We decided to say goodbye to Brisbane on a high note and see some Aboriginal art on the way.

After having packed everything up yesterday, we headed over to the second botanical gardens of Brisbane. I had read about mount Coot-tha, from where you are supposed to have a great view over the city and which is also the starting point for some nice hikes. So we drove to the botanical gardens, the starting point for everything. We went over to the info centre to enquire about the hikes that would take you along Aboriginal art. The ladies at the counter were quite discouraging unfortunately. They told us we wouldn’t see a lot and that it wouldn’t be a good use of our time. But no, they hadn’t been there themselves so they were not 100% sure about the situation. The stupid thing was, that when I asked them about what other hikes they recommended (for there were many listed!) they started to lay out a route for us that would lead up to the Aboriginal art trail, after passing the lookout. They mentioned some others, but their enthusiasm equaled that of our initial plan, so we decided to stick to the lookout and art trail. (I must say they did seem relieved when I told them, after they had looked down a bit to often at my slippers, that I had proper walking shoes in the car.)

Our walk started by going through the botanical gardens for the first two kilometer. Quite lovely actually! A lot of bamboo again. Then it was up, up, up until we became unsure about whether we had reached our goal. The signage was marginal and we did see a lot of tourists on the other side of the road. Only thing was: we were not supposed to cross the road. In the end we walked on and after 5 minutes reached the official end of the trail and beginning of the lookout terrain. Yes, no worries is one thing to master, with the other being my impatience…

I say terrain, because there was a parking lot, a souvenir shop, two lookout points and two restaurants at the sight. Since it was a bit later than we had originally anticipated, and left our lunch in the car, we decided to have a snack at one of the restaurants so we wouldn’t faint during the second part of our hike. Unfortunately service was slow, so by the time we got our food, we could have been half way down. Oh well, this way we had enough time to soak in the view of Brisbane from afar.

Before we actually set off for the second part of our hike, I got myself some icecream. I mean, hiking and icecream, sounds like a good combinatiom right?! It turned out that eating does slow you down a bit while walking, but the good thing was that the way was mostly down now, so I think no one noticed. Besides, I had chosen rum and raisins as a flavour, so at some point I just started drinking my icecream. Yarrr!

About half way down we reached the Aboriginal Art track. A short, less than an hour detour to the main trail. At the beginning there was another sign warning us that most of the artwork had become a part of nature again, so our expectations were low. And rightly so. There are a couple of posts along the track pointing out the artwork, but two were gone, two only consisted of small stone circles (no not like Stonehenge, but small rocks laid out in a circle), with two drawings left like you would imagine them. Another bummer was that they turned out to be not thousands (or at least hundreds) of years old, but from 1993. That was the year of the Aboriginals and that is when they made this trail and some Aboriginals were asked to make art along it.

The last part of the hike took us through some picknickareas. Funny: there are always BBQs at the official picknickareas! I have never seen that at home, but the Aussies are certainly living up to their internationally proclaimed fame of loving a good barbie. After we reached our car, we took off to our next motel near the Sunshine coast.