Brisbane River on a gorgeous winters morning

Awesome morning with the Brisbane City Sketchers..
I sat on a rock wall on the riverside outside the State library Qld to sketch the Brisbane City Library Buildings. I have drawn them before, always a pleasure..
8" x 7.5" handmade sketchbook graphite watercolour and pen (in that order)

Kurilpa means "place for water rats", in the aboriginal language, Kurilpa Point was once inhabited by the Turrbal peoples to whom water rats were a food source.
The Turrbal are an Australian Aboriginal nation, descendants of the original owners and custodians of the region of present-day Brisbane, Queensland. They have lived in Australia for over 60,000 years. The name primarily referred to the dialect they spoke, the tribe itself being alternatively called Mianjin/Meanjin. The Turrbal are regarded as interchangeable with the Jagera

The Turrbal were Jagera people whose traditional lands and hunting grounds, extended over some 1,300 square miles (3,400 km2) and lay around the Brisbane River, stretching from the Cleveland shore area of Moreton Bay, and running inland as far as the Great Dividing Range about Gatton; north to near Esk.

The Turrbal horde itself was located specifically in what is now called the Brisbane CBD, the name for which was Mianjin.

Neighboring Aboriginal nations include the Kabi and Wakka Wakka to the north, the Dalla to the northwest and the Ngugi of Moreton Island. Despite collective title to a stretch of land, the Turrbal like many tribes permitted private ownership of specific sections of land, down to recognizing personal possession of parts of a river or even of trees and shrubs.

Sketching the Historic Kangaroo Point Cliffs, from the City Botanic Gardens, with the Brisbane City Sketchers.
It was a lovely morning filled with laughter and fun, and some drama to boot. (A man got stuck on the side of the cliffs across the river from us) I rang the police and he was saved.

These lavas and pyroclastic rocks of the cliffs were deposited in the Triassic Period about 230 million years ago and filled an ancient river valley. These rocks were known as porphyry and later became known as the geological unit called the Brisbane tuff.
Records indicate that it was Captain Patrick Logan who first opened a quarry to supply stone to his building works as early as 1826.  It was the female prisoners who were required to quarry the cliffs.

The Cliffs are heritage listed and  are now a playground for RiverLife..

 

Regatta Hotel with the Brisbane City Sketchers

What a wonderful morning, eight of us came out to sketch at the historic Regatta Hotel.  So named because of the boat regattas held there in days gone by.

In 1886, the current and second Regatta Hotel, three-storeyed brick building, was erected for Brisbane publican William Winterford. , this is the building you see today.
The Regatta was one of a number of large, masonry, first-class hotels designed by Richard Gailey in the 1880s.
A famous women's liberation protest took place in the public bar in 1965, when two women, Merle Thornton (mother of Australian actress Sigrid Thornton) and Rosalie Bognor, chained themselves to the public bar footrail in protest at Queensland's restriction of public bars to men only. The protest was not successful despite other similar protests; it was years before the laws changed.

Floods were a huge problem being that the hotel sat on the river bank.. The hotel survived several floods.

It was first flooded in 1887, then again in 1893. Lack of wider custom, the financial depression of the early 1890s, and the floods of 1893, nearly ruined Winterford. 1908 - 1974 - 2011 saw more flooding.  It is said the canoes rowed to the second story to get a beer during the 1974 floods..
$10 million was spent on renovations before an official reopening in September 2012