An Alternative Guide to Brisbane And Its Best-Kept Secrets

If you’re looking for a more meandering and laidback way to cover the sights of Brisbane, skip the CityCat ferries and jump aboard a CityHopper. The service is completely free, and uses reconditioned Brisbane City Council ferries to cover a substantial swathe of the inner city, around the Kangaroo Point of the Brisbane River. The ferry is a hop-on, hop-off system, making stops at North Quay, South Bank 3, Maritime Museum, Thornton Street, Eagle Street Pier, Holman Street, Dockside and Sydney Street terminals. These rustic red ferries are an old-school delight.

Price: free

Times: every 30 minutes between 6am and midnight, seven days a week

For up-to-date timetable information, visit TransLink’s website.

For a truly alternative lunch ritual, check out the free public garden beds along the riverfront at the northern end of South Bank. All the greenery and herbs are edible – so pick up some basil, parsley, mint or oregano, season permitting. Even further afield, you can employ the Brisbane Public Harvest Google Map to track public land plots, vegetable patches and herb gardens in, around and just outside the city. In these veritable fruitbowl spots, users can forage for avocados, mangoes, lillipilly, figs, guava, mulberries and tomatoes.

Switch up Brisbane’s eclectic art collections, ideal sunny climate, and the locals’ love of outdoor activities by attempting one of the city’s four public art walking trails. The ‘Cultural Heritage Public Art Trail’ covers historic, heritage-listed and contemporary artworks and monuments, whilst ‘Art and the River’ spans 2km from South Bank’s Maritime Museum to the Kangaroo Point Cliffs. Perhaps the highlight of the four is the ‘World Expo ‘88 Trail’ looking at 11 of the 13 Brisbane-based artworks commissioned for the event.