I had a better night sleep last night and woke up at 6:30am to get dressed and head out again to explore the quiet Brisbane streets. This time I walked the opposite way from my hotel and found another smaller park called Cathedral Gardens. Market stalls were being set up ready for trading. Green grocers, organic tea sellers and bakers putting out their produce while the smell of freshly brewed coffee was in the air.

The garden is opposite St John’s Cathedral (Anglican) an impressive medieval-like building with an intricate facade. It reminded me more of a church found in Europe than Australia. It turns out it’s the second oldest church in Brisbane, the first being a little further up the hill from where I’m staying on Wickham Terrace.

(Yesterday while returning from the Roma Street Gardens), I walked along Wickham Terrace. It’s quite hilly but I noticed the over abundance of medical clinics and doctors offices. I jokingly thought “this is where the sick people all come!” ? Sure enough, I do a bit of a search online and it turns out historically, the area was established high on the hill because they thought that ventilation would overcome the bad miasma that caused sickness and disease.

I also had since discovered that the place where I saw the homeless people sleeping was an air raid shelter (protected by Brisbane government) built in 1942.

Anyway back to my story.

I continued walking towards the city and ended up at ANZAC Square.

The impressive war memorial and eternal flame, still had the flowers and wreaths laid from ANZAC Day. I walked around the small memorial park to read the memorials and the inscriptions on the walls and on the ground there.

The park has trees that give the area a “Middle Eastern” vibe with the date trees and boabs. Turns out they were intentional to signify the battles in the Middle East.

The park is overlooked by a Major Glasgow Thomas William Glasgow, a war hero and later, a member of Queensland government came from Brisbane and served in World War I.

It was getting time to head back to the hotel to shower and change. Today was going to be the second day of our workshop to discuss the actions of our Adopt & Embrace Team at Rapid Circle. I was also going to give a presentation on a recent project I was on about our internal corporate communications framework as well as run a fun team activity.

It was really weird to be standing up in front of real people in a real classroom. I hadn’t presented like this on over 5 years. I was actually nervous but appreciative to get some feedback on the project because I had never put together anything like this before in my life. Getting the feedback from peers made me realise that I should have “tested” it with them outside of our international working group so I have more homework to do – create the Purpose of Why We Use Different Platforms for What – but it’s a lesson learned for me.

The day ended with some after work drinks and dinner at a nearby restaurant. Once again Brisbane feels like a warm summer’s night with many people out and about and filled restaurants and bars on a Thursday night. So bizarre and a different vibe in Melbourne which is trying to get more people to return to the city.

Tomorrow, it’s a day off. I have two more days here and I’m looking forward to spending these by myself, with my own thoughts, exploring and letting myself wander about to learn the history of this wonderful city. I haven’t created a full itinerary as I usually do. This time, I’m just going to see where each day takes me and figure it out as I go along. There’s only a couple of must-see visits.