Brisbane sightseeing

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After a big night out last night, as well as some lousy nights of sleep and early mornings of late, it felt great to get a good night’s sleep. And I needed it for the day of touring ahead.

At 11:00 I made my way down to the city center to meet up with a free walking tour similar to the ones I did in Europe. In fact, I’d later find out that the Australian ones were started by one of the guys that used to do marketing for the Europe tour company. That explained why the brochures were identical, other than the colors and the subject matter. It’s good to know that all those years of banking engrained an ability to recognize font consistency like none other.

I was pretty excited for it. This was the first tour of this type I had done since Europe.

The tour began with a brief overview of Australian history. And since I have not covered that yet, I’ll include it here.

Australia is a relatively young nation. Actually, it had only begun to be inhabited by Europeans in 1770, when Lt. James Cook discovered it. In reality, the Portuguese and Dutch had found it before but they didn’t want it, for they saw no use for it. They likely didn’t grasp the size of it.

In its infancy, Australia became a very large prison. At the time, English prisons were overflowing so it decided to start shipping its convicts to Australia. The convicts were generally in for misdemeanor type crimes such as petty theft, as violent offenders were generally killed. Over time, the prisoner population began to regain freedom and expand, forming a new colony for England. Years passed and eventually Australia became a nation but remained under the rule of the English monarchy (and still does today).

The other side of the story involves the so-called Aborigines, the indigenous people. They were here well before Europeans. And by well before I mean that historians believe they arrived around 60,000 years ago. Their method of arrival is still puzzling. Common theories include the use of highly advanced boats (with a lot of luck) and the ability to migrate over a land bridge from Indonesia or New Guinea.

As in America, the arrival of Europeans posed problems for the natives over time. They were first threatened by disease. Next, land rights, as the British settlers deemed the Aborigines as nomads, with no concept of ownership or civilization. And under loosely interpreted British law of the day, this gave the settlers the legal right to take over the land. Conflict eventually erupted, with several cases of abuse and even poisoning and massacres.

In recent years, much debate has taken place over the natives’ land rights. Until 1992, the legal code generally went against the Aborigines. But in 1992, the Australian High Court declared the legal concept of terra nullius (land belonging to no one, as the original settlers determined) to be invalid. It has since opened the door for many other land claims. This is still being played out and will continue to be for years to come.

With a better background in the country’s history, we set off exploring. One of our first stops was the Shrine of Remembrance, dedicated to those who fought in WWII. It reminded me a lot of the one in Melbourne and contained the proverbial eternal flame.

A bit later, we learned about some of the great animals of Australia. It’s pretty interesting how this country has so many of the deadliest animals in the world residing within its borders. A few of the more notable ones include: the box jelly fish, crocodiles that can be up to 25 feet long, Great White sharks that are 20+ feet long, sea shells that if picked up contain critters that will kill you, poisonous spiders, the most venomous snakes in the world, the cassowary bird with its claws that can sever a human head and even a honey bee (the most common Australian killer).

On top of this, you can throw in the famous rip tides at the beach. Even an Australian prime minister fell victim to these.

Our Australian scare session finished, we continued our tour by the MacArthur building, the former headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific in WWII. There, we also learned about the Australians’ involvement in WWII. They initially supported Britain in Europe, as they were still deemed British citizens and that was the bigger threat. But as Japan came closer and closer to Australia, it had to start worrying about the threat closer to home. But with a low population and a lot of its own men in Europe, it relied heavily on the United States for support.

Interestingly, the threat was real enough for Australia to develop a backup plan in case the fighters couldn’t keep the Japanese out. They would just give the northern half of Australia to Japan and ask Japan nicely to please not attack anymore. Surely that would have worked.

From there we passed through Queen’s Plaza, the old Treasury (which is now a casino) and had our lunch nearby.

After lunch, we went towards the Parliament Building and the former site of the Bellevue Hotel. We learned about the Nationalist government that was in place in the 1970s and 1980s under Joh Bjelke-Peterson, the premier (similar to a governor) of the state of Queensland. He apparently brought great economic prosperity to the state at the sacrifice of the people’s liberty. He was also apparently very corrupt, as evidenced by the building behind us.

The Bellevue Hotel was a heritage building within Brisbane. But Peterson didn’t like it since it wasn’t modern so he tried to get it taken down. This was denied so one night, under his own authority, he had it partially demolished, beyond repair.

Across the street was the Parliament Building. Interestingly, Queensland only has one house, unlike the federal government and the other states. At one time it had two but the lower house couldn’t get anything through the upper house. So it systematically went about getting it eliminated. It first tried to pass a law, that would have to be approved by the to-be-eliminated body, to get said body to be eliminated. Obviously this didn’t happen. So the lower house began pushing for its supporters into the upper house seats, eventually getting the majority it needed. Why at this point it didn’t just get these supporters to side with it on the issues is beyond me.

We finally crossed through Queensland University of Technology and across the Goodwill Bridge into Southbank. Southbank is the antithesis to the CBD across the river. No tall buildings, lots of trees, benches, parks and even a man made beach. As we wrapped up the tour, we learned about the Battle of Brisbane during WWII. It wasn’t an actual battle but one that erupted between Australian soldiers and US servicemen that were stationed in Brisbane.

After more than three hours, the tour concluded. Jo and Jamie had talked about going to the Southbank beach. I was in the area so I walked around to see if I could find them. No luck. The beach was very full.

I decided to head back to the hostel for a bit. On my walk back, I passed through a man made jungle area in Southbank, where I came upon a lizard. Also in the jungle area was a Nepalese pagoda, which was quite out of place. Apparently it was left over from a world fair years ago.

Back at the hostel I saw Jo and Jamie were in fact at the beach. Without responding, I took off to see if I could find them since it was a bit late. I made it back down to the beach around 5:30 and didn’t see them at all. Who knows, they might have left by then. At least I got to see them yesterday.

Tonight my laptop finally took its last breath. I restarted it and the evil blue screen came up. That’s like a flatline for computers - dead. At least the vast majority of my files are backed up online. It had only a few file updates to go before the restart.

I’ll try it again tomorrow morning.

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Photos

Brisbane CBD
A view of the city.

Shrine of Remembrance
The shrine dedicated to those that fought in WWII.

Flame
The eternal flame within the shrine.

Parliament
The building that houses Queensland's parliament.

Goodwill Bridge
The bridge leads to South Bank.

Beach
This man made beach in South Bank allows people to cool off from the blistering heat.

Nepalese pagoda
This seems out of place. But it's from the world fair more than 20 years ago.