Brisbane Walking Tour

After my Queensland art gallery morning, I went on a Brisbane walking tour this afternoon.

The starting point was in Post Office Square, only a few minutes walk from my hotel if you know the shortcut. I knew the shortcut.

The e-mail from the tour operator said that the guide, Guy, would be wearing a white “Urban Tours” shirt. I saw a guy standing in the square alone wearing a white “Urban Tours” shirt. I was a little early, so I didn’t expect many other customers to be there yet.

I approached the guy, Guy. He said, “Hi, are you Joel?”

“Wait,” I thought. “How did he know that of all of his tour customers, I’m Joel?”

Without me asking, he provided the answer. “You’re the only one booked on this tour today, so you get a private tour.”

Oh, so that’s how.

We set off.

But, before I get into that. In case, for some reason that escapes me, you’re interested, Guy pronounces his name not like “he seems like a nice guy,” but rather like “gee,” but with a hard “G” rather than a soft “G.” So, the French pronunciation, not the American pronunciation.

My Inadvertently Private Brisbane Walking Tour

Guy was very informative and offered extremely interesting information about the sights of Brisbane’s Central Business District (CBD). I can’t tell you how many times I thought, “Wow, that’s incredibly interesting (or humorous). There’s no way I’ll forget that.”

I also can’t tell you how many times I nevertheless did forget it. Because, I forget.

But, I do remember some things. Actually, I recall a surprisingly large amount considering my memory.

The Old Post Office

For example, the old post office, the first sight on the itinerary, is constructed of a locally quarried stone called “Brisbane Tuff.” I don’t know about you, but when I heard Guy say “Brisbane Tuff,” it phonetically sounded like something Brisbanians (if that’s the appropriate term) might say as a declaration of the city’s unity and strength after a natural disaster strikes Brisbane. Instead of “We’re Brisbane Strong,” “We’re Brisbane Tough (Tuff).”

According to Guy, some other old buildings in Brisbane are also made of Brisbane Tuff, as are some of the curb stones on the CBD streets.

ANZAC Square

Just across the street from Post Office Square is ANZAC Square. ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. As the name suggests, it was a united Australian and New Zealand fighting force. ANZAC fought in the World Wars.

ANZAC Square commemorates the ANZAC fighters of World War I. There is a major ceremony there every ANZAC Day, April 25th.

A gambling game called Two Up can legally be played for money on ANZAC Day, and only on ANZAC day. It involves betting on whether two tossed coins will turn up two heads, two tails, or one of each.

Two Up was popular with the ANZAC troops during World War I. So the authorities make an exception on ANZAC Day to the usual prohibition on betting on Two Up.

ANZAC Square is level, but the street at the far end of it from Post Office Square is quite a bit above the square. ANZAC Square bridges the distance with a grand stone staircase divided into two sections, with a small landing between the two sections.

The designer of the square chose the number of steps in each section with great intent. The lower section contains 19 steps. The upper has 18. He chose those numbers because World War I ended in 1918.

The Windmill

The oldest stone building in Brisbane is “The Windmill.” It’s not a windmill.

One of the reasons for the founding of Brisbane was New South Wales got too crowded as a penal colony. Brisbane took the overflow.

They built what they hoped would be a windmill at the top of a hill in Brisbane to grind grain to feed the prisoners. There was just one problem. The winds at the top of the hill weren’t strong enough to power the windmill. I would have thought they would have sent someone up the hill to wet a finger and stick it in the air to test the wind before wasting their money building a windmill. Apparently not.

When the windmill didn’t work, they built a human treadmill beside it to grind the grains. Prisoners had to walk on the treadmill shackled to balls and chains for shifts that lasted most of the day. And I don’t mean most of the business day. I mean most of the day. Many of them died.

The treadmill is long gone and no one knows precisely where it was, but probably on the small plateau on which the not-a-windmill sits.

When the windmill didn’t work, they removed the blades and turned the tower into an observatory. Today, the public can go in only one day a year, Queensland Day, when many Queensland Government buildings normally closed to the public are opened.

Gingerbread Church

There’s a cute little brown brick church with white trim that locals call the gingerbread church in downtown Brisbane. I imagine they call it that because it looks like a gingerbread house.

During World War II, there used to be 16 weddings a day in that church.

If I remember the number Guy gave me correctly, during the war, 60,000 American troops were stationed in Brisbane. They were better paid, got better food and drink, and had better prospects after the war than Australian soldiers. So Brisbane women chased after the American soldiers. A lot of weddings ensued. Some of the brides moved to America with their husbands. In other cases, the American soldiers settled down in Australia.

In either case, Brisbane men were unhappy about their diminished sexual and marital prospects.

Old City Hall

Brisbane’s old city hall was sinking. The City Council had to decide whether to tear it down or fix it. Apparently, it wasn’t an easy decision. The “fix it” option was extremely expensive. Nevertheless, that’s the one they chose. It’s a good thing because the building is quite handsome.

Today, the old city hall houses a cafe (or maybe multiple cafes, I forget) and some shops (although I might be mistaken about the shops, we didn’t go in) on the ground floor and the Brisbane Museum above that. There are still some city facilities in the building as well.

I may go in on another day. There are tours every 15 minutes to the top of the clock tower.

Brisbane’s Smallest Door

Guy also showed me Brisbane’s smallest door. An overweight mouse would have trouble squeezing through. That’s fine because I don’t think the door opens. And there’s a brick wall behind it.

An artist put it there without telling anyone he was going to do it. Nobody ever removed it. It’s enough of a novelty that probably no one will.

To give you a sense of the door’s scale, those bricks in the picture are normal size.

The Brown Snake

Residents of Brisbane refer to the Brisbane River as “the brown snake” because of its snaky path. No, I’m not just making that up just to back up my earlier contention that it follows a drunken course. That’s honestly what Guy told me.

Ibis

Before going on Guy’s Brisbane walking tour, I’d seen some weird-looking birds with particularly long beaks picking at the garbage on the streets of downtown Brisbane. I didn’t know what they were. We saw more of them on the walk and I asked Guy. They’re ibises.

According to Guy, locals call them bin chickens because they like to hang out on garbage bins looking for stuff to eat.

The walking tour took us through Brisbane’s City Botanic Gardens. We saw a whole group of ibises there. The street ibises had grey or greyish bodies, but the ones in the park had white bodies.

End of the Brisbane Walking Tour

Guy provided me with a lot more interesting information, but I forgot all of it.

We finished the tour in about two and a half hours, despite it being scheduled as three. Guy said that when he leads tours larger than, say, one person, there tends to be much more interaction.

Plus, he said that I’m a fast walker compared to the speed he normally has to walk for his customers. This made me happy because I am slowing down in my old age, but, apparently, not as much as I thought. Either that or he normally conducts tours for people over 120 years of age.

Because the tour was faster than normal, Guy asked me if there was anything else I wanted to see. How would I know? That’s why I took the tour. To see things I wouldn’t otherwise know I should go see. So, we called it a day.