Today was a glorious day in Brisbane. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the upper 80s. Yes it was hot! We took a walking tour with a company called Local Sauce. It is owned by Justin who tours Sydney and Brisbane. He did an amazing job of giving us the history of Brisbane and showing us cool things about the city and its people. More importantly, he kept our attention, was interesting and, best of all, ended the tour with a beer.

We met our guide at Reddacliff Place which was a short walk from our hotel. As we approached, we saw these weird, large metal balls in the area. It turns out, they were an art installation, made from vegetable steamers. It’s called Steam by Donna Marcus and it’s made from 7000 vegetable steamers. When the artist was trying to decide where the balls should be placed, she made a model of the area and randomly threw out marbles and wherever they landed is where the metal balls would be placed. It is a very cool installation and at night, they light up.

Fun fact, Australia became independent without have to go to war. Queen Victoria was the first Monarch and continued until their independence. Today, it continues to be a monarchy ruled by King Charles III.

In its early days, Brisbane was the city for all the convicts and those were the only residents for a time. Prisoners would be sent to Brisbane to do hard time for crimes like petty theft and vagrancy. Young kids and adults were sentenced from England and served their long sentences here. During that era there were thousands of men to every one women.

Pretty close to where we are staying is the Brisbane River. It is nicknamed the Brown Snake because its waters are murky and there are bull sharks in the river. It also is very windy, like a snake.

Another art installation, made out of metal that looks like a rolled up newspaper was a tribute to Brisbane’s first edition of their newspaper called the Moreton Bay Courier. It was first published in 1846 and the tribute features snippets of different stories that the paper has published over the years. It is amazing to see how proud the people in Brisbane are of their important firsts. There are tributes to various historical facts all over the city.

There is also a very diverse culture here. Atheists are the largest group, followed by Christianity, and then a very good mix of Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

The walking tour was worth every blister and we couldn’t wait to get back to our hotel to cool down.

Dinner was at a great restaurant called Lamberts. We walked over Kangaroo Point bridge which was a beautiful walk over the Brown Snake (see above) and we maneuvered through various neighborhoods to get there. Sometimes its hard to imagine that we are 1/2 way across the world and many things look like we are right in our own backyard.