Discovering Brisbane

A Lizard sunbathing at Kangaroo Point

Today is discover Brisbane day, a walk to find tonight’s music venue first takes us to the West End district. It has a much more Camden Town feel to it, little coffee shops, recycling markets, ethnic shops and old buildings. There seem to be a good number of locals around all well known to the café owners, it’s a very comfortably, “village” type atmosphere, roll on tonight, but first where’s that tourist bus. We pick the bus up near the Cultural Centre (sorry we didn’t go inside) and ride to Kangaroo Point or city look out. This is a great spot to see the city of Brisbane, climb down the steps  to the park and walk along the river. Several rock climbers are scaling the cliffs, people are out biking or walking and lizards are sunbathing by the water’s edge. The climb back up to the road is via 106 steps and yes I counted them! I’m ashamed to say a couple of runners over took us on the way up, well they were at least 30 years younger than us.



The bus continued to Post Office Square, a lovely open space in the centre of the city where we took in the sights of the Anzac Memorial, Old Town Hall and the Old Windmill (first industrial building in Brisbane) and of course some lunch in a cool (in both senses of the word) café. A walk to Eagle Pier shows us how the other half dine in the swanky riverside restaurant’s overlooking the river. The final leg of the bus takes us past the Castlemaine XXXX factory, Suncorp Stadium and Park Road where we stop for a real Italian ice cream at “The Dolce Vita” before finally heading home.

Loc'N'Load by day 

Evening time starts early here as it gets dark about 5pm (and consequently light about 5.30am), the venue for tonight is Lock’N’Load an unprepossessing bar in the West End, until you get inside. The main draw is the live jazz tonight by Charlotte MacLean and sure enough she’s singing in the front bar accompanied by a pianist. The bar however is deceiving it stretches back to become a lovely wood lined room with false windows, chairs on the walls and eclectic art. The real gem is behind that a beautiful covered courtyard with wooden benching  around 3 sides and tables scattered along the length. There’s a huge mirror on one wall and exotic plants behind the benches draping artfully over us. And then there’s the food, I expected pub grub and got cordon bleu style cuisine – lamb medallions on potato and pea mash with lemon and mint salad  for Dave, Barramundi fillet on spiced pumpkin with spinach feta and pomegranate salad – absolutely divine. The jazz was soft and bewitching as well. On the walk back we were enticed into another local bar “Grilld”, by bluesy music. After they finished we got talking to the organiser Angela, she’s been in musical theatre all her life, performing in Mama Mia, Cats and as Liza Minnelli in Paris (France). She sang the last song acoustically and sounded like Eva Cassidy one of my all-time favourites. She does this every Tuesday as an open mic session for 4 local bands – so good to hear original good music.