Claire Moore sips a cup of tea as she looks out over a wide river from the back porch of a stately home surrounded by beautiful fig trees and an avenue of queen palms.
"I don't think there's a more beautiful place in Brisbane," says the former senator.
But despite the ease with which Moore moves through the opulent 19th-century interior, the city's oldest surviving European residence is not alone.
Once the domain of the city's colonial elite, Newstead House is now public property. Over the decades, it has hosted hundreds of weddings and countless Devonshire tea parties for the ...