☕ Cafes & Riverside

New Farm

New Farm is the inner city's most liveable stretch — a peninsula of riverside park, converted warehouses and cafes, fifteen minutes from the CBD by ferry.

✍️ By Frank Adam Burns 📅 Updated 2026📍 Brisbane, QLD

New Farm occupies a bend in the river downstream of the Valley, and it runs together with neighbouring Teneriffe as one continuous stretch of riverside. It is residential rather than touristic, which is most of its appeal.

New Farm Park

Fifteen hectares of riverside lawn under enormous Moreton Bay figs, some over a century old, whose buttressed roots and deep natural shade make this the city's best picnic ground.

There is a substantial rose garden, free electric barbecues, and one of Brisbane's better playgrounds sitting under the trees rather than under shade sails.

It is a genuinely local park. On a Saturday afternoon it is full of Brisbane families rather than visitors.

The Brisbane Powerhouse

A 1920s tramway power station on the park's edge, decommissioned in the 1970s, derelict for two decades and converted into an arts venue in 2000. The conversion deliberately kept the graffiti from the abandoned years alongside the bare brick and exposed steel.

It programmes theatre, comedy, music and contemporary performance year-round and is a fixture of the Brisbane Comedy Festival. The restaurant and riverside terrace operate whether or not you have a ticket.

The Saturday Market

The Jan Powers Farmers Market runs at the Powerhouse on Saturday mornings and is genuinely agricultural — regional Queensland growers with produce, meat, seafood, cheese and bread, plus coffee and prepared food.

Go early. Busiest from about eight, and the best produce goes in the first two hours. Parking is difficult; the ferry is the answer.

Brunswick Street and Teneriffe

Brunswick Street carries the cafes, small restaurants and neighbourhood shops. It is a coffee suburb rather than a nightlife one, and most cafes close by mid-afternoon.

Teneriffe next door has the converted wool stores — heavy brick warehouses from the wool-shipping era, now apartments, with the river walk running past them. The architecture is the attraction.

Staying Here

Good for: cafes, walking, the river, and a weekend that feels like living in Brisbane rather than visiting it.

Less good for: being in the middle of things — it is a ferry ride or a long walk from the CBD, and quiet at night.

Getting There

The CityCat stops at New Farm Park, Sydney Street and Teneriffe, about fifteen minutes from the CBD at fifty cents, and it is much the nicest approach.

The Riverwalk — a floating boardwalk on the river itself — connects to the CBD on foot in about forty minutes, flat and sealed the whole way.

Buses run along Brunswick Street.

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