The river defines the city, the Brown Snake, curling its way round city and suburbs. The water glancing off jetties and rowing sheds, skyscrapers and heritage house lawns, swirling beneath docks and walkways full of runners and walkers. The ebb and flow of the tides mirrored by human activity as the day progresses.

The colour of the water changes like the scales of a snake in the sun, brown, blue, flashing silver in the light, orange in the morning sunrise.

Lights of the city reflect onto the surface of the water at night, glinting and dancing, but during the day sandy beaches are revealed and the tide sucks in and out of mangroves along the shores.

Amidst the chatter of the early morning walkers, a bird sits on a nest, solitary in her silence until one glorious morning the chicks appear and she fluffs her breast next to the nest in the relief of job done.

Pelicans and seagulls follow the small fishing boats trailing nets past Teneriffe. The kayakers bob in the wake of the CityCats dashing commuters into the city whilst the KittyCats scoot across the waterway like illustrations from a children’s’ book.

Flotsam and jetsam, and the less romantically named general rubbish, drifts in and out of the mangrove roots sticking skywards in small forests, the mix of a healthy and unhealthy waterway.

Brown tinted water, whirlpooling and rushing, is testament to the hidden currents lying beneath the supple surface. The water looks undrinkable, but the trees that stand along its banks give a much clearer indication of the life giving force. Native and imported species thrive nurtured by the muddy torrent. Gums mix with the Jacarandas, whilst an African Sausage tree guards a creek junction, transported to the Australian sun, and sustained by the water below.

Shags sit drying their wings in the sun, the sun catching the accents in their feathers that turn the black to shining green and flashes of orange.

Maiwar, the Brisbane River, humanity has named the waterway, and tried to bend it to man’s will. Tried to trap its waters, corset it with walkways and jetties, stone banks and wooden piles, but the power of the water, of the river itself, is proven by the majestic curves of the path it carves through the slowly yielding land. Each deep bend testament to centuries of slow pressure as the Brown Snake bends the land to its will.