Saturday, 17 October 2026
Today I had hoped to see the Red Dress at the Museum of Brisbane in the Brisbane City Hall. I was sure I checked the exhibition dates and that the exhibition included our Queensland dates. I was wrong though and the exhibition finished last month. Oh well, off to city hall anyway to see the exhibitions that are currently on.
This morning we caught the train into city. Taringa station was at the rear of the Essence Suites so very conveniently located for a train trip into town. We even managed to get ourselves organised to tap on and off using our credit cards on our Apple Watches. How positively Maxwell Smart or James Bond is that??!
We disembarked at Central Station and walked the short distance to the Brisbane Town Hall located in King George Square. The town hall is an impressive heritage-listed building that was designed in the Italian Renaissance style. Construction started in July 1920 and it was officially opened in April 1930, following the creation of the ‘Greater Brisbane’ local government amalgamation in 1925. The building continues to serve as the seat of the Brisbane City Council and is also home to the Museum of Brisbane.
We made our way inside and used the stairs and lift to access the exhibition floor. We started with ‘Stories You Wear: Magpie Goose’, a collaboration between Museum of Brisbane and Magpie Goose, the proudly Aboriginal owned and led fashion and social enterprise. The exhibition features clothing from the fashion label and the stories behind the prints/patterns created for the fabric used to make the garments.
Next we made our way into ‘Precious’ which brings together thousands of remarkable items from more than 30 public and private collections across Brisbane. The collections featured an incredible array of items including: textiles, toys, architectural models, beaded purses, glass and stoneware, pharmaceutical materials and … self-pouring teapots. Invented in Manchester in 1886, self-pouring teapots were such a good idea, but one that just never took off!!
From the museum we wandered around to the Old Post Office and Anzac Park. With lunchtime upon us we found a food court where we enjoyed hot roast rolls. Refuelled, we wandered along to the City Botanic Gardens that span 18 hectares along 1.2 kilometres of prime river frontage. Also located in this precinct of the city we found Parliament House, which dates to 1868, and Old Government House, which was built for Queensland’s first Governor after Queensland’s separation from NSW. Sir George Bowen took up residence in May 1862.
Now in need of further refreshment we hoofed our way back towards Queen Street Mall in search of ice-cream! Syri guided us round and round in circles before we eventually found Gelatissmo. Bernie has been a big fan of vanilla this holiday rather than his usual lemon sorbet and I was particularly impressed today with Gelatissmo’s limited edition ‘Vietnamese Coffee’ with its very intense coffee flavour.
Thus fortified it was time to wander back to Central Station for the train ride back to the suburbs. Despite signs up saying that there was a limited service due to industrial action we found the trains to be perfectly adequate for a Saturday afternoon.
After all that walking around in the city, we put our feet up for a couple of hours to recover. And, thank goodness, we didn’t have to venture far for dinner tonight making our way down to TamRab Thai conveniently located under our hotel. Bernie enjoyed a mixed entree and then we shared a pork prik khing and a duck red curry with some jasmine rice. I even splurged on a mocktail, a passionfruit, mango and tonic water concoction that was lovely and fruity but not too sweet.
