Southbank to Kangaroo Point

Opposite Southbank Station Southbank Memorial walk

South Bank Parklands. The park is located behind the goodwill bridge This beautiful park honours the fallen soldiers. Tucked away opposite Somerville House and overlooking South Bank is this tiny triangular park with a secluded grove of banyan trees and pink porphyry stairs leading down to wrought iron memorial gates and two cairns commemorating the two world wars.

Brisbane’s war memorial parks are dotted throughout the suburbs, paying tribute to those who lost their lives in the Great War. For it is some of the city’s best loved gracious and stately parks with their shady avenues of figs, palms and pine trees that were built not as playgrounds but as memorials to alleviate the extraordinary outpouring of grief after 1.38% of the country, or 61966 young men, lost their lives.

I get quite confused at the corner and a walker leads me back to the crossroads. I decide to stop for Lunch at the Bel Swiss Cafe63 attached to the Bel Swiss hotel I had stayed at before. After lunch I walk back to the riverside and start walking to Kangaroo Point.

Walking is fun, I have done this many times dressed in running gear complete with a water bottle. Today it is very hot, and I am dragging along a suitcase and camera bag that get heavier with every step. I reach the cliffs that I get to know so well, and see the cliff sign and watch a girl climbing the cliffs. I am walking to Thornton Jetty from where I hope to get to Kangaroo Point.

Here the fun for me starts. I ask a walker how far it is to Thornton Jetty and he tells me its closed. I ask about how to get to the top and he says I have to climb up the steps to Joeys Restaurant, or I have to walk back to Southbank. He also says…“Looking at you, you could walk those steps quite easily…” We start walking back to the steps and he does take pity on me and offers to carry my bag to the top. I climb happily after him but a third of the way up, I realise this is not going to be easy. I puff and wheeze and groan and make my way up to the top stopping at each landing to catch my breath and hope my heart does not give out and tumble me down so I have to start again. Finally I actually get there and with a relieved grin, he leads me to my bag and climbs back down. I take a few photos and collapse on a seat to chat with another walker who uses his phone to show me where my hotel is located. It is almost straight across the road. I am there.