2020-03-01 – Brisbane Gardens

More walking today, mostly gardens.  We started out be heading to the Roma Street Parkland.  The park is up the hill from us and has some pretty reasonable views of the city. 

We found the Memorial Corner where there are memorials to fallen warriors from several conflicts, most notably World War I.

While there we watched a couple of rainbow lorikeets feeding on some flowers, 

and also saw a noisy miner.  The birds here are great to watch.

Further down into the park we found a children’s play area with some great street art, including giant tomatoes and squash.   

Nearby was the entry to the Spectacular Garden (yes, that is it's name)…and it was pretty spectacular.  It had a large concrete stream and cascade flowing through the center.  The stream ended an a massive waterfall. 

There were beautiful flower beds,

and some interesting art pieces,

and lots of gorgeous flowers,

and lots of Water Dragons. 

The park featured a large lagoon (being visited by a large number of ibis).

We then headed to downtown, past the Albert Street Church 

to King George Square (so named after a visit by King George V of England.

The square is right in front of city hall.  

We also visited the MOB (Museum of Brisbane)... 

where we spent a fair amount of time touring the New Women exhibit feature work by women artists over the last 100 years. 

There were a number of pieces that were "food" art.  We especially liked "Strawberries".

We stopped by the ANZAC Memorial…

and then found our way down to the Botanical Garden.  There was a little craft market going in one corner of the gardens.  Mary talked opals with a dealer while Paul checked out some of the other stalls.

We also saw a marker showing the heights of some of the major Brisbane floods.

The elephant apples were pretty interesting.  Don't know if they are edible and we didn't try one. 

By then we were pretty beat so we didn’t spend a lot of time there.  But it was certainly pretty.

The walk back took us along the river with good views of the Storey Bridge.

We also saw some great reflections in some of the building widows.

Once back to the room Paul took a long nap…it had been very hot as well so it was very draining.  We had a carryout dinner in the room.