The last morning in Brisbane came in a pale blue light, the kind of winter clarity that makes every leaf on the jacarandas look like it's been polished. I woke in my Highgate Hill flat with the windows open, the air at nine degrees but the sun already warming the floorboards. I'd spent six days here, which felt like a month, and the city had somehow become familiar in a way that surprised me. Today was about closing the loop properly, the way you finish a book you don't want to end.
I walked down the hill toward the river, past the Queenslanders with their tin roofs and wide verandas, the morning quiet broken only by a magpie's carol and the distant hum of a CityCat pulling away from the West End terminal. A neighbour I'd met at the Davies Park Markets waved from his balcony, holding a coffee. That's the thing about Brisbane in winter, he said, you get to see the city wake up without the sweat. He was right. The air had that crisp, low-humidity bite that makes you feel like you could walk forever.
Crossing the Victoria Bridge, I stopped halfway to watch the ebb tide pull silver ripples under the pylons. The Story Bridge stood upstream, its steel ribs red against the blue, and I thought about the first time I saw it from the plane, a geometric surprise in a green city. Now it was just part of my mental map, a landmark I'd pass without thinking. That's when you know a place is starting to stick, when the landmarks stop being postcards and become coordinates.
My first stop was the Brisbane Powerhouse in New Farm, that grand old industrial shell turned arts venue. I'd been there for Night Feast twice, but never in the daylight. The building's raw brick and steel felt different under the morning sun, less theatrical and more honest. A woman was setting up a stall for the weekend farmers market, stacking oranges in pyramids that caught the light. I bought a flat white from a pop-up cart costing about four and a half dollars, the same as everywhere in this city, and sipped it on the deck overlooking the river. The coffee was smooth, the kind of mild roast that Brisbane seems to prefer, and I watched a pelican drift by, headed upstream on some slow errand.
The Powerhouse's current exhibition was a collection of Queensland artist's works, paintings of cane fields and cyclone skies, and I wandered through with the audio guide muttering in my ear. There was a piece made from old XXXX beer cans, a love letter to Milton's brewery, and a video installation of the 1974 floods that made me stand still for longer than I expected. It's strange, the way a place's history gets under your skin, not through dates but through the texture of what people make. I paid the entry fee, which was about eighteen dollars, and felt like I owed the place more.
From New Farm I caught the CityHopper ferry back across the river, the free one that shuttles between the terminals. The boat was nearly empty, just a couple of cyclists and a man with a fishing rod, and I stood at the bow letting the wind carry the spray. The river's the real spine of Brisbane, more than any road, and riding it feels like you're seeing the city from its own point of view. The city centre rose ahead, glass towers mixed with Victorian facades, and behind them the green hump of Mount Coot-tha. I'd tried to get up there yesterday but the clouds rolled in, so I was planning a last-ditch attempt this afternoon.
The ferry dropped me at South Bank, and I wandered the Clem Jones Promenade past the man-made beach, its sand striped with winter light. A few families were already settled on towels, making the most of the eighteen-degree day, and I watched a toddler chase a water dragon that slipped into the gardens. At the Wheel of Brisbane, the pods were turning slowly with maybe three people aboard, a quiet rotation against the sky. I stopped at Coffee Anthology on the edge of the precinct and ordered a long black, the barista recognising me from the other day. That's the trouble with staying longer than a long weekend, people start remembering your order. He asked if I was sad to leave, and I said I wasn't leaving, just moving north. He laughed and said the best part of Brisbane is knowing you'll come back.
I took the bus to the Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, the 50-cent fare making the ride almost absurdly cheap, and walked the trails among the eucalypts and the quiet ponds of the Japanese Garden. The lookout at the summit was partly obscured by haze, but I could still see the city spread below, the river coiling through it like a spine. I sat on a bench and ate a ham and cheese toastie from the kiosk, which cost about nine dollars, and watched a family of kookaburras work the trees. A man beside me pointed out a koala in a fork of a eucalypt, a grey lump that seemed to breathe. It was the same view I'd seen from the plane, but now I knew what lay beneath it, the streets and the shops and the people, the shape of a life taking form.
The sun dipped lower, painting the sky in long streaks of orange and pink, and I caught a CityCat back toward the city for the last time. The ferry was busier now, people heading home from work, and I overheard a couple debating whether to book tickets for The Book of Mormon at QPAC, which is apparently the hottest ticket in town. I checked my phone and saw the rail of messages from home, friends asking what the weather was like, and I typed back 'clear and cold, the best kind of winter'. It felt true, in a way I didn't fully expect.
For dinner, I wanted something that felt like a proper goodbye, so I booked a table at Longwang, the pan-Asian spot near the city that had been recommended as the place to go before the night out. The room buzzed with the energy of a Thursday evening, and I ordered the dumplings and a chicken dish that arrived with a theatrically smoky garnish. The bill came to about forty-five dollars for a generous meal, and as I paid, I realised that number felt normal now, not a novelty. In a week, I'd recalibrated to Australian prices, where a coffee is four-fifty, a meal at a mid-tier place is under twenty, and a flat-fare transit ride will never break the bank. It's not that things are cheap, but they're fair, and the 50-cent fares do make you feel like the city is on your side.
The last thing I wanted to do was simple: walk along the river at night, from the South Bank parklands up to the Story Bridge. The lights of the city flickered on the water, and the air had that sharp, clear quality that winter in the subtropics brings. I stopped at the base of the bridge and looked up at its lattice, glad I'd never felt the need to climb it. Sometimes staying on the ground is enough. I thought about the road north, the ute I had yet to pick up, the thousand kilometres of coastline between me and Cairns, the beef towns and the sugar mills and finally the reef. The plan was to leave in two days, and I felt the pull of it, but also the weight of what I'd be leaving behind. Brisbane had been a soft landing, a place to get my feet under me, and I was grateful for it.
I walked back to Highgate Hill in the dark, the streetlights catching the jacaranda pods on the pavement, and when I reached my flat, I stood on the porch for a minute listening to the city hum. A plane crossed the sky, landing lights blinking, and I thought about how this was the last night in a place I'd never planned to love. But that's the thing about travel, you don't get to choose what takes root. I unlocked the door and packed my bag for the morning, the maps of Queensland spread on the table, tomorrow's route already traced in pencil. G'day, Brisbane. I'll be back before the summer.
And that's the thing about a place like this, it doesn't need you to stay, it just needs you to remember the feel of it. The river's still running, the magpies are still singing, and the 50-cent ferry will still take you across for a coffee at the other side. I'm heading north tomorrow, but Brisbane's in the rearview for now, and that's exactly where it belongs.