Up early on Sunday for the train to Brisbane to see the parade of CityCats along the river to celebrate their return to service tomorrow – 15 out 23 services functional. Alas we had our first meeting with the Brisbane Police and ended up giving statements. No! We won’t be sentenced to life here although we wouldn’t mind! Some drunken idiot started abusing us, for no reason, on Sandgate Station platform, followed us onto the train and then started on everybody else. For a moment we thought it was our fault but we did not take kindly to being threatened to have our faces smashed in!! It was amazing how quickly two large Transit Policemen, built like wardrobes, arrived, isolated him and held him safe until handing him over to the police at Roma Street station. A job very professionally done but we had to make statements and were fearful of missing the CityCats. No problem! The police put our bikes onto the train to South Bank and held it up whilst we got on!
It was just a poor paranoid drunk but he was very nasty and looked capable of anything!
We didn’t miss the CityCats! After cycling from South Bank station we positioned ourselves with a few others on the Goodwill footbridge and were surprised how few people were there for such an important moment – all of Brisbane’s CityCats (well 15 of the 17) and 8 of the 9 City Ferries in procession along the river to celebrate their partial return to service on Monday after the damage caused by the floods. Not well publicised they said. I cried buckets! It was so moving and such a lovely way to say ‘We’re back’ loud and clear after losing most of their jetties in the floods. Brian was chuffed to get a note of every one! See picture below! We watched them there and we watched them back waving like mad so look at the news tonight! There were lots of helicopters filming the event and they may have copped the bridge with us on it!
A lovely cycle wander around the lush green and shady Botanic Gardens followed, lunch and a trip to Target and the Queen Street shops before hazarding the busy city streets to Roma Street and the train ride home. Uneventful this time! A bit of basic shopping at Woolies before we were glad to collapse in front of the TV with the Sunday papers!