Today was cloudy. It never rained. It never really threatened to rain. It was also a perfect 70 degrees. But because it was cloudy for moreso the morning part of the day, it caused me to call an audible and basically flip the activities I was initially planning for today with tomorrow (when it would be spotless blue without a speck of a cloud). Not like this required a whole lot of challenging manuevering or anything, but it was quite a last minute thing. What it did though is lead my first bit of tourism in Brisbane to be arguably my favorite - a visit to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.
As its name indicates, the stars of the show are the koalas, these little fluffballs of cuteness. But as always I tried saving that for last, and first started with the rest of the place. The Lone Pine sanctuary is actually quite large. When you enter, you can go left to see reptiles and then barnyard animals, or right to see other reptiles and birds. All roads lead to the koalas in the middle. I started out going left, seeing reptiles (including one massive crocodile) and then a series of barnyard animals that were all crazy cuddly, from sheep, to goats, to donkeys to a bunny. All of it just plain cute. From there, you go through a large "nocturnal animal" section. Now, the park is only open during the day. In the end, of the purported 8 species, we saw two of them - one possum and a tasmanian devil (really nice!). I can't blame the park in the end - they make it clear this area has only nocturnal animals.
Anyway, past that we get to the koalas, and I mean a lot of koalas. Basically the middle third of the park is series of enclosures with 1-3 Eucalyptus trees, with 1-2 koalas on each tree. It's overwhelming in its adorableness. It's koala overload and cuddliness overload. By the end of it, you are almost not even noticing the next tree with a couple more koalas. For instance, the eating area near the restaurant has say 10 of these trees on its perimeter, all of them with koalas, but the people issting in that enclave or mostly just focusing on eating. How can you focus on eating at a time like this!
Off to the side, is an area where three times a day they offer an opportunity to pet and take photos with a koala. It costs $30 AUD (~$20 USD), on top of the already sizable $58 AUD entry, but how could I not. It takes a while, since they do a great job of not hustling people in and out, but man when I got to the front of the line I was lovestruck. They are indescribably soft. Just petting one on its back puts an immediate smile on your face. They let you take selfies and then give a phoen to one of the handlers to take more photos, along with giving you little stats and facts and figures about tehse little fluffballs. By the end of it, koalas shot up clearly to my #3 favorite cute animal ranking behind the all-time leaders at #1 and #2 of polar bears (cubs, mostly) and penguins. Nothing will top those two, but I don't know if anythign will top koalas as well.
After the Koala park, I returned near my hotel for a quick Korean BBQ lunch, which was good but nothing special. They did give a lot fo banchan with it, some were excellent, and had ice, ice cold beer on tap. Those plus reasonably good meats and I was a content fellow. After a quick check-out of one hotel and check-in to the other, I was ready to explore South Bank, the more green, artsy side of Brisbane.
In reality, the main attraction of South Bank is probably the areas by the riverbank with amazing views of Brisbane CBD, the many varied, geometrically diverse bridges that span the river, and the world around it. While walking the South Bank, you really start to get the majesty of Brisbane. First teh glistening towers and buildings behind these beautifully designed bridges on the otehr side of the river. The curling Brisbane River really is just a magnificent sightline. They've also heavily developed the South Bank Riverfront Park in a great way. In a stretch about say three blocks wide (but probably 20 blocks long) they fit a covered "rainforest walk", a man-made pool with beach sand (very busy), a bunch of restaurants, a ferris wheel, and so much more. On the south side of the park are also the arts district with the Brisbane Opera / Performing Arts center, the Exhibition Center, and two art museums, conveniently placed at the far end of the walk.
Those art museums were my real destinations - both area connected in a sense, one named the Queensland Art Gallery and the other the Gallery of Modern Art - stylized together as QAGOMA. Both entrances are free (aside from some paid exhibitions), and both collectively took about 75 minutes to see properly. About the perfect balance of time for waht was a couple interesting museums. The QAM portion heavily featured Australian art, from large modernist takes on Aboriginal designs, to a series of 1930s stills. There was also a large exhibit on aboriginal art featuring animals which was nice. The GOMA part was about half in development for a future exhibit, but the one half still open was one large set of rooms featuring large, vibrant art, very little of it was too modern for my taste (which is a great thing). There was a lot of large, deep color paintings, some interesting sculpture and design. Just a really good curation.
Staying in South Bank, I walked towards the "West End" part of Brisbane, which is a more bohemian type area featuring a lot of restaurants, shops, bars and the like - one of which was Brisbane Brewing Company, which is a craft company based here. Despite a pretty basic name, the beer was good, but not great. That actually seems to be a theme of most of the craft spots I've been to in Australia. It's a weird dichotomy where this is absolutely a beer obsessed country, but in a very UK type way that overfocuses on pub pours and underfocuses on true craft.
Dinner was at Essa, which worked a lot like Honto the day before, with a nice banquet menu option. The food was more elevated Australian, than Honto which leaned far more into Japanese style cuisine, however it arguably was better, from a really nice burnt pork kebab/skewer topped with fig and radicchio slaw, to a brilliant wagyu trip-tip main. Even their dessert was delectable. The one thing though I did learn through this dinner, and the one yesterday, is that Brisbane very much is an early to rise, early to sleep town. My reservation was for 8pm, and I was the last one seated. I guess it maks sense since the sun rises around 6am and sets around 5pm. I just haven't done enough to get on that schedule.
Granted, while the restaurant was fairly empty, the nightlife wasn't really. I went to Death & Taxes first, a cocktail bar also on that little lane that held Antico and the Hyatt. I quickly learned the owners are the same between teh two bars, and they also own to other leading bars in teh city that were on my list (Dr. Gimlette and Cobbler). It's weird in the sense that you would think this is a bad thing, too much ownership of what should be craft type bars, but so far at least these two were quite different, and both still excellent. Death & Taxes was qiute full, though I was able to snag a seat at the bar and watch the mixologists work.
From there, I took a stroll down the main drag towards The Gresham, which also was quite a bit more full tonight, including some groups clearly coming from something or the other, as many people ordereed food (in the form of toasties) along with their drinks. It was if anything else a great people watching scene, elevated by some great cocktails as well. This was a great way to end a great day in Brisbane, a city I'm very quickly starting to love.
