This beautifully maintained, 16-hectare downtown park is one of the world’s largest subtropical urban gardens. Formerly a market and a railway yard, the park opened in 2001 and is a showcase for native Queensland vegetation, complete with a rainforest and fern gully, waterfalls, skyline lookouts, playgrounds, free-to-use BBQs and no shortage of frangipani. It’s something of a maze: easy to get into, hard to get out of.
Adjacent to the Roma Street Parkland is the Old Windmill – reputedly the oldest surviving building in Queensland (1828). Due to a design flaw, the windmill sails were too heavy for the wind to turn, and a convict-powered treadmill was briefly employed before the mill was abandoned. The building was converted into a signal post and later a TV broadcast site and meteorological observatory.
