Brisbane’s Ferry System

Travel

Aug 29

I’m sitting in the Brisbane Airport right now.

I’m waiting on a flight that is now on its third time being delayed. Great because I’m getting some work in; not so great because I’m effectively missing a whole day in Airlie Beach. And let’s be honest, if I was going to miss a day, Brisbane should’ve been the day to miss.

I’m thoroughly unimpressed with this place as a city. I’m sure people think the undulating river is just so phenomenal, but I’d venture to say a regular straight river is just as nice. Because the entire city is built around a water feature that looks like someone gave a young Helen Keller a crayon and said “Go nuts!”. Literally everything within the center is impossible to get to without walking. Should you choose to order an Uber for a trip that would usually take ten minutes, you’ll wait 30 minutes for your car to show up. Then it will take another 30 to get there. All when you could have just walked. The bridges are ineffectual at best and the shockingly mismanaged road construction projects are a stone throw away from those of Las Vegas Paving. That being said, there is one alternative: the ferry.

Let me tell you a little story about a girl who had dreams of travel grandeur, only to find out that a wonky floor tile was enough imbalance to cause severe motion sickness. Me. I’m the little girl. And while we all know that I suffer from motion sickness, I actually think the effects are getting worse as I get older. What was once car sickness, then planes, then sea, is now any general movement. Knowing how much I planned to do on this trip, I went to the experts and had my doctor prescribe me sculpamine patches. To my surprise, while the patches were ultimately more effective than other oral meds I’d taken, they also came with the pesky side effect of partial blindness (Yes. I went blind on holiday in Australia. Which also accounts for why I haven’t blogged in over a week. Hard to type in brail with stiletto nails. More on that to come).

So the ferry, the cute, sweet little free Brisbane City Hopper. There are a ton of them, all named after people, and even one named “Melany”, probably just to mock me. Evidently this fleet of ferries is how all Brisbanians get around, so I gave it a try. The first one was early in the day, had little rocking, and for the most part seemed fine. I got on, I got off, no incident to record. But as I headed up river and farther from my destination, I had no idea what treachery awaited me. Unbeknownst to me, more ferries came on duty. Then there were attendants at the docks. More and more people being shuttled back and forth. Fucking jet skies weaving in and out of waterway traffic. So the calm waters became choppy and unruly, and so, on my way all the way back down the river, bobbing up and down, side to side, a familiar feeling came back to me. Heat, palpitations, nausea, and then the dreaded moment when my mind comes to terms with it’s fate, moments before my body does.

I vomited. Not on anyone. Not in the cabin. And not for the first time on this trip. But hey, at least I didn’t go blind again.