The River City

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Brisbane, The River City.



Today my plans were to go in to the City of Brisbane, the night before I arrived in the holiday park I made sure to ask the receptionist for some information regarding what to see and do in the city.



I quickly realised Brisbane was not like any other city I had gone to before in Australia as in my opinion it seemed quite limited in things to see and do. Well thats the impression I got from the receptionist as she did provide me a map and showed me some things to see but nothing famous like the harbour bridge in Sydney or the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.



The receptionist told me that it was quite easy to get in to the city, there was either a bus station outside the park which went once an hour to another station which is about a 10 minute drive away and from there every 15 minutes busses go in to the city.



I checked the times of that bus but quickly decided it would be easier to just drive to that other station and park there and grab the bus from there as I new those busses went back and forth every 15 minutes and I would not have to worry about getting back or waiting long for a return bus. The receptionist told me parking should be no problem as there were 2 big parking areas.



I drove to the bus station about 10 minutes away and headed in to the first parking area, I drove around it twice before deciding there was no parking spots left it was completely full. I headed to the other parking area... yeah exactly the it was completely full. Funny part I noticed another camper van looking for a spot as well and noticed it was people that are staying at the same park as me as they were standing on a spot behind me. So we were both trying to find a spot after another 10 minutes of just finding nothing I noticed the bus from the park would go in about 15 minutes so I decided I would just quickly drive back to grab that instead and so I could just leave my van safe in the park.



Of course when driving back I missed my turn as I thought it was a good idea to drive without GPS. I added another 5 minutes by not being able to find a place to turn around, after I finally turned around I quickly drove back to the park where of course everything was against me time wise. All the traffic lights would turn red but I was the best at pulling up ever, I think my driving instructor would be proud of me because in his opinion I would pull up as a slug and take to long to get to the speed limit.. well can confirm I was at that speed limit fast every time I was pulling up just trying to get back as soon as possible. Yes of course still sticking to laws.



Once arrived in my spot in the park I quickly parked and ran to the bus station, check the bus times and it didn't come for another 4 minutes.. Yay I made it.

Drove on the bus to the main station and from there I got on another bus in to the city.



Once I started getting close to the station I recognised a building the receptionist told me was cool to go in, it was a science and art museum. I went inside and looked around before deciding to not buy a ticket and see other things first and maybe come back.. I never did come back.



I walked away from the museum and headed over to one of the bridges that goes in to the city itself where all the shops are and the botanical gardens are.



Before I arrived at the bridge I noticed a big ferris wheel and some other things to see on my right so I headed over there, basically the ferris wheel is like the one in London but a bit smaller haha Let's call it the Brisbane Eye.



Took a bunch of pictures of everything around me, followed some path with a lot of Chinese lights hanging above it and came to some street performer, there do seem to be a lot of those in Brisbane.

I walked around the City looking at some pretty buildings until I reached a bridge across Brisbane River, there was an Arch on it which apparently was from the original bridge that was built there. It was the first bridge in Brisbane to connect the two sides of Brisbane and apparently the original bridge did not stay up for long before collapsing.




After I crossed the bridge I went to eat some food, I got myself a bratwurst with sauerkraut in some hot dog bun and continued my stroll through the city, hopped in to some shops and just roamed really without really having a destination.

At some point I found the Brisbane Botanical Gardens, It was quite busy there with people playing football and others doing yoga. Also a lot of people just running and cycling around. Honestly how can you be so active in this country while its almost 30 degrees haha.

After I walked through all the gardens I decided I walked to the south bank of the city where you can look over the river, crossing another bridge over the Brisbane river. I sat there for a little bit before going to WoolWorths and getting myself a drink. After I got a drink I decided to head back to my holiday park it was about 15:00 not to late but like I said before the city does not seem to have as many tourist attractions as other city's do.

I must say I do like the city of Brisbane but Melbourne and Sydney are easily my favourites i've seen until now.

I grabbed a bus back to my holiday park and was very lucky regarding getting the next bus to, only had to wait 5 minutes.




Once back at the holiday park I decided to go get some food, I drove to the local Woolworths where I got myself some steak and potato wedges. Before eating anything I went to the holiday park pool and had a swim, there were other people sitting at the pool and I asked them if the water was cold to which they responded "Today is cold full stop we haven't got swimming and don't plan to". They were kind of right it was not amazingly hot about 22 degrees at the time which in the Netherlands is really hot but in Australia not so much. I wanted to go for a swim anyway so I walked up to the water and dipped my toe in it looked back at the other people and said "Well this is going to suck" walked back about 4 steps and took a dive into the water. If there is one thing I have learned is to just jump in the water and never go slow, If u go slow it's so cold you'll never make it in but if you go in in one go your body adjusts straight away and it's not to bad.




I swam around for about half an hour before getting out having a nice warm shower and started preparing my steak and potato wedges. While I was preparing that a local Australian from West Australia came over and we had a talk about Debbie and Brisbane. The man is a road train driver and told me about his experience doing that. He also told me about the amount of damage a Kangaroo or wallaby can do if you hit them at high speeds, basically it would just take out the entire front of my camper if I were to hit one. Basically don't drive at night was a tip i've been following since the beginning.




The man headed back to his own camper while I ate my food, the camper I saw earlier that morning arrived and the people got out. I started a chat with them and asked them what they did in Brisbane. They did end up finding a parking area not to much further away. After talking for about 10 minutes I asked them where they were from and got the answer "Holland" to which I replied "Serieus??". We talked a while about our trips in Dutch and after some talking a random possum appeared. I had not seen a possum yet but it was quite cute, it hopped from the roof on to some tree and from there jumped on to the grass and roamed around. It did not care that we were standing there talking, I will note that it is dark by this time.

After we talked for a bit and laughed about the possum walking around I hopped back in to my camper and watched my series before going to bed.




Thank You for reading.

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