I decided at the last minute to have a day off today. My partner has been away for a lot of this year and will probably be going away again soon, so we decided to spend the day together. We began by having lunch at Swampdog, a newish fish and chip shop with a focus on sustainable local fish. We then went for a little stroll down to South Bank, the site of the former World Expo in 1988 and now a public parklands. We saw this fine water dragon hanging out near one of the ponds there.
From South Bank we crossed over the river on the Goodwill Bridge to the QUT Gardens Point campus and walked around the edge of the City Botanic Gardens. Although the gardens themselves are lovely, the mangrove swamp (if you are into that sort of thing, which we are) is always a real highlight. In the photo below you can see the Kangaroo Point Cliffs on the other side of the river There used to be a lovely boardwalk through the mangroves here but it was damaged in the 2011 floods and was quietly demolished last year without any community consultation. Apparently the $1.8M to save it was too much, though somehow $72M was able to found to fix the Riverwalk which was also damaged. Hurumph.
In the gardens we spotted a enormously fat kookaburra, which was being buzzed by an aggressive mynah and was down foraging on the ground, which we hadn't seen before. We have lots of kookaburras around our home, but this one seemed quite unperturbed about having humans quite close by trying to take photos of it.
From the gardens, we walked around part of Eagle St Pier, from where you get a good view of the iconic Story Bridge. I never realised until now (thanks, Wikipedia!) that this is the longest cantilevered bridge in Australia. At that point I was getting a bit tired as my plantar fasciitis is still not letting me walk too far, so we jumped on the CityCat and headed back to South Bank, and from there got the train home. It was a really lovely day, and not at all wintery, but that is Brisvegas for you!
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