Having worked in the Brisbane area for over a week now, we’ve had one or two occasions where we’ve been at liberty to wander. The first good chance we got was Sunday 25th; and so we decided to head into the urban jungle of Brisbane City. As we went back again today, I’ve decided to amalgamate the experiences one psuedo day that could, in some parallel universe, have happened (but incidentally didn’t).

Like any good tourists in Brisbane we started with the South Bank Parklands. This little stretch of paradise has beautiful landscaping, restaurants, bars, markets and Australia’s only innercity beach, something we spent a full afternoon enjoying (and in true British fashion managed to pick the most overcast afternoon since we’ve been here). There’s also a large ferris wheel that looks distinctly like a slightly scaled down London Eye and various graceful bridges nearby tempting us across to the Brisbane CBD: the heart of the city.

The Central Business District, a common Australian acronym (of which they are very fond), surrounds Brisbane’s key commercial pedestrianised road: Queen Street. There’s just about everything there you could expect from city shopping and then some; but beyond that, this sector of the city also offers their own Botanical Gardens. This area had some beautiful views across to the cliffs of Kangaroo Point (from which the city’s renowned Story Bridge spans), as well as intriguing little features of its own. One of these was a bank of mangroves, including a plaque that enlightened me to what exactly a mangrove is. What is it then? Well, it is a tree that has adapted to live between the tide lines, using special roots to hold to the muddy riverbank.

Brisbane’s bus system (or Buz, as it appears to be known) is a comprehensive, subterrainean beast. At first glance simple, at least as much as any other city bus system, it nevertheless seemed to take a lot more guesswork and poking around than I would normally expect. Travel is done in one of two ways; you either use a super-handy Oyster-esque “Go Card”, or you pay the Man the full fare of seventy five thousand dollars. A no brainer; only, the catch is that the Go Card is a mysterious, reclusive creature that it turns out can’t be found at the local news shop. It is in fact at the top of a mountain in a monastery, guarded by ninjas surrounded by lava and probably on a really high shelf. Probably. Needless to say we paid the Man the first time and it turns out it wasn’t all that overpriced I guess.

However, it has to be said, that once you have a Go-Card the buses become far easier and more convenient. Just so long as you don’t plan on coming home, because finding them from Queen Street Mall is complicated. You see, bus stops in the city are most often underground and accessed from various seemingly random sets of steps. It’s kinda like a combination between the London Underground and the Superoute 66, but in a weird sort of way it works. It just takes some getting used to.

Overall, Brisbane’s a rather lovely city. But we’ve really only scratched the surface. I mean, there’s the rail system to figure out, yet.