How we filled in our Sunday

One of things I always check out when we are in a new area is where the local markets are held.  This is not that we necessarily want to buy heaps of gear, but the produce direct from the farmers is always great, and it is a good way to mix with locals and other visitors.

Before Sharryn had arrived in Brisbane I had watched a television program on South East Queensland and a segment was on the Boggo Road markets.  So come Sunday morning we headed off to find these.  The markets were held adjacent to the historic Boggo Road gaol (between 1883 and 2002 more than half a million people passed through the gates as staff, visitors and inmates).  It is known as one of the most notorious prisons of the 20th century and is now open for cultural-historic tours.  We could have joined a tour but there queues and it didn't hold a lot of attraction for us so gave it a miss. Instead we came for the markets!  Boggo Road is in the suburb of Dutton Park which was nearly fifteen kilometres from The Gap, and we passed the well known sports complex "The Gabba".

The only shopping was for edibles - and the beautiful fresh strawberries were first items purchased and I must say consumed before we got home.

We enjoyed wandering around the market which was quite small really and had a good variety of stalls.

From here we went back to Southbank where we parked and meandered along the parklands - I had already visited a couple of weeks earlier but for Sharryn it had been sometime since she last visited. Again as it was a beautiful day there were lots of families have BBQ's and picnics and swimming in the beach area.  We headed down to the jetty and caught one of the City Hoppers.  Again the views of the city and the bridges were wonderful.

Story Bridge

City buildings

We had initially planned on going the full length of the river to Bretts Wharf where the cruise boats berthed.  This required us to disembark from the City Hopper (as it doesn't go that far down the river) and join a City Cat.  It took much longer than we had initially thought and we realised that we were parked in two hour parking and we didn't have time to go as far as Bretts Wharf.  We got off the City Cat at Bulimba and was that a mistake.  We had not realised that the Bulimba Festival was on - this family friendly day has live entertainment, fashion parades, buskers, demonstrations and apparently 250 market stalls and as in excess of 100,000 attended you can imagine the crowds.  We were really disappointed that we didn't have time to wander the festival (poor planning on my part!), instead we just had to join the queues and wait for a City Cat to return to Southbank and our car.

It was a relief to arrive back at the car and no parking ticket - I didn't want to be the first person to get a ticket in this car.