The Star Grand, Brisbane

When I began writing a Substack column, never did I imagine that I would devote an essay to a single hotel.  Then my husband and I checked into the Star Grand Hotel in Brisbane, Australia, and everything changed.  Never having set foot in Brisbane before, we took an uber from the central rail station to the hotel.  Our driver was unusually grumpy, but perhaps this was because it turned out that the Star Grand was only a few blocks from the station. 

Exiting the car as quickly as possible, we found ourselves in a subterranean auto-court which nevertheless managed to be perhaps the grandest hotel entrance I have ever experienced.  Emerging from behind parked Mercedes and BMW sedans, a bell boy waved us toward a glass wall with multiple doors, wasting no time offering to take our bags upstairs.  We gladly consented to his entreaty despite my lifelong habit of avoiding bell boys, whose efforts are inevitably accompanied by the unavoidable but largely unnecessary tips that are their due.

Inside the bank of floor-to-ceiling glass windows and doors lay a sumptuous modern lobby in shades of white and muted gold.  It appeared to be only slightly shorter than a football field.  Sunlight pressed in from another long bank of windows on the opposite side of the lobby, facing the Brisbane River.  Its rays illuminated a series of lounges and bars divided from the reception area only by intermittent rows of planter boxes bursting with tropical vegetation.  As I approached the reception desk to claim our reservation, I felt enveloped not only by luxury but by an unflinching attention to design that seemed to permeate every horizontal and vertical surface.

Nor was the bold yet subtle design energy confined to the lobby; it followed us down the curving hallway and up the elevator to our room on the thirteenth floor.  When we opened the door with our card key, sheer drapes on the wall-height, full-width window opened automatically, inviting the gods of theater design into the spacious room with us.  Inside, a padded fabric headboard rose from the pillows on the bed all the way to the tall ceiling. 

I immediately approached the window, as I always do when I enter any room in any building in the world.  When I looked directly out, the curve of the hotel’s matching northwest tower met my eye.  It was joined to our southeast tower by a curving rooftop skywalk that swept past the hotel to terminate in a much taller black residential tower.

But it was when I looked down that the view really dazzled: directly below us lay the largest roof deck I have ever seen.  Terrace after low-walled terrace, clad in bright green artificial turf, formed a giant cross pattern representing the four points of the compass, with distant views of the city appearing beyond them.  Broad steps and walks led up through the turf terraces where people were dotted about strolling or sitting on large bean-bag chairs to watch an Australian football match on a giant screen at the roof garden’s center.  A small black glass pavilion housed a gym, while under the two hotel towers, a pool deck emerged, leading to an outdoor bar with views over the river. 

My reaction to this unexpected luxuriant expanse was immediate: “I don’t think we’ll even need to leave the hotel during our visit to Brisbane,” I commented to my husband, Dennis, who was playing with the electronic curtain release.

There was no need to leave the hotel, but there were plenty of reasons to depart our room, starting with a visit to the fabulous roof deck, which turned out to be on level 7.  Skirting one of two pools, we quickly arrived at an outdoor bar, where Dennis wasted no time ordering himself a martini.  Because we were in Australia, the exact composition of the drink he desired (“Bombay sapphire gin, 3 olives to the side, dirty up, give me the glass of ice in which you shake the concoction”) was not assured.  The last time he had requested one, at a hotel in Melbourne, the bartender had interpreted “dirty up” to mean that he should squash the olives and infuse them into the drink as if they were a sort of olive guacamole.

Leaving Dennis at the bar before I heard the verdict on whether his order was correctly fulfilled, I descended a few steps to a wide walkway bordered by a glass railing.  There I found an overlook where I gazed with pleasure directly across the zigzagging Brisbane River toward Brisbane’s pre-eminent cultural institutions on the south bank: the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Museum, and Queensland Cultural Centre. 

It was impossible not to notice that an attractive modern pedestrian bridge spanned the river a mere 100 feet or so from where I stood.  “I’m going to walk across the river,” I informed Dennis, who was already sipping his martini and appeared to be satisfied with it.  “I’ll be back shortly.” 

First, though, I had to find the entrance to the bridge.  After a bit of wandering, I ended up descending to the roofed but open-air fourth floor of the complex, where I encountered an array of tastefully appointed, upscale restaurants facing onto a wide promenade.  Navigating around them, I finally found the entrance to the bridge.  It, too, departed from the hotel complex! 

Strolling slowly across the bridge, I wondered if the Brisbane River was wider or narrower than the Thames.  It seemed about the same, I decided, as I came upon a colorful inflated double archway that marked the center of the bridge.  Large numbers of pedestrians flowed past, including a little girl who stopped under the arch to exult with glee at its yellow and blue haunches.  As I approached the opposite shore, I took pleasure in a long, tree-covered embankment where many pedestrians and joggers were out enjoying the afternoon sun.  A Nepalese pagoda, erected for Brisbane’s 1988 Expo, which first introduced the city to the world, greeted my eye just left of the bridge’s ramparts.

Returning toward the imposing, shiny black curves of the Star Grand’s complex façade felt like approaching Darth Vader’s citadel, but any hint of evil dissipated when I rejoined Dennis on the roof deck.  There, I asked the bartender for a glass of Maker’s Mark, a drink guaranteed to match its American incarnation, and sat down next to Dennis.  As we both sipped, it was a delight to watch the passers-by in the late afternoon sun reflecting off the river.  But as evening approached, I suggested taking the elevator up to the roof deck, which turned out to be on the twenty-third floor. 

Emerging from the elevator, we found ourselves on another fashionable curving promenade, but this one offered a panorama over the entire city.  As the sun went down, reflections of the colorful lights on the many bridges bounced off a tall glass guardrail that stretched across both hotel buildings to the two taller residential towers that framed them.  Night accent lighting switched on, illuminating not only the glittering inverted cone of a chandelier over a central bar, but a series of Australian native Screw Pine trees with their distinctive aerial roots.  

Two “dining options,” as the hotel would have called them, presented themselves.  One was a pricey restaurant featuring European fare, but we repaired to the more affordable option, an open-air affair called Babblers.  Not for the first time on our trip, I ordered fish and chips.  In tastings at multiple places, I discovered that the Australian version of this ordinary dish is superior to its English and American equivalents due to its ultra-light, tempura-style batter.  The filets manage to be both crisp and foamy in your mouth.  

As we sat enjoying our dinner, we watched a multitude of young Brisbanites parading past, searching for excitement on a weekend night.  Laughing and jostling with one another, they were clothed in everything from sweatshirts and jeans to silver-sequin frocks with stiletto heels.  The effect was democratic, to say the least.  At first, we assumed they were all headed to a fabulous nightclub at the end of the promenade, but then we followed them, we discovered that the walkway terminated only in a public elevator back down to the fourth level.  (Hotel guests have their own exclusive elevators housed in discrete foyers along the walkway.)

The next day, we did leave the hotel, and for good reason: We took a bus to the Lone Pine Wildlife Sanctuary, where we watched koala bears dozing in eucalyptus tree canopies and we hand-fed kangaroos.  This was perhaps the only activity that the Star Grand could not produce within its precinct.  We learned that koalas sleep up to 20 hours a day, owing to the fact that the eucalyptus leaves on which they dine are insufficiently nutritious to allow them the energy for more wakeful hours. 

When we returned to the hotel, I took a walk around the surrounding blocks, which featured the lovely city botanic gardens, the grand Queensland Club, the former Treasury building (now another hotel) and the Queensland Parliament.  All were within a block or two of the Star Grand.

I have not yet mentioned that the fifth floor of the complex is a casino where we spent all of five Australian dollars in twenty-cent increments in slot machines so saturated with colorful images of video-game style combatants that we scarcely understood how to work them. Of course, we won not a penny. 

From the fifth floor, a grand stair descends to nearby Mary Street, which boasts more affordable dining options, including a very good Korean barbecue joint.  Next to the staircase is an array of amphitheater seating whose risers are lit up in a continuous, constantly changing video of nature scenes.  

As we said goodbye to the Star Grand for our flight to Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, I reflected that it must have taken an army of the most talented architects, interior designers, landscape architects, and artists to create this place that represents no less than an entire urban design transformation of the most central block in all of downtown Brisbane.  It almost didn’t happen.  According to two stories in the Brisbane Times in August, 2024, the developers almost went belly-up before they somehow managed to pull off their enormous success.  Brisbane is set to host the 2032 Summer Olympics and the Star Grand will open its doors to the luckiest of visitors, showing the world once more that Brisbane is no provincial backwater.  “Now that we’ve stayed in a real five star hotel,” I told Dennis, “I never want to go back to four stars.”