The Bane o’ Bris

Employing wordplay to compare Brisbane to the Judaic act of circumcision is a bit rough. However, something has to be said about the fact that navigating Brisbane’s roads is approximately ten times more painful than the act of circumcision.

Which urban planner decided four-lane, one way streets was an effective means of laying out a city block?

A fucking idiotic one, that’s who.

So many times we were driving around  the city saying, “Cool. We’ll head left here… Oh, we can’t.”

Rage building.

“Nevermind, we’ll just take the next…”

Set your phasers to ‘rage’.

“Ah, well. Surely I can just turn…”

And then I’d go all Lou Ferrigno and black out for a few minutes.

What the hell, Brisbane?! Give people roads they can drive down, especially if u-turns are illegal unless specific signs say “U-CAN-U-TURN”. If you allow people the ability to drive around your city at their leisure, people are generally more inclined to stick around and check things out, not just drive through and go ‘Awwww, if only I didn’t have to stay on that one road that led me out of the city’.

Road ranting aside for a moment, leaving the Tribute in Rainbow Beach for repairs, I aptly named our hire car ‘The Blueberry’. A small, blue Holden Barina. Driving in The Blueberry was cheaper in terms of fuel, but the size difference was crazy.

The first afternoon in Brisbane was spent checking out Kangaroo Island, mostly along the riverside. The Brisbane river really is the centrepiece of the city. After some more awkward driving, we stumbled across a small street which seemed to have nothing but expensive antique stores. This baffled me.

 In fact, a few things baffled me about Brisbane. There was a gyoza restaurant – Harajuku Gyoza. They charged something like $8 per 5 gyoza, which is pretty expensive if you ask me. There was nothing particularly great about the types of gyoza you could buy, either. But the restaurant had a very cute logo (Google it if you can be bothered) and very cute girls dressed up in their whacky Japanese Sunday bests.

This meant there was a line stretching out down the block.

Baffled. Baffled because, well, gyoza isn’t really something to feature as the main drawcard of a restaurant. Melbourne has gone through its dumpling development, has this just hit Brisbane now? Brisbane has its very own Chinatown, but there was no sign of dumplings.

While all these thoughts were scurrying through my head, I was sitting across the road from Harajuku Gyoza in a cocktail lounge called Glass. Not a bad little venue, actually. I drank a Median Passion – Havana Club Anejo Blanco, peach liqueur, passionfruit, sugar and lemon juice. The Crazy Canadian had a Miss Moffett mocktail.

This was our night exploring the nightlife Brisbane’s famed ‘Valley’ had to offer up. We wound up at a place called Mystique, which seemed like it had no idea what it wanted to be. Splashes of Middle Eastern, Asian and Oriental decor with a lighting setup that was deep blues, reds and greens with your standard flashing, alternating bulbs and smoke machine in tow. And then came the music.
’80s cheese ahoy. Farnsy, Barnesy and a lot of music to generally just have a good time to.

But wait – ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ from the Lion King soundtrack. AGAIN.

When did that track become a club hit? Someone tell me, please.

Returning to our hostel for the night, we were treated to two bunk neighbours – both French – bonking each other stupid. Kudos for not caring about the fact that you were sharing the room with six other people. What I didn’t get, however, was why they were dirty talking to each other in English. Like it wasn’t awkward enough already, when the Crazy Canadian sat up to reach for something on her top bunk, she made eye contact with one of the participants of said bonkage.

What happens when awkward reaches an all-time high?

Hawkward.

The following day, we decided to explore the CBD. It’s only fair that it rained for most of the day then, right?

The Queen Street Mall is quite nice. Plenty to see and purchase should you be inclined to do so. We had coffee at Aromas Coffee House, situated in the foyer of the now-defunct Regent Theatre. At one point we had to evacuate a shopping arcade because, well, the fire alarm went off after it was hit by some thunder and lightning.

Walking around Brisbane’s botanical gardens on a rainy day was probably the best way to see it, as there was little or no-one else around. A small path that lead out toward the middle of the lake was inhabited with lizards, ducks and a mallard. The large Indian fig trees were a sight to behold.

After the gardens, we made our way across the Goodwill Bridge to hang about Southbank for a while and cause some trouble.

Trouble ended up consisting of us sitting at Cove bar, passing on my wisdom to the bar staff about cider.

Me: Could I get a glass of ice to go with the cider?
Bartender: (Puzzled look on face) Uh, sure. Why?
Me: (Points at bottle) It says ‘best served chilled on ice’ right here. Melbourne’s been doing it for a while.
Bartender: (Expression resembles someone discovering caramel-covered popcorn for the first time)  Awesome! Let me know how it is!

A walk along the riverside at Southbank reveals some more sights that Brisbane has to offer – an artificial beach, the Brisbane Wheel, the Osaka Friendship stone and a Nepalese temple left there after the World Expo in 1988. Do you see what I mean about the baffling?

Our hostel offered a $7 dinner meal deal and a complimentary cocktail. Avoid. I won’t name and shame the place, but the cocktail was melon-flavoured liqueur and tonic water. We headed out to Chinatown to get something to fill us up and returned to our room for the evening, thankfully no further French hanky-panky ensued.

A large portion of the last day in Brisbane was spent hanging out with wildlife at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Unfortunately, my camera was without battery and I forgot to grab any photos of this day off the Crazy Canadian before her departure.

I highly recommend visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary should you find yourself in Brisbane. Should you get there early enough in the day, be sure to check out the Birds of Prey demonstration. I was lucky enough to see a white-bellied sea eagle, a wedge-tailed eagle, barn owls and barking owls flying about and doing all manner of tricks for the audience. Anyone keen on falconry or animal handling should definitely get along to it. (Read more HERE)

We chilled out with, petted and fed kangaroos and red wallabies. We were even more fortunate to see Tasmanian Devils scrapping about, churning through baby chick carcasses like they were butter and waddling about being mischievous.

Before the koala demonstration, two koalas were fighting, which was quite funny to watch. I can’t really describe it. They were taking swipes at each other while howling and trying to move around the trees faster than I’ve seen a koala move ever. Now that I think about it, I might have witnessed an attempted koala rape.

The lone platypus they had on display was too fast for the Crazy Canadian to get a decent photo of it.

We made our way back to Southbank for dinner, where I met up with a childhood friend of mine. I hadn’t seen him December, 1998.
When I use the term ‘childhood friend’, I don’t use it lightly. He and I have known each other since kindergarten and were best friends in primary school until he moved to Brisbane in grade five. We caught up over dinner and a beer at The Plough for a couple of hours. Good times spent reminiscing about Whittlesea (the town I grew up in), people we still know from that time, the bad luck that has plagued the area in recent times and sombre recollections for people who are no longer with us.

So I’ll end this entry with a picture of the two of us, some 24 years on since first meeting.

Next time – Cairns!