All afternoon I just wandered the streets of the city and had a look about. There are areas where there has been a lot of development, basically from what I recall of the place quite some years ago,the new development where they have the Lagoon (think Southbank Brisbane, but paid) and some of the new apartment blocks along the Pioneer River used to be all mangrove, so it all looks a treat now and very handy to the town.
The Promenade walk is really quite a great addition as it stretches from one end of town to the other along the course of the Pioneer River and is a great alternative to walking through town and pedestrian crossings etc.The part that surprised me the most about it is that other than a couple of fence railing parts that have obviously been ripped off there is no graffiti or vandalism.In Melbourne it would last all of 72 hours before being covered in tags and graffiti so that is brilliant. The walk runs from the Lagoon development and main shopping centre along the river basically to the Forgan Bridge and there is a newly developed public space across the road from the end, which is all very nice and I am guessing handy when an event is on, but there were very few people about anywhere at all really, not even in the shops.
The main town streets have mostly been slowed to crawling speed for cars to add to the experience for the pedestrian and most of the centre "islands"/medians have been heavily planted out, which gives a nice cooling tropical feel to the town, quite a nice change to the usual paved or grassed medians. There are quite a number of "deco" style buildings about and still a few Queenslander style pubs too. Most of the buildings in the city centre haven't changed much from what I recall years ago, which is nice. They don't seem to have the knock it down and put up some soulless glass box mentality, again very different for current planning in Melbourne.
Off to Airlie Beach and Proserpine next...
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