters into a walk at the end of the bridge as I rejoin the river trail on the other side of the river bank. This is due to the humidity, but mainly due to the fact that it really does get interesting from here on in. There's cute little boardwalks over the river, nice green park areas, and excellent lighting. The last point means that even though its after 9pm, it's well used and feels very safe.
After about 1km, there's the booking office for the River Adventure. From here you can book kayaks, hire bikes or roller blades and go rock climbing. Yep, rock climbing. The clever people in Brisbane have floodlit a huge stretch of the cliffs and opened it up to rock climbing, and judging by how busy it was, it's proving a big hit. It's also good spectator viewing.
A kilometre further and you find gold. It's been there a few years now, but the public beach and outdoor pool on Southbank by the river is simply brilliant. It's open til late and completely free. I regretted not bringing the budgie smugglers along but settled for a quick paddle. Just further north here is the impressive arts precinct, but since its all closed up for the night I decide to ride the city cat back to the CBD.
The city cat is the Crown Jewels of Brisbane's ferry network, and glides speedily and quietly back through the city. It costs about $5 for a 2-3 stop journey. Not cheap, but worth every cent, awesome views and impressive boat.
I pretty much hit the sack as soon as I'm back as I want to get up early for a walk in Roma Street Parklands. As beautiful a city park as it is, I'm not there to enjoy the greenery, I want to find some water dragons. These are one of the finest lizards in Australia, growing up to 3 feet long, and seemed to love life in Brisbane. In fact at six in the morning, they outnumber the people in the park - I counted up to twenty four in about twenty minutes. They are a joy to hang out with and don't mind you getting up close.
By 7.30am I'm back at the hotel and raring to go for the business day ahead. Three hours of fun and adventure that make me smile my way through an all day conference. Now that's as fine a tribute anyone could pay to Brisbane!
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