Brisbane is a beautiful city, even in the rain. It has a lot of street sculptures and art. For example the electric boxes that dot the streets have all been painted in different designs by different artists. There is aboriginal-motif murals on buildings. The city is green, literally. It has two botanical gardens within its limits and all its parking garages are underground -- with parks on top of each.

Our visit to Brisbane consisted of a bus tour around the city and a visit to the Lone Pine koala sanctuary and it rained almost the entire time. Since this is the rainy season that was not unexpected but Brisbane would have been a nice city to walk around in.

Our ship is so big it can't get into the cruise port so we had to tie up in the commercial port about 15-miles downriver from the city which serve the big bulk carriers and container ships. We took a bus in and on to our tour.

Fortunately, we had a really good guide. She had majored in aboriginal studies and was able to give us a lot of the history of the area plus she really knew the area . We were also lucky in that we were the first bus out so we got to the Koala sanctuary and were able to get our pictures with the koalas before the crowds came. After our pictures we walked around the sanctuary for a bit but the rains came and we gave up.

Back in the city our guide gave us a really good commentary on what we were seeing and where it fit in Australia's history. The rain on the windows made photography difficult but our bus driver knew places we could stop and take photos out of the rain. We lso were able to stop for coffee.