The CityCat pulled away from the South Bank terminal and the whole skyline swung into view, all glass and steel above the brown river. I had a bank card in my wallet that finally worked, a tax file number that existed somewhere in the ATO's systems, and a Medicare card that I still wasn't entirely sure I'd used correctly. But the ferry was the real achievement. It cost fifty cents. The whole ride, from one end of the river to the other, cost half a dollar. In what world does a ferry ride cost less than a banana?
This is the Australia Travel Podcast, day four in Brisbane, and I'm Jack Thornton. I woke up this morning in my rental in Highgate Hill with a list of boring, necessary things to do. Bank, tax file number, Medicare. The glamorous side of moving to a new country. And I have to say, Brisbane does a good line in bureaucratic efficiency. The Commonwealth Bank branch on Queen Street Mall had me in and out in twenty minutes. Passport, proof of address, a few signatures on a screen, and suddenly I had a working card and a mobile app full of features I'll probably never use. The whole thing cost me nothing to set up, which was a relief after the initial cash injection of moving.
The tax file number was even easier. I'd applied online yesterday from my flat, and the confirmation email arrived this morning. It's free, it's straightforward, and it's the key to basically everything here — work, superannuation, even some bank accounts. The Medicare part was the one that felt properly administrative. My visa's eligible, so I went to the Services Australia office with my passport and a printout of my rental lease, and a very patient woman named Carol walked me through the form. No appointment, about forty minutes of my life, and I walked out with a temporary number printed on a piece of paper that I'll need to keep safe until the real card arrives in the post.
By eleven o'clock I'd done more paperwork than I did in a year of adult life back home. So I celebrated the only way that felt right: I caught the CityCat down to New Farm and went for a walk. The Brisbane Powerhouse is an old power station turned arts venue, all brick and industrial weirdness, and it's right on the river. There was a farmers market on this morning, and I wandered through the stalls smelling coffee and bread and something that might have been a chilli jam. I bought a flat white from a little stall for about four and a half dollars, which is standard, and a pastry that I didn't need but couldn't resist.
The Powerhouse itself is worth a look even if you're not here for a show — the old turbine hall is now this cavernous space with a cafe and a view over the river, and the whole building feels like Brisbane's culture made physical. This weekend kicks off something called Night Feast, apparently, which is a free month-long night food and art village on the Powerhouse's riverside terraces. I'm told the chef-only dishes are the draw, but honestly, the neon light installations might be worth it on their own. Worth checking the dates if you're in town.
I ate my pastry on a bench facing the river, watching a family of water dragons sun themselves on the rocks below. They look like tiny dinosaurs with attitude. The Brisbane River at winter noon is all glare and quiet, the occasional CityCat cutting a white line across the brown water. A man on a paddleboard drifted past, and I thought about that fifty-cent ferry and how much this city gets right that other places get wrong.
After lunch I had a more practical mission: my ute was finally ready. The mechanic in West End had called yesterday afternoon to say the old girl had passed her roadworthy and she was mine. So I caught the bus over — another fifty cents, which still feels like a misprint — and there she was in the laneway behind his workshop. A white ute with a bull bar and a thousand little dents that tell stories I don't know yet. He handed me the keys and a receipt for about eight hundred dollars' worth of brakes and a new battery, and I thought, well, that's the price of freedom.
I drove her back through the Valley, which felt both wrong and right. Wrong because she's a country vehicle in a city of electric scooters. Right because she's mine. I parked on a side street and walked up to Given Terrace in Paddington, where the Queenslanders have these wide verandahs and tin roofs that catch the winter light. I had a late lunch at a place called Longwang, which does this sort of Chinese-Australian thing that I can't quite explain but fully respect. A plate of dumplings and a pot of tea came to about thirty dollars. Not cheap, not outrageous. The dining room was full of people doing exactly what I was doing — taking a long lunch in the middle of a Tuesday, making the most of the winter sun.
Paddington is the kind of suburb that makes you want to move here properly. Vintage shops, cafes with names like Coffee Anthology and The Hideout, and a rooftop bar culture that comes into its own as the arvo stretches on. I had a second coffee at a tiny place that's part of the Given Terrace strip, just watching the street. A man walked past with a kelpie. A woman carried a bunch of flowers that must have come from the market. The winter air was crisp and the sun had that low, golden quality that makes everything look like a film still.
But the real event of the day wasn't the paperwork or the ute or even the coffee. It was the ferry. I caught the CityCat again in the late afternoon, this time from the University of Queensland terminal all the way up to North Quay. The sun was dropping and the river turned orange and pink, and the city skyline — which I'd been looking at sideways for four days — finally made sense. The Story Bridge, the old warehouses on the north bank that are now apartments, the new towers going up for the 2032 Olympics. The ferry slipped past the Botanic Gardens, and I felt something I hadn't felt since I landed: that I was actually living somewhere, not just visiting.
Here's something useful for your trip, and I mean genuinely useful. Brisbane's public transport is a flat fifty cents per journey. Not fifty cents for a short trip, but fifty cents for any bus, train or ferry in South East Queensland. That's been made permanent, apparently, and it's the cheapest of any Australian capital. For comparison, a single ride in Sydney costs around four dollars. If you're here for a week and you use public transport twice a day, that's about seven dollars total. Seven dollars. A coffee costs more. I paid exactly fifty cents to ride the CityCat for nearly an hour — that's absurd value, and it makes the whole city feel accessible.
Now, the thing nobody tells you about moving to Australia is the hundred points. You need a hundred points of identification for everything — bank accounts, phone plans, the library, possibly your soul. Passport is worth the most, but you still need a secondary document. My UK driving licence helped, along with a bank statement and my rental lease. It's a weird points-based game of proving you exist, and you should start gathering documents before you even get on the plane. Photocopy everything, keep it all in a folder, and brace yourself for the word 'proof' to become your entire personality.
The other practical thing is the SIM. I grabbed a prepaid one from Aldi's mobile arm, which runs on the Telstra network and costs about twelve dollars for a month with enough data to keep me lost in the suburbs. You need your passport and an Australian address — which, if you haven't got one yet, is the first hurdle. A hostel address works for some things, but for banking and Medicare you need something more solid. That's why the rental matter sorted itself first. If you're arriving, get the accommodation sorted before anything else, even if it's temporary. Everything else follows from that piece of paper.
So, day four. Bank sorted, tax number sorted, Medicare sorted. A ute in my name and a tank of diesel. I know where the best coffee on Given Terrace is, and I know that a CityCat ferry at sunset is worth more than any of the paperwork it took to get here. Tomorrow I need to pick up some camping gear, check the tyre pressure, and start planning the actual road north. The plan is to drive up the coast to Cairns through the dry-season tropics, through beef and sugar towns, and end at the reef. But tonight, I'm going to sit on my tiny balcony in Highgate Hill and watch the city lights come on, because for the first time since I landed, it kinda feels like home.
That's all for today. I'm Jack Thornton, still in Brisbane, still in winter, and slowly getting my life in order. Catch you tomorrow.