Australia's Queensland is renowned nationally and internationally for it's idyllic weather and predominantly outdoor lifestyle and the capital of the sunshine state, Brisbane is no exception.

Brisbane has a wide, undulating cityscape that combines nature's beauty, Brisbane's interesting heritage and the unique cosmopolitan lifestyle that is continuously evolving. The city is now the third largest in Australia with a population of over 898,000. The city centre straddles the river and is a fairly compact 2 mls from N to S and 1 ml from E to W, but it has no great architecture or natural sights to attract the international tourist.

The old Expo '88 site on the S bank of the river has left a pleasant parkland area (South Bank Parklands), but there are no iconic city sites worth flying halfway round the world to see, especially when compared with its rival, Sydney.

It is often used as a transit point for tourists arriving or leaving Australia and is the gateway to the Gold Coast resorts to the S and the Sunshine Coast to the N. The hilly suburb of Spring Hill to the N has various parks and views over the city and river but little else. Fortitude Valley to the NE offers a Chinatown district and downmarket shopping by day but is probably best avoided at night unless you go prepared for a seedy red-light district which may not be entirely safe for unwary tourists.

Locality:

Brisbane is situated halfway down the E coast of Australia, in the SE corner of the state of Queensland, of which it is the capital. It is 470 mls NE of Sydney, 58 mls N of Surfers Paradise, 12 mls SW of the airport. The city centre sits on a flat N-shore promontory in a tight loop in the Brisbane River, which at this point is about 250 yds wide. The open sea at Moreton Bay is 10 mls downstream. The surrounding plain is flat as far as a small range of hills dominated by Mt Coot-tha, 5 mls to the W.