diaryofapom.com
Memoires of a tour of Australia
We found Brisbane to be a truly amazing city. Built on the edge of a river, and boasting amazing views onto it from numerous locations, it lived up to, and even exceeded our expectations. We read many texts on Brisbane when we were in the UK and every one sang it praises, but when you are there in person you soon realise that is really is something special.
One big shock is that even though it is a city, the people are still friendly and willing to help you. There are café’s everywhere, the main shopping street is pedestrianised and has outdoor bars running up the centre of it, there is the ‘South Bank’ area teeming with bars, restaurants and of course the ‘Streets Beach’, a man made beach and lagoon pool for relaxing days out of the office.
The transport system is years ahead of what we experienced in the UK, with buses running on time, digital displays at every stop telling you when the next bus would be arriving, and the city centre underground terminals. We didn’t get chance to use the trains, but if they were half as good as the buses, they would get a thumbs up from us.
We were told that there are bad parts to the city, which should be avoided at night, but we didn’t go into them, so can’t really comment. All of the area’s that we saw seemed to be very safe and a pleasure to be in. We visited some of the suburbs, both north and south, and have to say that the northern suburbs seemed to be more attractive. The being said the traffic around Brisbane is abysmal, and if we were to live here we would only do so if we could commute to work by train as driving is out of the question.
The caravan site that we stayed on in Brisbane was the ‘Newmarket Gardens Caravan Park’, and it was very good. The facilities were clean and tidy, well looked after and we always had hot water. The pitches were spacious enough, and whenever we used the BBQ facilities we found them to be reasonably clean and serviceable, except on rare occasions when someone had left them dirty. The staff were friendly, as is becoming the norm now, and the prices were reasonable for being so close to the city. It was pay for six nights and stay for seven, which at $32 per night wasn’t too bad a deal. It meant that when we took into account the free night, we were getting under our $30 per night target.