New public art tour at Brisbane’s new Queen’s Wharf

Sydney is famous for its Opera House and harbour. Melbourne boasts world-class dining, sports and arts. Adelaide has churches, while Darwin has a tropical lifestyle that’s hard to beat. But what in the heck does Brisbane have?

“The most iconic landmark in Brisbane is the Brisbane River. It’s not swimmable, but since Expo 88 the focus of leisure activities in this city has been on the banks of the river, with South Bank and four different riverfront dining precincts. I’m sure they’re great restaurants, but people don’t go there for the food. They go for the views,” says Larissa Deak, a tour guide with the Museum of Brisbane.

But here’s the interesting thing. The Brisbane River, which runs 344km from its source at Mount Stanley and flows out to Moreton Bay and writhes with bull sharks, was a series of water holes that only conjoined during heavy rains when the Moreton Bay penal settlement was established in 1824. In the decades that followed, convicts were used to excavate sections of the floodplain and dredge the river bed and mouth so ships could sail downstream irrespective of the rain.

These are just some of the interesting historical facts I learned when I joined the Museum of Brisbane’s 90-minute public art tour at Queen’s Wharf. A new riverfront district centred around The Star casino and leisure complex that opened last year, Queen’s Wharf has transformed a once-dilapidated part of Brisbane’s CBD into its most enticing by planting cutting-edge sculptures, murals and floating gardens in between the State’s oldest and best preserved colonial buildings.

The tour begins at Lindy Lee’s Being Swallowed By The Milky Way, an 8m-high oblong sculpture with thousands of tiny holes puncturing its bronze surface. At night-time it shimmers like a model of a light-filled galaxy of stars.

Then there’s Sheila, a larger-than-life five-tonne stone sculpture that plays on fertility, empathy and the bogan word for Australian women; Destiny, a large-format aluminium sculpture of three mullet fish; Inhabitant, a wall-mounted sculpture of a native Australian floral bouquet; and Lungfish Dreamz, a supersized mosaic of lungfish, a species endemic to the Brisbane River.

There are 10 art installations in total, with the tour culminating at Sky Deck, a breathtaking 100m high circular observation platform with a 250m long circular runway on the roof of The Star with restaurants, bars and the very best views of Brisbane, its serpentine river and the cliffs at nearby Kangaroo Point.

There, convicts used their bare hands and rudimentary tools (as part of their punishment, convicts were not allowed the help of pack animals or machinery) to chisel bricks of Brisbane tuff, a volcanic stone, that they used to construct buildings like The Commissariat Store Museum at Queen’s Wharf. Built in 1829, it is the oldest utilised building in the State, and now houses a museum that explores Brisbane’s colonial history.

But the most striking building in the district is The Star itself, an architectural marvel that rivals the most audacious landmarks in Singapore or Dubai. “Casinos carry bad connotations,” Larissa says. “Normally, I don’t even mention it in my tour, and the fact is that The Star is so much more than a casino. It’s got hotels, apartments, restaurants, bars, shopping, and 14 football fields of shared space. It’s the new heart of Brisbane.”

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Queen’s Wharf Brisbane Precinct Public Art Tour is on Wednesday 3pm and Saturday at 9am. It lasts 90 minutes and is $35 for adults, $30 for concessions. museumofbrisbane.com.au/whats-on