Brisbane travel guide

Top 10 sights in Brisbane

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1

   City Botanic Gardens

   Gardens laid out from 1855 in a loop of the river, originally to test which crops would grow in Queensland — the first sugar cane and macadamias in the colony were raised here. A bamboo grove, a mangrove boardwalk and the riverside cycle path run through them.

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2. 

   2

   Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

   Eighteen hectares at Fig Tree Pocket opened in 1927, the first koala sanctuary anywhere and still the largest, with well over a hundred animals. Queensland is one of the few states where visitors may hold one, and kangaroos are fed by hand in an open paddock.

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3. 

   3

   Queensland Museum

   The state museum of Queensland, at South Bank and free to enter, covering natural history and the state's own past. Its dinosaurs include Muttaburrasaurus, found in Queensland and one of the most complete Australian skeletons.

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4. 

   4© Phillip Capper · CC BY 2.0

   Gallery of Modern Art

   The Gallery of Modern Art, opened in 2006 and the largest gallery of modern art in Australia by floor area. It is the home of the Asia Pacific Triennial, and the collection and most exhibitions are free.

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5. 

   5

   Cathedral of St Stephen, Brisbane

   The Catholic cathedral of Brisbane, a sandstone Gothic Revival church of 1874. The small chapel beside it, from 1850, is the oldest church building in the city and is still used.

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6. 

   6© GordonMakryllos · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Queensland Art Gallery

   The older half of the Queensland art institution, in Robin Gibson's 1982 building with a water mall running through it. It carries the historical Australian collection — Streeton, Nolan, Aboriginal bark painting — and connects to the modern gallery by a walkway.

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7. 

   7

   Fort Lytton National Park

   A pentagonal fort of 1881 at the mouth of the Brisbane river, built when the colonies feared a Russian attack, and one of the few moated forts in Australia. Guns are fired on open days by volunteers in period uniform.

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8. 

   8

   Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mount Coot-tha

   Fifty-two hectares at the foot of Mount Coot-tha, with a tropical display dome, a Japanese garden built for the 1988 expo and a planetarium. The lookout above gives the standard view over the city to the bay.

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9. 

   9© Jonny Brownbill from Melbourne, Australia · CC BY 2.0

   Museum of Brisbane

   A history and art museum on the third floor of Brisbane City Hall, showing the city through changing exhibitions of art and social history. Its guided tours climb the clock tower of 1930, reached by the building's original cage lift.

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10. 

    10© Nick-D · CC BY-SA 3.0

    HMAS Diamantina

    A River-class frigate launched in 1945, which took the Japanese surrender of Nauru and Ocean Island and later surveyed the deepest point of the Indian Ocean, since named after her. She is moored at South Bank as a museum ship.

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1. 

   1© Heritage branch staff · CC BY 3.0

   Victoria Park, Brisbane

   A park on the northern edge of central Brisbane, used as a golf course for most of a century. Since 2021 it has been converted back into public parkland, opening sixty-four hectares of ridge and creek to the city.

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2. 

   2

   St John's Cathedral

   The Anglican cathedral of Brisbane, begun in 1901 and finished only in 2009, and described as the last Gothic cathedral in Australia to be vaulted in stone rather than plaster. Its porphyry and sandstone walls stand above the river at the top of the city.

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3. 

   3© Brisbane City Council · CC BY 2.0

   South Bank Parklands

   The parklands laid out on the site of the 1988 world expo, on the bank opposite the city. Their centrepiece is Streets Beach, a lagoon of clean sand and salt water in the middle of the city, free and lifeguarded.

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   4

   The Skyneedle

   A spire on the South Bank in Brisbane, put up for the World Expo of 1988 and left standing when the site became parkland. At eighty-eight metres it survives as the emblem of that year.

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5. 

   5© willislim · CC BY-SA 2.0

   South Bank

   The Expo 88 site, turned into parkland when the fair closed rather than sold off. It holds Streets Beach, a lagoon of clear water with sand imported to it, and the Arbour — a kilometre of steel curls covered in bougainvillea.

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6. 

   6© Chris Olszewski · CC BY-SA 3.0

   King George Square

   The square in front of the City Hall of 1930, whose clock tower was the tallest structure in Brisbane until 1967 and can still be ridden to the top in the original lift. The city's protests and festivals happen here, over a bus station.

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7. 

   7© Juicedpixels · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Wheel of Brisbane

   A sixty-metre observation wheel at South Bank, put up in 2008 for the twentieth anniversary of Expo 88 and never taken down. The glass capsules give the river bends, the city towers and, on a clear evening, the Glass House Mountains.

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8. 

   8© Chris Olszewski · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Chinatown, Brisbane

   The Chinatown of Fortitude Valley, centred on the Duncan Street mall that was pedestrianised in 1987, with paifang gates at either end and stone lions between them. The Vietnamese and Taiwanese food on the streets around it is better than in the mall itself.

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9. 

   9

   ANZAC Square

   A memorial square in the middle of Brisbane, opened in 1930, with a Greek-revival shrine of remembrance and an eternal flame. Crypts beneath hold soil from battlefields where Queenslanders died.

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10. 

    10© Gene Poole at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Holy Name Cathedral, Brisbane

    A cathedral planned for Fortitude Valley on a scale to match any in the empire, of which only the crypt was finished, in 1928. The Depression stopped the work, the site was eventually sold, and the church was never built.

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