The challenge was to show one of our newly arrived families how to do a capital city for free (excluding travel). Brisbane City Council has a great website called Five free things to do in Brisbane.
We actually didn’t get to do any of those suggestions because some of them required a vehicle to get to and our goal was to travel cheaply using transportation other than a car. The day went like this:
Travel to Robina train station and catch a train to South Brisbane station. Cost of return travel for five people was $5 (Queensland has 50c fares). Foaad was the only one in the family who had been on a train before.
The travel was hassle-free from the heavy road traffic and easy to manage with children. South Brisbane station is opposite the Queensland museum, which was to be the highlight of our trip as we really wanted to show Mohammed the dinosaurs. However, a burst water main shut down the museum for the day so that will have to wait for another time to practise our collective roars.
Undaunted, we made our way to GoMA and the children’s workshops which provided hours of free art fun as well as the rocks and sculpture gardens outside where the children played games.
As we ate our lunch under the giant fig trees on Southbank, Heba looked enviously at the water. She’d never been on a boat before and neither had the rest of the family. So aboard a Rivercat they went and spent an hour cruising the Brisbane River.
There are worse ways to spend your day and the cost of the family boat trip was $5. They could have taken the KittyKat boat for free but it is a much longer trip. Next time we will do a trip at sunset when the flying foxes fly over the river.
Afterwards we spent another couple of hours watching the children play on the incredible Southbank equipment. Had it been summer they would have been in the pool. To finish off it was an easy walk back to the train station and a relaxed ride back to our cars. Total cost for the day was $10 (excluding the ice creams).
Suggested free activities for families in Brisbane:
In addition to the above, walk across the new pedestrian bridge which links Southbank to the new casino. Take the lift to the public viewing platform at the top of the building which looks right across the river and Southbank. Watch the sunset from there.
See the koalas at the Daisy Hill Koala Centre. Visit the botanic gardens and the planetarium. The list is endless really but what is does demonstrate to families is that it does not have to be expensive to explore other areas. A backpack with food and some minor planning is all anyone needs.
Foaad and Heba enjoy their first ever river trip.