Brisbane is incredibly pleasant. Toronto's planners should be sent here. Then, they should be swapped with Brisbane's, with the aid of plastic surgery and memory-altering drugs.
Partly, the difference is that Brisbane is a charmed city of perpetual summer, while Toronto in February is like something a yeti threw up, but Brisbane has also fitted itself out with parks and great public spaces. Across the street from the hotel is the sprawling Botanic Gardens, with acres of palms and soft grass, stands of bamboo, exotic birds, and banyan trees dangling great weird sheets of aerial roots. It's a Sunday, and Brisbaners who aren't laughing demurely over expensive brunches are in the gardens, speed-walking, cycling, jogging, or being pushed in a pram at at least a brisk trot.
The flat and bendy Brisbane river runs through the city. By the gardens, there are mangroves growing in slabs of black mud. There are no crocodile warnings, probably because any crocodile that did stray into the city would be identified by satellite and gently persuaded to leave, with its personal data scrupulously wiped afterwards. On the other side of the river, artificial creeks feed a public pool with a beach. Behind that, an arbour covered in flowering vines stretches for a kilometre. Healthy people stroll on meandering walkways. A group of police officers ambles along, chuckling amiably. Once, I see someone smoking a cigarette, but he turns out to be an English tourist.
I went to the Maritime Museum, which is one of those museums where the staff are nonplussed and a bit alarmed when you want to actually visit. They have a WWII anti-submarine frigate there, the HMAS Diamantina, which was commissioned -- awkwardly -- at the same moment the Red Army was marching into Berlin. There are hand-written warning signs, steep ladders, and assorted deathtraps -- all the signs of a good museum. It's interesting to see the speaking tubes on the bridge and the formica table artificers of the Australian navy ate their dinners at. Unfortunately, the ship is also a popular answer to the question, "what historic relic should we let our horrible children wantonly abuse today?"
So as not to have to make do with the Botanic Gardens, Brisbaners also have the Roma Street Parkland. More birds, more palms, more manicured lawns, and more basking water dragons -- foot-long lizards that move only when hassled by ibises or toddlers. Just overhead on a pathway between two groves of palms is a vast communal web where dozens of five-inch yellow spiders wait to fang, liquify, and devour insects, birds, and careless trampoliners. A woman stops me to say "don't worry, they're not venomous", and then calls me back to tell me that they're "golden orb-weaving spiders. They're like stars, aren't they?" And it is just like a little sky. The sky over an arachnophobe's hell, where countless hairy, many-legged stars glitter malignantly.
It turns out that they are venomous; they're just not lethal to humans, which, to Australians, makes their venom not worth mentioning. I stoop low when walking under their twenty-foot stretch of web. I'm not sure how often tall people pass this way, and I feel sure that walking into a low strand would cause the whole thing to wrap around me like a bedsheet on a clothesline.
Brisbane has a sightseeing wheel, like the London Eye. I went on it. It was by chance, really, because I'd just stopped at the ticket counter to ask if they knew of any extremely silly ways to get rid of $17.50. There's not a great deal to see from the 'Wheel of Brisbane'. In the bright sun, the many green spots are like dishes of crunchy vegetables soaked in butter, the high-rises of the business district are like high-rises seen from slightly higher up, and South Brisbane is a dull urban sprawl. It's a ground-level, human-scale city. This might be why there were only two of us on the entire wheel.
I wanted to visit a zoo in Brisbane, so as not to leave Australia without seeing a kangaroo, but didn't. One zoo is closed, the other two are far away and seem a bit mercenary. One of them offers expensive koala-cuddling sessions. There's a picture of a young woman looking down lovingly at a koala, while the koala looks off into the distance as if beginning to feel there's something distinctly odd about the tree it's on. There's also snake-holding, which supply and demand has made cheaper. I think kangaroo-cuddling was discontinued after a disemboweling controversy, while saltwater crocodile-cuddling is on hiatus because leaving the crocodiles alone with tourists' children was felt to be animal cruelty.
Tonight, I get on a train to Longreach.
Partly, the difference is that Brisbane is a charmed city of perpetual summer, while Toronto in February is like something a yeti threw up, but Brisbane has also fitted itself out with parks and great public spaces. Across the street from the hotel is the sprawling Botanic Gardens, with acres of palms and soft grass, stands of bamboo, exotic birds, and banyan trees dangling great weird sheets of aerial roots. It's a Sunday, and Brisbaners who aren't laughing demurely over expensive brunches are in the gardens, speed-walking, cycling, jogging, or being pushed in a pram at at least a brisk trot.
The flat and bendy Brisbane river runs through the city. By the gardens, there are mangroves growing in slabs of black mud. There are no crocodile warnings, probably because any crocodile that did stray into the city would be identified by satellite and gently persuaded to leave, with its personal data scrupulously wiped afterwards. On the other side of the river, artificial creeks feed a public pool with a beach. Behind that, an arbour covered in flowering vines stretches for a kilometre. Healthy people stroll on meandering walkways. A group of police officers ambles along, chuckling amiably. Once, I see someone smoking a cigarette, but he turns out to be an English tourist.
I went to the Maritime Museum, which is one of those museums where the staff are nonplussed and a bit alarmed when you want to actually visit. They have a WWII anti-submarine frigate there, the HMAS Diamantina, which was commissioned -- awkwardly -- at the same moment the Red Army was marching into Berlin. There are hand-written warning signs, steep ladders, and assorted deathtraps -- all the signs of a good museum. It's interesting to see the speaking tubes on the bridge and the formica table artificers of the Australian navy ate their dinners at. Unfortunately, the ship is also a popular answer to the question, "what historic relic should we let our horrible children wantonly abuse today?"
So as not to have to make do with the Botanic Gardens, Brisbaners also have the Roma Street Parkland. More birds, more palms, more manicured lawns, and more basking water dragons -- foot-long lizards that move only when hassled by ibises or toddlers. Just overhead on a pathway between two groves of palms is a vast communal web where dozens of five-inch yellow spiders wait to fang, liquify, and devour insects, birds, and careless trampoliners. A woman stops me to say "don't worry, they're not venomous", and then calls me back to tell me that they're "golden orb-weaving spiders. They're like stars, aren't they?" And it is just like a little sky. The sky over an arachnophobe's hell, where countless hairy, many-legged stars glitter malignantly.
It turns out that they are venomous; they're just not lethal to humans, which, to Australians, makes their venom not worth mentioning. I stoop low when walking under their twenty-foot stretch of web. I'm not sure how often tall people pass this way, and I feel sure that walking into a low strand would cause the whole thing to wrap around me like a bedsheet on a clothesline.
Brisbane has a sightseeing wheel, like the London Eye. I went on it. It was by chance, really, because I'd just stopped at the ticket counter to ask if they knew of any extremely silly ways to get rid of $17.50. There's not a great deal to see from the 'Wheel of Brisbane'. In the bright sun, the many green spots are like dishes of crunchy vegetables soaked in butter, the high-rises of the business district are like high-rises seen from slightly higher up, and South Brisbane is a dull urban sprawl. It's a ground-level, human-scale city. This might be why there were only two of us on the entire wheel.
I wanted to visit a zoo in Brisbane, so as not to leave Australia without seeing a kangaroo, but didn't. One zoo is closed, the other two are far away and seem a bit mercenary. One of them offers expensive koala-cuddling sessions. There's a picture of a young woman looking down lovingly at a koala, while the koala looks off into the distance as if beginning to feel there's something distinctly odd about the tree it's on. There's also snake-holding, which supply and demand has made cheaper. I think kangaroo-cuddling was discontinued after a disemboweling controversy, while saltwater crocodile-cuddling is on hiatus because leaving the crocodiles alone with tourists' children was felt to be animal cruelty.
Tonight, I get on a train to Longreach.
