Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Brisbane Travel Guide: How to Enjoy Australia’s Most Relaxed City

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

I’ve always been a little afraid of Australia because of all its slithery and sharp-toothed creatures, but British expat James Cridland has me wanting to sip coffee and cuddle with koalas Down Under. On the Postcard Academy’s Brisbane episode of the podcast, James and I talk about the best things to see, eat, and experience in Brisbane, Australia. Also, I learn the proper way to eat Vegemite; Australia’s tipping situation; and the proper way to ride in a taxi in this super-laidback country. Links to all we talk about can be found on postcardacademy.co   James is a radio futurologist and creator of Podnews, a daily newsletter and podcast. In other words, he’s a thought leader on all things audio, and I first interviewed him on my show Podcasting Step by Step. Check it out if you’ve been wanting to start a podcast. Every week, I break down ‘how to podcast’ with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams.   I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to the Postcard Academy travel podcast. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insuranceDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel. And you may know that I host another podcast called Podcasting Step by Step, where I teach people how to podcast, the technical things, the marketing side, how to create good content. But I'm also interviewing leaders and other interesting people in the podcasting space. And my first guest was with James Craneland. He is the host of the Daily Podcast and newsletter Pod News. But not only is James a thought leader in radio and podcasting, he is also an expat who moved from England to Brisbane, Australia with his family. On this episode, James shares his recommendations on how to best experience Brisbane,

including the foods he says we should try. Some of these suggestions really horrify me, but I am leaving them in for the cultural reference. and you don't want to miss his taxi riding tip. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet. Postcard Academy listeners can get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audible trial.com slash postcard.

This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need a simple and flexible travel insurance. Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co slash insurance. Welcome, James. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. That's a great pleasure. I'm really pleased to be here. So you are in Englishmen, who now lives in Brisbane, Australia. Where did you grow up? I grew up in the UK, yes. So as you can tell from my ridiculous accent, I'm most definitely a UK, a UK person. And yeah, and I grew up in Somerset, which is to the southwest of England and then Yorkshire, but I was actually born and spent most time in London.

So, yeah. What was your first trip abroad? First trip abroad was probably with my parents to France, because France is, of course, very close, and you can get over on the ferry, which is what we ended up doing, I think. So that was fun, and then we went to Italy and a few other places. And the first trip that I did as an adult, i. i.e. not with my parents, was apart from the school choir, where we went to Poland and we went to East Germany and all kinds of things, which was amazing and fascinating.

Wow, when was this? This was about the mid-1980s. So the Berlin Wall was still up. And I ended up going through the Berlin wall from West Berlin to East Berlin. And my, the difference was incredible. You know, West Berlin would be just like any big city is, you know, with three, four lanes of traffic and modern cars and everything else. And you would literally, you would go through the wall to East Berlin

where the choir that I was in was doing a concert. And it was quiet and there was hardly any cars. And the only cars on the street were the really old cars that the communists, you know, used to have. And it was an incredible, incredible experience. And I think I was only, what must I have been, 12, 13, something like that. Quite amazing. So yeah, so that was quite a thing. Yeah, and on the same trip, we ended up going to Poland and Poland was behind the Iron Curtain back

then and, you know, one of the families who we were staying with ended up saving up their meat rations and their dairy rations for a month just so that they could feed us. a pizza, a pepperoni pizza. Oh, that's so kind. Yeah. And you just go, wow, you know. And the changes that they must have seen in the last 30 years must be incredible. So, yeah, quite a change, quite a change.

Yeah, well, it's those things that stay with you forever, right? And I love that it was host families that were looking after you guys, because that's how you get to know a place, right? Yeah. So when we were staying in West Germany, we would give the host families. We would give them a little present of some ground. No, what did we give them? We gave them a CD of the choir. And we gave them a little brochure about the school that we were in.

When we went to Poland and into East Germany, then we would give them some ground coffee and some Lurals. And literally, you know, one of the first of the first of the first, families that we ended up giving a box of toilet roll. And one of the families that we, that we gave them to, one of them actually started crying because they had not been able to buy toilet roll for the last six months. And so you think, what a difference, you know, really what a difference. Yeah, because I was back in communism and everything was, if you couldn't get it on the black market, chintas are you're not going to get it. Yeah. And everything

was different and everything was, you know, everything. I mean, of course, I'm looking at all of this through the, through the propaganda that we were fed in the West, but, you know, even so, you know, gosh, what a difference that was. And, you know, having been back to Berlin and having, you know, walked along the street where I had to queue to go through the East German guards to get into East East Germany and now you can just walk along the street, you know, literally the only way that you can tell what was in East Berlin and what was in West Berlin is what the traffic lights have look like. The Ampleman.

Yeah, the Ampleman, because there's a specific thing. So, which is just, you know, just so much change. Yeah, and I jumped in because I was so interested in your story when you started to see what your first trip as an adult was by yourself. Yeah, my first trip as an adult was I flew from the UK to Washington, D.C., to the Ronald Reagan Airport, and then I drove up from there to Boston and then back again. So how did you end up in Brisbane, Australia? Because I met a girl.

Okay. That's how it always works. So I was doing some work for the BBC. I work in radio and in podcasting. And I was doing some work at the BBC, weirdly doing some work for the BBC in Ghana, in Africa. And there was somebody else there from the BBC, you know. And there was a point around five, six years later,

when we were looking at our baby daughter and going, what are we going to do about school? And my partner, who is Australian, who was born here in Brisbane, said, well, why don't we just move over there? And so that's what I ended up doing. So how are you able to live in work in Australia? Do you have a partner visa then through your wife? Yes. Yeah, that's exactly how it is. So, yeah. Could you give us a visual snapshot of Brisbane? Where is it geographically? What does the postcard look like? Yeah. So geographically, it's in Australia, which is the big thing. on the bottom of the world.

Brisbane itself is 10 hours drive north from Sydney. So on the right-hand side of Australia, so it's the bottom of Queensland. The big town to the north of us is Cairns, which is an 18-hour drive. And that's about a quarter of the way down, so you can keep on driving north if you want to. It's very subtropical,

so it's anywhere from 50 to 100 Fahrenheit. And it's a very, very green place. You know, there's a lot of gum trees here. There's a lot of palms. You know, it's a very green feeling place. And most of the houses are made of wood and they're risen from the ground. You know, they're on stilts to keep the ants away

and to ideally cope with some of the tropical rains as well. So, you know, it's a really nice, picturesque place to be. Yeah, and not just the ants. There's all sorts of wild creatures in Australia. I've actually, like, I have put it off of my list for a long time because I'm afraid of snakes. Do you see snakes everywhere there? We don't see snakes everywhere, but I have seen quite a few since I've been here. There were three that went rolling through our garden a couple of a year or so ago. And the only reason that they were doing that is that next door was cutting their grass and they were hiding in the grass and they were and they were escaping from that. But yeah, the snakes are fine. There aren't any snakes

down here in Brisbane that will that will kill you. So that's good. I mean, there are, but you'd need to be very, very unlucky. Yeah, you need to be a bit more careful of the spiders, obviously, because there are some spiders. One of the things that my partner gave me as soon as we moved here was she she went to the local bookshop and she bought me Wildlife of Brisbane. And it shows very clearly which of the spiders will kill you. And which of the spiders, you know, you've only got, you know, a couple of hours to get to hospital for and which of the spiders are perfectly safe. So.

Oh my gosh. That sounds like essential reading if we're visiting. Yeah. So that's fun. And then we've got cane toads, which. which are a pest that were, you know, probably you can blame the Brits for that. But the cane toads are here and they are very annoying. And if the dog licks them, then they've got poison in their back,

which will probably kill a dog if you don't act very, very fast. So, yeah, so there's all this kind of stuff. I believe that of the 10 animals that are most likely to kill you, Australia has seven. So I think we've done pretty well there. Having said that, you know, we live in the city. We don't live in the bush. If we lived in the bush, it will be a different conversation. One of the one of the wonderful things that we do have though is we have very small ring-tailed possums, which are a bit different to the possums that you have in the US. And they're very, you know, lovely small creatures and they're nocturnal and they're,

they go hammering down your roof late at night. And all you can hear is as they're running down the roof and back again. You know, so that's really good fun. That sounds very cute. I mean, it might wake you up at night, but it does sound adorable. I've got one that lives in my garage, which I could kind of do with that because they stink. But, you know, part of that, it's nice. So aside from the landscape, the culture in Australia must be quite different from England. What would you say are the biggest cultural differences between the two countries? Yeah, I mean, you know, the culture is relatively similar, actually. The culture is kind of a mix in between British and American because obviously we used to be

a British colony here. We're still part of the Commonwealth. And many people who live here are from the UK anyway. So the culture is relatively similar. It is a much more outdoor culture. It's a much more fitness. culture than the UK is, partially because the weather's nicer. But, you know, expecting that, it's much the same sort of culture, actually, to the point where you get a little bit confused

because you're not quite sure all of a sudden you're given a different word and you go, what on earth does that mean? So when I first moved here, I was walking through the supermarket and, you know, they've got the signs up at the top saying what's in this particular aisle. And I looked up at the sign and I went, okay, so this one has kitchen utensils and it's got Manchester in it. And I thought, Manchester, what's Manchester? And I walked down the aisle and back again, trying to work out what on earth Manchester could be, still had no idea, had to have a look on Google to find out what Manchester is. It's bed linen. And we call it Manchester in Australia. They call it Manchester in New Zealand and in South Africa. And they call it Manchester because

that's where it used to get made in Manchester in the UK. Yeah, so it's just these little things. And every so often you hear weird words or weird sayings that you don't quite expect because you are lulled into this sense of security that it's much like the UK. Yeah, I can understand the whole grocery store thing because, yeah, the same thing happened to me. You're searching around for very, very common things. And I'm like, where is the zucchini?

where's the cilantro, where's the eggplant? And all of a sudden it's like, what? Quirgette. That's right. We call them zucchini here again. So that again confuses me. And peppers, we call them capsicum in Australia for some reason and probably American again. So there's these various different names for stuff.

The weirdest thing in Australia is size of beer glass because in the UK you have a pint or you have a half pint and that is all that you can legally sell beer in. In America, there's a pint which is inferior because it's not quite as large because it's an American pint. Here at Australia, we have an imperial pint, we have a UK pint, but we also have a schooner and a pot. And a pot is a different size if you're in Queensland than if you're in South Australia and a schooner doesn't always exist. And then there's a midi in some states and so on and so forth. It just gets really confusing. So if I am visiting Brisbane, I've just arrived, how do I get my bearings in this city? Are there any tours you would

recommend? Yeah. So I, you know, as you would probably guess, we've had quite a lot of people coming to visit. And so we now have a pretty standard routine now of taking people, firstly, to the lone pine koala sanctuary, which is basically a place where you can go and see all of the Australian animals and you can hug a koala if you really want to.

And you can see a crocodile and you can feed kangaroos, which is a lovely thing to do. Then I would do a little walk. There's a mountain that overlooks Brisbane called Mount Coutha. It's called Mount Coutha because Couther was the

first nation word for honey, a trail of a trail to the honey, which is where the honey bees used to be. And you can walk all the way up, Mount Kutha, it's only a couple of kilometers, it's not particularly far, to the lookout at the top, which then gets you a beautiful panorama of all of Brisbane.

And you can really see how green it is. You can see the river snaking through. You know, you can see the sea. If you look far enough, you can see around to some of the lakes and some of the other mountains and so on. And then maybe go into the city, go to the Museum of Brisbane, which is fantastic, which is very hidden, which nobody really knows exists and is a really nice experience, actually, a really nice interactive experience to learn about the people who live here.

Then go to the South Bank, which is a lovely outdoor space that was built for the expo in 1988 and has lots of really nice parkland there and has a beach and all kinds of things. There's the Queensland Museum there as well. And then possibly take the ferry down to the powerhouse, which is one of the cultural centres for maybe a show in the evening. So that will be our day, I think. That sounds wonderful. Are there any hidden gems that you like to go to?

Yeah, I mean, you know, in the centre, in downtown we have a botanic gardens which is a beautiful very large open parkland with lots of unusual plants in there and everything else and that's a wonderful walk next to the river you know as well you know so that's a wonderful walk and there's also a brewery which is underneath the bridge so the story bridge is probably the most famous postcard picture that you would ever see and there's a brand new brewery underneath there, which does decent food and brews its own beer. And so that's always a, you know, a good place to go to as well, which very, very few people know about because it only opened about four months ago. So if you had the day off and you could do anything that you wanted and you

don't have to cart around visitors, what would a perfect day in Brisbane look like for you? I mean, quite a lot of the time, it's having a nice walk, to be honest, because there are so many, you know, beautiful walks along the creeks, you know, that are all over the place. Taking the dog to the beach is also good as well, you know, the beach being only about 20, 25 minutes or so away. You know, so that's a nice thing too. But also, you know, grabbing a decent cup of coffee. That's also a good thing too. And people in Australia really like our coffee. Yeah, talk to me more about the coffee culture and I guess the food culture in general in Australia. Because Australia has all the climates, it means that we actually make all of the food.

So, you know, so typically most of the food that you get is made here, is grown here, you know, and that's really good. I mean, the food, you know, the food is an interesting mix of, you know, because we are so close to Asia, there's a lot of Vietnamese, there's a lot of Chinese, you know, there's a lot of Thai, but there's a lot of UK influence as well, you know, in the food that we actually have. So, you know, Australian cuisine in so much as it exists is very much a blend of those types of, of styles. It's very much a, you know, a fusion of all of the different people who have come and, you know, moved here. You know, so.

that's really good. If you were going to ask what foods, you know, Australia and particularly Brisbane is famous for, well, we're famous for the chicken parmi, which is a chicken, which is a chicken what, Escalop covered in breadcrumbs with cheese and tomato sauce on the top and with chips, hot chips, as we call them here. So the chicken parmi would be probably the pub staple thing. food that you would get, along with avocado on toast, which is the big Australian breakfast. Everywhere. I think that's gone global. I think it has.

I think it has. But yeah, and we will normally have it with something called Dukha. And Dukha is kind of seeds and nuts and grains that you get from Australian plants and stuff. And that would be a sprinkling on top of the avocado on toast. So it's a little bit different to what you would, you know, what you would get elsewhere. Sounds delicious. So in a lot of big cities and actually, how big is Brisbane? Population of Brisbane is 2.28 million people.

It's almost as if I've just Googled that. So yeah, so it's about two minutes. And by the way, it's about the third largest city here. Obviously, the metro area is rather larger. So in a lot of big cities, there's food markets, food halls. have become really popular. What is Brisbane seen like that? Yeah, so we've got a few places like that.

One of them is a place called Eat Street North Shore, which is a place that I would heartily recommend to anybody who comes here. It's a night food market, and there's also a few bars in there. There are bands in there as well. But it's basically lots and lots of packing crates in the middle of a disused area next to the river. So basically you end up driving.

into what feels like the middle of nowhere, and then you walk through a wall and you are literally in this place which is buzzing and it's got loads of people in there and loads of very different places for you to go and find some great food. So everything from, you know, Japanese food to, you know, to the weird sort of, you know, deep fried ice cream, you know, to all kinds of stuff, including, of course, kangaroo. Oh, God, no. What? Yeah, yeah. So Kangaroo is a great meat. I'm hanging up on you right now. I know, you can go and buy it in the supermarkets. It's, you know, you buy it next to, you know, lamb and beef. And it's a great meat and it's really, it's got a good strong taste. It's very good in terms of iron.

Good grief. I'm having the same trauma as I had when I found out people ate reindeer in Norway. Oh, when I was in Norway, I've eaten reindeer and that's delicious. And kangaroo is much the same. It's a really, really nice. It's a really nice meat. I would not recommend crocodile. Crocodile is horrible. But kangaroo is lovely.

So we definitely recommend that. And for us vegetarians, it sounds like there are other options for us as well. We've got our avocado toast and our Asian fusion, thankfully. Indeed. Indeed. And vegamite, of course, which you shouldn't. forget as well. Vegemite on toast.

Do you like that? Vesemite on toast, macadamia nuts, all of that. Vegamite's lovely. Yeah, Vegemite is nice, although as a Brit, I do prefer Marmite. It has to be said. What's the difference exactly? Is it like Coke and Pepsi? Like it's only slightly different.

Yeah, it's like Coke and Pepsi. You can definitely taste the difference in between them. The difference, if you really want to know, is that Marmite from the UK is made with the yeast at the bottom of the barrels from bass beer. So when you make bass beer, which is a bitter, then you scrape the yeast off the bottom of that and you stick it into jars and you call it marmite. That's basically what it is. Vegemite is exactly the same thing, but it's the yeast scraped from the bottom of 4X. And 4X is the local beer in Brisbane. And 4X is a lager, so it's brewed in a slightly different way. So it tastes a bit different. And that's really why

there's a difference between what marmite tastes like and what vegamite tastes like. But they're both very strong, very salty, umami tastes. Spread very thinly on your toast. Have it with butter and it's a delicious thing. Yeah, I think I have maybe only tried it once. I need to go back. I think I didn't even have butter on it. It was all wrong. I need to try it again. No, no, butter on toast, spread it very thinly. You spread vegamite slightly less thinly than you do my might. But yeah, I know it's a wonderful thing. And so much better than, you know, having sweet stuff and jam and, you know, jelly or, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So Australians are known to be a bit wild to like their beer. What would you say the going out culture is like? over there in Australia. Yeah, there is a pretty good going out culture. And, you know, what is nice, of course, is that you can go out in the evening and you don't have to put a big heavy coat on and a scarf and a woolly hat and everything else. You can just go out wearing, you know, shorts and a t-shirt. And that's actually great because it's much more relaxed. It's a much more, you know, calming thing, you know, and much more sort of, you know, nowhere near as far. formal as going out is, you know, elsewhere. And it also means that most of the, of the pubs and bars that

you go to are actually pretty well outdoors anyway. You know, they don't have windows. They don't have, you know, any of that. So actually, it's a very different experience than it is, you know, in the UK or in Boston or in, you know, or in Toronto or wherever it is that you might be. So, yeah, so that is a really nice thing. And, you know, and going out is a relatively affordable thing as well. You know, so quite a few people do it, which is a nice thing. The last time that my partner I were out was on Wednesday, where he went to the pub choir. And what happens in the pub choir is 1,500 people are all taught how to sing a song

in four-part harmony and then videoed, which is the most amazing thing. So that was great fun doing. What a nice community, like, event to take place when you're at a pub. Yeah. So that was really nice. That was on Wednesday night. And then on Thursday, it was a public holiday here for Anzac Day, where we remember the fallen in the war.

And everybody goes to the local Bowles Club for a service in the morning. And then you have a beer and a sausage sizzle, which is a sausage on a piece of bread with some ketchup. And it's lovely. So, yeah, you know, so there's a good sort of, you know, community feel, you know, about all of that, which is really nice. What are some of the good neighborhoods to hang out in? Well, if you're coming here to stay, then stay in places like Paddington or Red Hill, which are some of the older areas of Brisbane. They're the areas that have been here longest.

and the areas that have some of the older houses there, some of the older Queenslander houses, which are the wooden ones on stilts that I was talking about earlier. So those are great places to end up going to, you know, just sort of very relaxed. If you want places which are a bit more bohemian, then West End is the area of the city, which is a bit more independent,

has a bit more sort of independent, field to it. And a lot of great restaurants and a lot of great bars and stuff like that in there as well. So, you know, and there are, you know, other more studenty areas, you know, as well. So, yeah, sort of, you know, it's nice that there's actually quite a few very distinct areas in this place as well. Can we get around by foot? Do we need a bus? How do we get around Brisbane? By foot is pretty good in the in in downtown unlike Las Vegas where I was a couple of weeks ago we have these things called sidewalks I would recommend them in every in every city so yeah so getting around by foot is great in in downtown which of course we call the CBD here because you know because we're Australian and if you are going elsewhere then there's great public transport. to get you there, buses, there are trains, and there's also the ferry, which will take you a very scenic route on the Brisbane River.

Oh, that sounds like a fun activity, no matter what you're doing, just to get on the ferry, even if you don't really need to go somewhere specific. Yeah, and there's a free one that goes in between the various bits that you might want to go to in the centre of town, and obviously paid ones to go elsewhere. and there's also free buses as well because, you know, because we like that. And there's even a train all the way from the airport. So if I went on holiday to Brisbane, saw the rest of Australia, and I wanted to buy a souvenir to remember Australia by,

or even Brisbane specifically, what's a typical product I could get? Well, so you can buy vegemite to take home with you, obviously. The thing that the tourist shops will try and sell you are things that look a bit like boomerangs with Aborigine artwork on them. Normally they're not proper boomerangs. Normally they're not proper aboriginal artwork. So you can probably avoid some of those things. The other thing that the tourist shops will sell you are get ready for this, kangaroo scrotums. No. Which you use as a key ring. So, you know, some places have lucky rabbits feet, but oh no, we have kangaroo scrotums. So yeah, so you can buy those if you really want to. Don't buy them.

Don't buy them. The main thing that I would probably recommend you buy is a good hat. And there are good reasons for that. A good wide brim hat. You can buy them made out of kangaroo leather, which is wonderful and soft and excellent. But you can also buy them out of other material as well, if you so desire. And a good wide brim hat is a very useful thing here because obviously see the sun beats down on you very, very hard. But what I learned with the first hat that I got here, when I got it home to London, is that it's also very good at keeping the rain off.

And if you buy hats from a company called Barmer, then they are scrunchy. So you can scrunch them up and throw them in your bag. And then when you need to wear them, then you can just take them out of the bag and they spring back into shape. They're a really good thing. that's what I would probably recommend. Sorry, Bama. How do you spell it?

Bama is B-A-R-M-A-H. Oh my gosh, never would have gotten that. Yeah, B-A-R-M-A-H. You mentioned boomerangs. I did not realize that that was an Aboriginal thing. Could you talk about that a little bit? The relationship that we have, particularly we as British people with the native people of this land is not a very good relationship.

I mean, the British, frankly, don't have a very good relationship with most countries, given that we've invaded almost all of them, apart from, I think, eight. But in Australia, we did particularly bad things to the Aborigines, which is, you know, a very bad thing. And unlike New Zealand, we've never really made, we've never really made peace. We've never really reconciled. And that's a bit of a shame, you know, it's a lot of a shame to everybody. concerned. And, you know, I mean, to the point where some of the streets that you'll notice in Brisbane are called things like Boundary Street. And Boundary Street still exists. There are occasionally

a lot of campaigns to get them renamed the different boundary streets that happen to be here. They're called Boundary Streets because after the hours of nightfall, if you were if you were an aboriginal, you were not allowed in past that boundary. And if you were found, then you would have been killed. So we have this sort of very sort of tortured past. And it's, you know, and it is, you know, something that a lot of businesses, a lot of meetings and things start with a dedication to the traditional owners of this land. And we're very lucky, you know, the land that I live in and I work in is owned by the Turball and the Jaguar people.

And it's very important that we remember that. You know, so that's an important part of our history. And occasionally we also have, you know, conversations around Australia Day. And whether Australia Day is a good thing to be remembering because it is in essence invasion day. the day when the Brits landed on somebody else's country. You know, so we need to be, you know, sort of careful about all of that. Well, you have shared some very interesting advice, James. Definitely stuff that we should read up more on, I think,

and also explore when we visit Australia. Before I let you go, can we do a roundup of your favorite places in Brisbane? Yes. Where do you want to start? Okay. What's your favorite bakery? So the bakery that I would recommend is one that is a 10-minute walk away from me, which is nice because it means that I can take the dog there. And that's a bakery called the Bannerton Bakery, which is in Ashgrove, which does really nice, everything from beautiful fresh croissant to loaves to kiches to all sorts of things.

How about favorite coffee shop? Favorite coffee shop is one that is, very close to us in the next door street and it is literally in the front porch of the hairdresser and it is the most wonderful community hub. It's been open a couple of years and it's a wonderful place. It's called Miss Audrey Coffee and you'll be nestling in the in the foothills of Mount Cuthar if you visited it and only come in the morning because it's only open in the morning, a wonderful place. What kind of coffee do you usually get? I normally get a flat white. Okay, traditional. Yeah. How about lunch spot? Lunch. I'd probably go for, there's a really good Chinese food

place that I go to, which is very near Roma Station. Now, you're going to ask me the name and I can't remember, but it's opposite Roma Street Station. And it's a very small place, which is basically on a street corner. But the food that it sells is really, really nice. And you can spot it because at lunchtime, it's very close to the police station. And at lunchtime, there are loads of policemen and indeed police women standing there and queuing there for it. So it's a wonderful, wonderful place. Where do you and your wife like to go for dinner? There are a couple of places. I mean, the local pub is always good. There's the Gap Tavern, which is around the corner. which is nice, as I should explain, there's a place called the gap here.

And it's called the gap because it is literally the gap between one mountain and another mountain. So there we are. So that's probably one of the places that we would go to the other places, eat streets, which I've mentioned that great place to go with all kinds of different interesting food. You have mentioned food market before, but can you just repeat what, your favorite? food market or food call is. Yeah, so it would be the Eat Street market. There are, though, other markets as well. And there's a really good market right in the center of Brisbane, in something that the council wants to be known as Brisbane Square, which nobody calls it Brisbane

Square, but it's at the end of Queen Street. You can't, you can't miss it. And that has a lot of different farmers stuff for you to go and buy, everything from, you know, wonderful fresh mangoes to fresh meat and to all kinds of things, including some musley, which they sell, you know, granola musley, which they sell with the slightly dubious claim that it will make your poos easier, which is a slight concern, but nevertheless, you can buy that there as well. It's a really good place to go for some decent fresh food from some of the farmers here. Are there any designer markets that we should check out by like local artists or different things like that? Yeah, I mean, there are a few places to go around that.

One of them is James Street, which is a really nice sort of area of town, which is both some really nice stores that sell some interesting design work, but also some very independent work there as well. And also in Paddington, there are a lot of very good local independent art galleries. So you can actually go and even get some artwork commissioned there as well. Now, that would make a great souvenir. Wouldn't it just? Yeah. Yes, yes. Where do you like to hang out at night?

I have a six-year-old daughter. So the answer to that is obviously at home more than anything else. But South Bank is a great place to be lots of restaurants, lots of being by the river in the evening. There's a beautiful large ferris wheel there as well. So you can actually see a bit of the city from up high as well. And the lights of the city are beautiful against the river too. So that would be a really nice place to hang out. What museum do we have to see?

both the Museum of Brisbane, which is in the City Hall, follow the signs. It's pretty well hidden. And also go to the Museum of Queensland. When you go in there, then there is one of the areas, which is essentially every single animal that you will ever see in Queensland. So if you want to see, thankfully not alive, but if you want to see lots of scary spiders or you want to see lots of scary, you know, fish that might kill you or some cute kangaroos or bilbies or koalas or all of that kind of stuff, then you can see all of those in a slightly eerie taxidermy way in the museum. But it's, I'm making it sound awful, but it is actually really good. So, yeah, you should go there. Where do you go when you're in the mood for some culture? So the South Bank, again, has a love. large, there's the Museum of Modern Art there, as well as the, as well as an older fashioned

art museum, which is there. There's also a theatre with a number of different shows on. The more funky place to go for a bit of culture is the powerhouse, which is a ferry ride away, and that is an old powerhouse, an old power generating place, which fell into disrepair and was almost knocked down, but was saved and is now used as a theatre complex. So there's lots of really great shows there for all types of people. And that's well worth going to. That's great. I love when buildings are recycled instead of destroyed.

Yeah. And what's lovely about it is that actually inside, you know, you can still see all of the old concrete, you can still see some of the old graffiti when it was completely disused and run down. have actually kept some of that, which is a really nice touch. Very cool. So what culture tips should we know about Australia before we show up? When you jump into an Uber, if you're alone, jump in the front. That's a great tip, actually. Yeah, that's a really useful thing. That's what they kind of expect and they look at you weird

if they jump in the back. I learnt this after about three months. So there is always that. But, you know, basically, you know, Australia is just a bit more relaxed than everybody else. You know, the language is a bit more straight. You know, we're not one for, you know, for complicating things. And that's really the culture that you need to know. And if you're a sports fan, then, you know, read up on some of the sport that you could see while you're here. And is there a tipping culture? There is zero tipping.

So if you're in a restaurant, do not tip because they're not expecting one. If you're in a bar, do not tip. If you're in a taxi, do not tip. The only change to that is some of the posh restaurants will have, you know, a charge which they will automatically put on the bill of 20% and that's all fine. And you do end up paying more over weekends and over public holidays. That's the standard here. And that's because people get paid more to work weekends and bank holidays, public holidays.

So therefore, people charge more. It's quite a good tip. I would recommend it for any culture. It sounds so wonderfully easy. Yes. I wish all of our lives could be easy. Everything's just done and you don't have to think about it. Yeah, it's a really easy thing.

And so, of course, what that essentially means is that, yes, things do look a little bit more expensive. And, you know, and the Australian dollar is worth less than the U.S. dollar as well. So things do look a little bit more expensive. But just remember that actually there is no tipping here. So the price you see and there's no sales tax as well. So the price you see is the price you pay, which is always a good plan. Well, thank you again for talking to me today. I have really enjoyed learning more about Brisbane and Australia.

You may have tempted me. I'm still afraid about the snakes, but Brisbane sounds pretty great, so thank you very much. There's no snakes here. You're absolutely fine. Where can people find out more about you? So I have a personal website, which is james.credland.net, which I'm sure you'll stick in the show notes, James.credland.net. And if you're listening to this, then you might be interested in podcasts as well. And I produce a daily podcast newsletter, which is entirely free. You'll find that at podnews. Thank you very much, James, and have a great evening. Thank you so much. If you would like to hear me interview James on all things podcasting, check out episode

eight of podcasting step by step. I will share the link in the show notes, and you can also go to sarahmicatel.com and click on Learn with Sarah. That's all for now. Thanks for listening, and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.