Brisbane -- River City

Our final stop in Austalia was in the northeastern city of Brisbane. Founded as a penal colony for recidivist prisoners from New South Wales (Sydney), it was designed to be so terrible that no one would want to be sent there. Fortunately for us, today Brisbane is a really pleasant city built mostly along the curving Brisbane River.

One of the things we really wanted to do while in Australia was attend an Australian Baseball League game. The schedule worked out for us to see the Brisbane Bandits take on the Canberra Calvary. The game was slightly away from the area where we were staying, but very easy to access by bus. Unfortunately, the level of play was fairly low (for those who follow the minor leagues, I suspect it was about A-ball level). Most of the players were has-beens or never-weres. A few young Americans were in the game as they play "winter" ball to keep their skills up before returning to the minor leagues in the US spring.

Although we did see the Bandits win, it was a game marred by five errors, including one that allowed the winning run to score in the 11th inning. The teams also combined to strike out 23 times, and basically looked like they would lose to a good college team. The stadium was quite small, but could seat many more than the announced crowd of 600. All of that said, it was a very nice night (while it was hot in  during the day, it cooled down nicely after sunset), and we did enjoy seeing live baseball.

We spent a good amount of time walking around Brisbane just seeing the city. Among other things, there are many public works of art:

One of the cooler things we found, was the Nepalese Peace Pagoda, originally brought to the city by Nepal for the 1988 World Exposition. It has since remained in Brisbane as a site for relaxation and meditation.

We took a tour of the City Hall building and learned a bit about the history of the city, including the building itself, which cost almost $1 million pounds to build in the 1920's!

We also saw a lot of art, including a visit to the Art Gallery of Queensland where we continued to see a lot of Indigineous art, much of which is overtly political -- Richard Bell in particular loves to make bold statements:

Later, we attended the opening weekend of an exhibit called "Air" at the Gallery of Modern Art, including attending a talk by the curators of the exhibit. There were a lot of interesting large scale pieces, which focused on air as something that, while invisible, is made visible by the many issues it impacts such as pollution and climate change:

Finally, we wanted to spend some time seeing the city from the river. But, rather than take a tour, we simply used our transport cards and hopped on a public ferry, the City Cat (a catamaran), which we rode to the end of the line and back spending more than 90 minutes taking in the scenery. No commentary, but we got to see a lot of the parts of the city where people actually live, including many old buildings that have clearly been repurposed and plenty of nice rivierside homes, while chatting with some of the ferry staff.

Now, on to New Zealand.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana