With ANZAC Day upon us this Saturday, it was a rather special walk we did this week following a trail of plaques and statues and other interesting sites around the Brisbane CBD relating to our ANZAC heritage. One of our band of walkers (Margot) is a Brisbane Greeter and she led us on the tour, filling our heads with amazing facts and our hearts with a mixture of sadness and pride. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, and the battle at Gallipoli stands out as having defined the spirit of our nation. This ANZAC spirit embodies courage, bravery, endurance, mateship, determination and sacrifice, and is possibly the only positive to come out of such a tragic episode in our history. While ANZAC sites were the focus of our walk, we made many side-tracks and enjoyed a great many other aspects of our fair city, beginning with Anzac biscuits and coffee under the Story Bridge in Captain Burke Park. We were afforded a fine view of the city across the river, with skyscrapers gleaming in the morning sunlight. With a city walk ahead we thought we would be safe today from wildlife that usually attacks us - things like ticks and leeches and snakes - but we were wrong. We had chosen a morning tea spot in the midst of a caterpillar colony. They rained on us from above, dropping onto our heads and into our food, and climbed up our legs from below. |
(1-3 May) now recognised as the largest annual Buddhist Birth Day Festival in the world.
We started at Queens Park and found out, surprisingly, that here stands the only statue of Queen Victoria in Queensland. Since the state of Queensland was named in her honour you would expect many more statues of her around. The Victoria Cross was introduced in 1856 by Queen Victoria to honour acts of valour in wartime and made retrospective to 1854 to cover the period of the Crimean War. It is the highest military decoration awarded for valour to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories. Our walk also took us to the site of a bomb shelter which was housed under the old Roma Street Police Station, up to the Museum of Brisbane housed in City Hall to see some letters from soldiers on display, and finally to ANZAC Square where Margot shared a wealth of information about all parts of the memorial. I won't divulge all of these as I would rather encourage you to book a Brisbane Greeters walk to find out more. first hand. The walks are free and open to all. | |