Beautiful Brisbane

One cannot visit Australia without seeing a koala or a kangaroo! Brisbane’s Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is the first and largest koala sanctuary in Australia founded in 1927. The park, all of 18 hectares, houses around 80 species of Australian animals. This is where one can get close to and even pet kangaroos and koalas. The sanctuary is also home to 75 Australian animals such as platypuses, wombats, lorikeets, and dingoes. Koalas are now endangered due to deforestation, disease, and animal attacks. They live up to 10 years on average, but at Lone Pine

Koala Sanctuary, they live up to 15 years old!

Brisbane never runs out of fantastic places to eat. Agnes Restaurant is one of the top restaurants to dine in. A great place to have an eclectic yet delicious cuisine such as Sydney rock oysters, sourdough crumpets with tuna and caviar, bottarga toast, babi guling doughnut, tartelette of Jerusalem artichoke, and quail in harissa sauce. The highlight was our perfectly cooked Stockyard beef’s Kiwami Wagyu short loin 9+ and Angus ribeye! Agnes also has a bakery which is a great place to have breakfast! Their coffee and very flaky pies make it worth waking up early and going to this takeaway-only place. Another must-try place is James and Antler. It is owned by Tze Huei Choo, who lived in Hong Kong and the UK before settling in Brisbane. He also owns the popular coffee shop Mitch and Antler.  I loved their croques (sandwiches, but literally meaning “to bite”) and their OG frappes, which are canned on the premises! Their frappes, which went viral, are made with Hokkaido milk ice cream combined with flavors, but my favorite flavor was a Filipino favorite — ube (purple yam)! The croque monsieur, croque madame, caprese, and dessert brie and berries were my favorite sandwiches!

Just a ferry ride away is the wonderful Tangalooma Island Resort (www.tangalooma.com) on Moreton Island. Being greeted by a lobtailing whale, even if whale-watching season was over, was a great start visiting this resort. After a helicopter ride (choose to ride from 6 to 15 minutes), we had a fabulous lunch consisting of Australian beef tomahawk and a seafood tower prepared by the resort’s Filipino Executive Chef Nilo Calleja. We then headed for a snorkeling adventure around the Tangalooma Wrecks — 15 vessels were deliberately sunk by the Queensland government between 1963 and 1984 to provide a safe anchorage spot for recreational boat owners on Moreton Bay’s East side. Coral has formed in and around the wrecks, providing a haven for fish and even dolphins, wobbegong sharks, and dugongs. There was also diving, a desert safari, kookaburra feeding, and much more to do here that I wish I had spent at least two days here rather than go for just one day. I missed the highlight of the resort — wild dolphin fishing at dusk. So this gives me a reason to return. At least I saw pelicans and cormorants swimming from the shoreline into the ocean at dusk right before I boarded the ferry back to the city.

Brisbane is also a great place to shop and Queen Street Mall is the heart of shopping in this sunny city! It is a pedestrian mall 500 meters long, with more than 700 retailers, including six shopping centers. We also spent a day with personal stylists (Instagram: @spreewithme) who took us around to meet local designers and see the stores that set fashion trends in Brisbane. We visited the unique shop of Brisbane designer (and half-Filipino) Gail Sorronda and had a break at Cru Bar for some Prosecco and a charcuterie board that included squid ink truffle salami (something I tried for the first time)!

Having to leave Brisbane made me sad, but I forgot that as soon as I entered the plane since Qantas tends to really feed their passengers, which is a good thing! Food is served more times than other airlines and I totally enjoyed their Aussie-made food! I had the Bannockburn roast chicken which was the juiciest and softest chicken I’ve had on a flight! Don’t ever fail to get the Pat and Stick’s vanilla lace ice cream sandwich on board Qantas. For me, it is the best ice cream sandwich ever made!

A Qantas Airbus A330 flies four times from Manila to Brisbane, adding an extra 100,000 seats between the Philippines and Australia every year. The new service also gives more options for Filipinos traveling to New Zealand, with connections to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown via Brisbane. These are some more reasons to go back to a city that I love and perhaps connect to another city to discover!

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Qantas flights from Manila to Brisbane depart at 0245 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Check out www.qantas.com/ph/en.html. Also check out www.visit.brisbane.qld.au andqueensland.com.

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