Live Brisbane: A challenge

Welcome to Live Brisbane:

A tour of my home city

I have decided to take on the challenge of getting to know and enjoy the city I live in. Everybody has heard someone say it is not until you have visitors from interstate or overseas that you actually get around and visit the tourist sites. For the next year every second weekend I am going to be a tourist in my home city. Of course I am making a huge assumption; there is at least 26 tourist sites to see across the city of Brisbane.

Currently I believe that I just exist in the city of Brisbane, this is the only way I can see that I can start living the Brisbane lifestyle. What do 'Mars' say: 'Work, Rest and Play'. The reality is we 'Work, Eat and Sleep'.

This weekend, Sunday, November 15 my husband and I are visiting the Fort Lytton National Park. I have my site map, my walking shoes and the $4.50 entry fee packed and ready to go.

I have told my husband to be ready by lunch and I am thinking maybe I should also warn the site manager as many of my friends would know I am hard to impress.

Here is the cliche statement, watch this space - on this page I will let you know how the experience went and provide you with some basic statistics about Brisbane.

1st Tourist site visit -

Fort Lytton National Park, Brisbane, Queensland

Live Brisbane: Fort Lytton National Park Tour

Live Brisbane - being a tourist in my home city

Challenge - Weekend One

Fort Lytton National Park - Sunday, 15 November 2009

My husband and I headed off from our house at about 12.15pm, the tourist site is 20 minutes drive from our house. As with most days in Brisbane it was beautiful, clear and a little too warm a day.

We discovered the fort was established around the 1860's and was Brisbane's major defence against attack. Back then and as it is now the fort is manned by volunteers, today the guns are fired for tourists not for protection.

The site was operational for 65 years including the years during World War I and II . Finally the site was considered to be not met defence needs and was abandoned. During the decades of the 1950's and 1960's before it was sold in 1963 to a petroleum company the buildings and facilities were left to deteriorate, they were subjected to the elements.

A number of bush fires destroyed buildings and equipment, also upon the sale the cannons and guns were removed from the site. The site was returned to the State Government in 1988 thanks to a surprising donation made by (Ampol) Caltex. Many of the guns and cannons have been returned to site and restored expertly by a range of volunteers.

We both found it was really quite interesting to understand why this site was built here and how it was used for more than 60 years.

The site tour ran for about 90 minutes and started with the firing of one of the larger cannons by volunteers in traditional military uniforms, which had white jackets. What were they thinking when they chose white as the official uniform for soldiers, it takes my husband about 5 minutes to get a white shirt dirty and he is not cleaning and loading cannons.

At 2.20pm the loud bang of the cannon firing was the signal to start the tour, a loud noise is always enough to make you jump even when you expect it, jump we did.

We stayed for about 4 hours and probably could have spent more time looking in the museums. All the volunteers and tour guides had great knowledge of the historic site and its place in Brisbane's history, their enthusiasm and passion was stimulating.

This site has never had to fire their weapons in anger, let’s hope Brisbane military sites will continue to maintain this record.

Weekend Two- Next tourist attraction -

Wet’n’Wild Water Park on Sunday, November 29.