Trialling Brisbane's local greeter scheme

Blair Allsopp is a man who seems to have life sorted. He whizzes around Brisbane’s waterways on the uber-efficient ferry system in summer, occasionally wallowing in the waters of Australia’s only inner-city, man-made beach, before attending a local exhibition opening perhaps.

He is good friends with local guerrilla street artist Blu Art Xinja, who shimmies up drainpipes to affix (you guessed it) blue artwork to buildings in the city’s Central Business District.

Come winter Blair spends time with his family on the slopes of New Zealand’s Wanaka, just a three-hour flight away (and a much cheaper proposition than the resorts of New South Wales and Victoria, he adds).

Blair was one of the first local residents to assume the mantle of “Brisbane Greeter”, becoming part of a worldwide network of volunteers who feel passionately about showing visitors a little slice of their city, from Madagascar to Calcutta and Tokyo. All for free. And though seeing the sights is a large part of the appeal – especially as a lone traveller in a foreign city with limited time and no local friends or family to show me round – trying on a local’s life for size is arguably a big part of the charm of the service.

Of all Australia’s big cities Brisbane has traditionally been relegated to the bottom of the “to-do” list, serving merely as a gateway to wider Queensland. But Blair sells the city in a way that only a proud local can. So much so that I wonder why I shouldn’t pack up all my worldly belongings and move there immediately.

That’s a fact

A walking encyclopaedia, Blair is full to the brim of quirky and enlightening facts about the city: how large chunks of the Queensland capital were once swampland, why Brisbane City Hall is record-breaking, where to find the finest public art out of the 400 examples on offer and when is best to visit for the city’s festivals.

Visitors can arrange for the tour to be tailored to their interests. In Brisbane the options range from touring the city’s laneways to exploring its sporting heritage, aboriginal monuments, public art or viewing the sights using the city’s free network of bicycles.

Our tour is wedged in between my two flights – one domestic and one international – but two hours proves ample time to get to grips with the compact city centre and South Bank.

We begin at the beginning: Burnett Lane is the oldest street in the city, and true to Australia’s modern history as a British penal colony, Brisbane grew up from around the local jail here. Now the lane is a brick and bitumen canvas for street artists and a booming hideout for hipsters, with bars, restaurants and cafes hidden in every corner. It’s a surprisingly young city, Blair explains, with the average age just under 34. It’s also impressively international – some 70% of the local populace wasn’t born here.

We stroll to the Cultural Precinct, taking in the recently remodelled library, which takes pride of place on the riverfront. It has an outdoor fire pit where local elders tell stories by dusk, and is just one of many nods to the region’s aboriginal heritage. To conclude our explorations we take a trip on the CityCat (Brisbane’s ferry network) admiring the skyscrapers and illuminated contours of Story Bridge at nightfall. And I begin to imagine myself as the next Brisbane resident to walk across it.