Mt Coot-Tha Lookout

After spending Christmas on the Gold Coast we returned to Brisbane to say our goodbyes to Filip, who had a flight to Cambodia to catch. For our final trip together we headed to the Mt Coot-tha Reserve, a 15 minute drive west from the city to take in the views of Brisbane and complete a last bushwalk together. After Filip had left, Jack and I stayed in Brisbane to work a while before heading to Newcastle for a wedding. The final two photographs of Brisbane in this post are taken from a different lookout point in South Brisbane, near to where we were staying.

Skypoint Observation Deck

As part of the cost of the Skypoint climb (seen in Friday’s post), you are given entry to the observation deck, which can be used anytime on the day of your climb. The evening after our climb, Jack and I returned to the observation deck for a drink and a chance to take my own photos of the view.

Skypoint Climb

Surfers Paradise is home to the Q1 building, “the world’s tallest residential tower” and we decided to climb it. As you may have noticed from some of my earlier posts, Jack loves any opportunity to leave the ground and climb to new heights, remember that tree climb? So we booked ourselves onto a morning climb. Unlike the tree climb, this one involved a harness to keep you connected to the building. We climbed from the observation deck, already 230m above the ground, to the Bird’s Nest up a specially built metal staircase on the outside of the building. The Bird’s Nest was the highest point in the Skypoint Climb and at 270m I was thankful for my harness! Safety procedures meant that you weren’t allowed your own cameras on the climb (its 14 years in prison if you drop anything off the edge!) and so all the photos in this post were taken by the climb team. More information about the climb can be found here on Skypoint’s website.

Brisbane

Just before Christmas we arrived in Brisbane. We had a few days to spend exploring the city and relaxing at the lagoon before Jack’s friend caught his flight home. As a lead up to the festive season the local council were putting on Christmas fireworks along the Southbank. One evening we headed down there to watch the fireworks, which were choreographed to Christmas songs. It was odd being away from home for Christmas and being in a hot country I didn’t often feel festive, but standing and watching the fireworks along the river bank filled me with that Christmas feeling. As some of you may have seen from my Instagram account (there is a link in the drop-down menu) we spent the Christmas period at Surfers Paradise. As it was our first Christmas away from home we decided that we wanted something very untraditional and so we headed to the beach.

P.S. Apologies for how blurry some of the firework photos are, I didn’t have my tripod and with my hands being pretty unsteady at the best of times it’s a miracle the long exposures captured anything at all!