Koalas in Brisbane
Driving the Great Barrier Reef from Gold Coast to Cairns
Brisbane is about an hour north of Gold Coast and is both the largest city and the capital of Queensland State. On the outskirts of Brisbane is a place called the Daisy Hill Koala Centre. The Koala Centre rehabilitates injured koalas found in the wild and houses five that cannot be released into the wild because they cannot reproduce anymore.
The best part of Daisy Hill is that it is completely free. We learned that out of over 900 species of eucalyptus trees, koalas could only eat around 120, and they regularly eat just 14. We also learned that koalas can swim!
The second best part of Brisbane, after the koalas of course, is the Southbank Streets Beach Park. It is a completely free man-made beach/pool complex beside the river that anyone can visit. A lot of people were sun tanning or just chilling in the water, since it’s not deep enough to swim properly. There are showers and lifeguards, as well as some nearby cafes. We would also come to visit other man-made swimming lagoons in other cities along our road trip, but this was the only one that had real sand; this made it feel more authentic and not just like any old pool.
On a weekday the pool wasn’t very busy, but it’s easy to see how it could get really busy on the weekends. We only stayed for two hours because that’s how long we could get free parking for. We could have easily stayed longer but Brisbane has some of the highest parking fees in the country, and after walking 15 minutes back to the car, we decided it was time for lunch.
That evening we ended up driving downtown to see a boardwalk that extends out over the river. To our delight, we arrived at sunset and were able to capture some fantastic photos of the Victoria Bridge.
The boardwalk over the river was quite enjoyable but it was really hot and humid, even after the sun went down. We were sweating buckets just walking around and the sun wasn’t even out. There were plenty of runners around and just as many people sitting around, having a picnic or just chatting. We sort of wished we had a bottle of wine and a picnic basket ourselves.
