Outback Queensland Trip 2024, Day 21-22: meandering in Meanjin/Magandjin

In Yuggera/Jagera and Turrbal country

Unless we do something astonishing tomorrow morning, this will be the last post we write about our current trip, as we fly home tomorrow afternoon. As we’ve said before, this record is primarily an aide-memoire for ourselves, but knowing our friends and family are following us in spirit helps motivate us, so thanks to all of you who have stayed the course! I am wordy I know!

But now, before I get onto this post, I’d like to clarify the naming I’ve been using for Brisbane. Meanjin has, for a long time, been the First Nations’ name we’ve known for Brisbane, but recently we’ve become aware of other ways of saying and writing it, including Maganjin and Magandjin, but there are others. Melissa Lucashenko used Magandjin in her recent novel, Edenglassie, so that’s where I am going at the moment. The First Nations website, Common Ground, gives Meanjin/Magandjin, while the First Nations created Skylore drone show we featured in our previous post used Maganjin.

At this point, I will also share a weird thing that we are seeing from our apartment window! We are staying in a mini-forest of apartment towers, which is perfectly okay for our purposes, but is not how I’d like to live permanently. Some of these apartments are just a bit too close. Take, for example, the building on our bedroom side. Every night, some time after midnight, a huge moving image show commences on an apartment wall visible from our window. That room’s blinds are up, and while our medium weave curtain is pulled across the window, we had the blind up. The first night something surprising happened. I opened my eyes, and thought I saw a big face looking at me from across the way! I looked out and realised it was some sort of projection happening. No-one seems to be in the room but this has happened every night, from soon after midnight until near dawn. We pull the blinds down a bit, so it doesn’t bother Len, but I’ve become accustomed to the nightly show. Very weird, though. I took some documentary pics one night. They aren’t great, but we’ll include one to give you a sense. OK, so most of you would pull the blind fully down to keep out the light but I have always liked to have a sense of my environment when I sleep (or don’t, as the case may be!)

We didn’t go to Sandgate

Our longstanding plan for Friday had been to get the train to Sandgate, where I had spent 6 years of my childhood, to catch up with a special friend who lives a little north of there. However, for health reasons, that, very disappointingly, had to be cancelled. With travel you just have to, as Baden-Powell famously said, “be prepared”. We could still have gone to Sandgate, but I’d rather come back another time with a car. We visited my old haunts by car, maybe 20 years ago, so I’m happy with that for now.

Instead, we decided to take the CityCat to its northern terminus (Northshore Hamilton), given we’d done the southern terminus the previous day. Again, the cost was 50 cents, and it took an hour to get there. We hopped off to lunch at a well-reviewed little cafe called Riva, minutes from the terminus. Recently renovated, it is a stylishly casual place which overlooks the river, and is set in a beautifully designed park. I enjoyed the pavers with their etched text from the area’s history. Riva caters for those wanting a nice lunch in a pleasant, relaxing atmosphere. I had panfried salmon on a cheese-free risotto, while Len had a Chicken Caesar salad.

It was an hour’s ride back to our North Quay stop. Then it was time for a rest, as we were heading out in the early evening for a light meal and a chamber music concert. For dinner, Len had spied a Spanish place called Olé that did tapas, which was all we needed. We shared lamb skewers, and then had ceviche (mostly me) and Jamon Serrano (mostly Len), with a G&T for me and a sangria for Len.

Chamber music side-by-side

The concert was held at the Griffith University Queensland Conservatorium, at Southbank (near where Olé was, and about 10 minutes walk from our apartment.)

The concert was billed as “a delightful musical collaboration as students from the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University join forces with the world-renowned LA Philharmonic Wind Quintet: Andrew Bain on horn, Whitney Crockett on bassoon, Boris Allakhverdyan on clarinet, Denis Bouriakov on flute, and Marc Lachat on oboe”. A wind quintet! We don’t see that often so we were keen to check them out. The tickets were only $45, because of the student involvement perhaps? Or, some sort of subsidy? It went from 7.30 to 9pm. This is what they played:

• WA Mozart, 1st Flute Quartet (three students, with Bouriakov on flute)
• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Nonet in F Minor, 1st movement (1894) (seven students with Bain on horn, Allakhverdyan on clarinet)
• Benjamin Britten, a wind ensemble written when he was 16 (students with Crockett on bassoon and Lachat on oboe )
• Valerie Coleman, Tzigane (LA Philharmonic Wind Quintet)
• Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, written for wife Cosima’s birthday (the LA Philharmonic Wind Quintet and an ensemble of about 6 or so wind and string students)

It was a delightful but poorly attended concert. However, many Conservatorium students were there and it was lovely to (over)hear their discussions about their aims and careers. The Quintet had been with the Conservatorium for a week, rehearsing, giving master classes, etc. It was great to get a sense of how new young musicians learn their craft.

The concert finished in time for us to watch the Skylore drone show again from so-called official side of the river. We could hear the story better but the drones were less visible because of the high-rise buildings in the background. There wasn’t such a background from the side of the river where we’d first seen the show.

Quirky (?) Magandjin

There were so many options we could do for our last full day, including traditional ones like some museums, but we were unsure, so I asked Chat GPT again. First, I asked for “Quirky Brisbane Tours”, and I got the Powerhouse; Boggo Road Gaol; Ghost Tours; Story Bridge Climb; Laneways; Kangaroo Segway; Kayak tour; Distillery tour; Craft Beer tour; Clock Tower tour.

But, most of these were specific tours. So, I reframed, asking for “Quirky Brisbane Sightseeing” and got “Brisbane offers plenty of quirky and offbeat sightseeing experiences”. It suggested Boggo Road Gaol (again); The Wizard of Oz Museum (in Wavell Heights); The Cube at QUT ( which sounded a bit Questacon-ish, for us Canberrans?); Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium (at Mt Coo-tha); Bee Gees Way (tempting, but over in Redcliffe); Eat Street Northshore (which we’d wandered through last night); Giant Koala in City Botanic Gardens; South Bank’s Streets Beach (a man-made beach, and, you know, beaches!); Wolston Farmhouse (but not sure where this was); Brisbane’s Tiny Doors (love this idea but maybe next time!)

In the end, we decided to get the 50-cents CityCat out to the Powerhouse, as it sounded interesting with performing art spaces, exhibitions, and eateries in an old powerhouse setting. We enjoyed pottering around there, looking at an exhibition of First Nations art, exploring the building, and having a light lunch at Mary Mae’s (“Eat Drink and Be Mary … Rollin’ On A River”. How could we resist?)

We spent a little time relaxing in the parkland with picnickers, and then got the CityCat back, alighting at Southbank to visit the officially non-quirky (well it wasn’t listed as such) State Library of Queensland. We beg to differ. This library has some quirky offerings, and finding your way around has its quirks! (Just ask the staff). What we did was visit its gallery area where the exhibition was Brisbane’s Portrait Prize for 2024. We enjoy portraits, so enjoyed looking at these, albeit Len was sceptical about calling some of the more abstract ones “portraits”. I liked many that I saw – some for the art, some for the subject – but the one I’m sharing here, I liked for a particular reason.

Now, however, I’m getting back to apartments and skyrises! The first day we were in Brisbane I spied a tall building across the river that appealed to me. It looked like it had some rattan-inspired decoration that seemed appropriate for a sub-tropical city. However, a little research turned up that it was called Upper House, which has apparently set a new benchmark for sustainable high-rise living. You can read all about it at that link, but the point is that its architects, Koichi Takada Co, describe its design as being “inspired by the organic forms of the Daintree Rainforest”. I think my rattan idea is close! I think it’s rather beautiful, which is not to say that I love the “tall sprawl”. Brisbane, like all cities, is challenged by a housing crisis. We did find some of its tall buildings attractively designed, but there are a lot of them – cheek by jowl.

For dinner, we returned to the Port Office Hotel just down the road … the food was good, but the service disappointed compared with our last visit.

This post’s pics