50-cent Fun - Indooroopilly!

We've had a busy week and I was looking forward to some time out, on another 50-cent adventure.  

Some tech prep was necessary for this one.  I'd tried to re-borrow a book of walks around Brisbane suburbs.  

It was no longer in our local library collection and I didn't want to buy a copy (cos cheap and cheerful is our current focus).

Brisbane Council has lots of heritage trails though, which can be downloaded as .pdf files. That seemed a great option but my phone has a few quirks, so wasn't up to extensive use on a day's outing.  

I remembered Nick's iPad, which he uses for his music files.  I borrowed it the other day to save some bookmarks and also download the first heritage trail. 

We set off this morning with our lunchbox backpack and fully charged iPad - ready to view the map and info on its bigger screen.

Indooroopilly is about a 40-minute train ride from our local station.  Once there, we walked to the trail's starting point, a memorial in Keating Park.

There are 17 points of interest on the trail.  Nearly all of those were new to us and we liked the snippets of history.

We had a morning tea break half-way round, near Witton Barracks, to lighten the backpack load!

I've admired the Walter Taylor Bridge on our previous drives to/through Indooroopilly.  I liked seeing it at closer quarters.

We stopped to read some history of the adjaent Albert Bridge.  The first of the same name was destroyed by the 1893 floods in spite of attempts to weigh it down with a fully loaded train!

That bridge was subsequently swept away by floodwater, in dramatic fashion. 

"A desperate plan was hatched. A fully loaded steam train was parked on the bridge, its weight meant to pin the structure in place ... 

With a crack that could be heard over a kilometre away, the bridge’s central span snapped like a twig. The train, the steel, the timber—it all collapsed into the floodwaters below."

I haven't found any photos of the original bridge with the fully loaded steam train in place but there are other photos of it's destruction, here.

We continued walking to see the remaining sites and then had our picnic lunch in Keating Park (near our trail starting point).

By the time we got home, we'd walked around 6.5km! 

Total fare cost was $2.00 - 50c each way, for each of us. How good is that?

As we walked around, we saw diesel adventised for $3.15 per litre.  If I calculate the Mahindra's consumption at 8 litres per 100km, our return trip would have cost just over $15.00 - plus $6.00 for parking, so $21.00 total.

50-cent Fun - February edition!

We've had a few 50-cent train rides over the past 18 months.  

Queensland's 50-cent fares became permanent in early 2025 after a six-month trial period. The scheme applies to all Translink buses, trains, ferries, and trams.

As much as I usually blog of our road trips, there were a couple of train trips from our NSW days. 

Back then we travelled as a family of four - and carted picnic provisions in our trusty trolley.  

Nick is currently off work and we've been seeking cheaper entertainments -  even before all the rising fuel costs.  Mostly it's just two of us, so no need for the trolley.

Our first planned 50-cent adventure was to the State Library's "Driven" display - yep, spot the irony of catching the train to a car exhibition!

We hadn't packed lunch, so walked from the Library to West End and bought some lunch items from Woolies.  There was more walking to a shady spot beside the river where we sat on a huge rock and enjoyed the view. 

All up we walked 7km that day and spent $26 on lunch, plus $9 later in the afternoon for drinks and snacks.  $37 total spend, which included $1 each for our train fares.

After the Driven day out we bought an insulated backpack from BigW, on clearance for $6.50.  

We already had two insulated lunch boxes that fit inside and I made a simple tote bag to tuck into a side pocket. 

Our next outing was fairly impromptu.  We caught the train to Rosewood.  

We poked around opshops, found a few bargains and then bought some lunch items from Drakes supermarket.  

We found a shady picnic table. It was hot out, so after lunch we sat in the air conditioned library till it was time to go home.

Total spend was $10 for lunch and $2 for our train fares -  with 3.5km walked.

Rosewood is one end of our local train line.  Caboolture is the other end - and that was our next destination, a couple of days later.

The Art Gallery had a very interesting exhibition. We then picknicked at Centenary Lakes, while watching various bird antics. Highlight was a dozen cormorants doing some synchronised swimming! After lunch we walked a bit further to a couple of opshop and scored some excellent bargains - including a pair of cushions for the nearly two-hour trip home!

I'd packed excellent lunch provisions that day - a ham roll for Nick, Greek salad for me and juice boxes for both of us.  There was even apple/almond cake. Our fares were just $1 each - and we walked 5km.  

I'm currently researching for more public transport outings - here's to making great use of our 50-cent fares!