I'm not predisposed to liking Brisbane. No-one's really said anything in its favour. It's the first big city I've been in for a while (much bigger than Cairns or Darwin) in fact the 3rd largest in Australia with a population around the 2 million mark. I'm struck by the traffic noise, fumes and mildly paranoid that I'm going to be run over. However it's doing its best. The sun's shining, the sky is clear and the not unimpressive skyline backdrops a river crisscrossed with bridges. 
Walking down southbank I'm disappointed in the cultural centre: museum, art gallery and library are mean concrete pre-fabs reminiscent of run-down English colleges. But this gives way first to a smarter festival centre and then to a long stretch of recreation area- an artificial beach and swimming pools and water-based play areas. Scores of people are hanging out here and the atmosphere is happy, children playing in the artifical sand and entertained by water parks. I loop round after crossing the river and return through the centre of the city- bold and brash and busy. And that's the afternoon gone, by 6pm it's all but dark.
As a side note I'd like to point out that this is real downside of Australia- none of those magical long summer evenings where it never seems to get completely dark in England- and they have the climate for it. To be awkward and different from the rest of Australia Queensland doesn't use daylight saving and so in summer it's light at about 4am, dark at 8pm which seems silly to me.
Next morning I have a few hours to traverse a few more city streets and I wander up to St Johns cathedral which is a small gothic cathedral which seems incongrous in the skyscraper jungle. Then it's onto the Greyhound bus to Byron Bay- the final leg of the East coast.
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