Bris-vegas

IMHO, Brisbane wins top score among the major Australian cities. Its location on the east coast of southern Queensland offers a fantastic climate for lovers of hot sunny days and balmy evenings. Maybe it gets a bit too hot in February, but manages to avoid extremes at all other times. Right now it’s a safe haven between tropical floods in the north of the state and devastating bush fires with alternating searing heat and extreme cold in the southern state of Victoria.

It’s 26C on arrival in Brisbane at 9.30am Sunday morning. A convenient fifteen-minute train ride to Central Station put me down just five minutes walk from a fine riverside apartment. Most of the high-rise accommodation and commercial buildings now gracing the waterfront post-date my first visit to Brisbane 12 years ago. 'Old' in this city means grand, colonial and well-preserved.




One of Brisbane’s best features must be the Botanical Gardens that run from just south of Eagle St Pier to another bend in the river at Queensland University of Technology – my final destination for the day.


Australia has a large, diverse population of birds and other ‘curious critters’. There is no need to travel far, or go to zoos or bird parks to see them. My concern that something was wrong with this one ‘splattered in the sand’ was quickly dispelled when it glared at me and fluttered off. Just cooling off I guess.


The flying dinosaur design of the Ibis always intrigues me. These designer scavengers are the pigeons of other places, and can reliably be found raiding wheelie bins in restaurant back yards.


The waterlily pond at dusk is a veritable hive of activity with ducks, moorhens, pigeons and more prehistoric creatures – large lizards posing around the edge.



Not all of the country's wild life can be found in the flesh in cities, though artists contribute the missing ones.

In the early evening hours, the park transforms into a huge outdoor gym. Trim, taut, terrific bodies flee past on bikes, gather in groups to contort into painful poses, skip, jump, box and run. Shutter-bug tourists are another well represented group.

The prize view of the day though, is a Tawny Frogmouth with its chick sitting calmly on a log in the shade. Not the best spot for photographs but a wee bit of touching up shadows results in presentable images. They are naturally well camouflaged in woodland surrounds, and could easily be mistaken for logs at a glance. Sightings of this owl species are quite rare apparently, though these two don’t seem to think so. Is this the cutest chick you ever saw or what?



For anyone wondering about the title of this post – the suffix is added to the names of many growing-but-still-slightly-small-scale cities. Rotorua in New Zealand goes by the nickname Roto-vegas. I’m sure there are many others. These 'bubbly queens' show that side of the local culture.


Next stop is south across the border into the New South Wales time zone (Queensland doesn’t do daylight saving). Destination Lillian Rock, a tranquil spot with views across the Eucalyptus clad hills to Mt Warning.