Brisbane City Backpackers

So I've made it to the Merry Old Land of Oz.... and I didn't even need to follow a yellow brick road!

Am happy to report the weather here in Brisbane in warm... although a little overcast today.

BTW
Time in Auckland was great. As always was wonderful to spend time with
Carla and Noah, and to catch up with Abs and Cindy and Bertha and Jono
was all an added bonus.
I'm also proud to say that , being left in
charge of Carla's vehicle, I managed to navigate my way ro...

Well, if not more feeling then more details at least.

Okay... here's a run down on the last week....

Thursday
the 11th flew Wellington - Auckland. The whole thing with me starting
off my travels by heading through Wellington, Aucks and Australia has
been a mixture of family history research and seeing friend's family,
and whenever I get the chance to hang out with the Hedgemans in Aucks,
well I always always take it.

Didn't play so much of a tourist
in ...

(sorry no pictures at this time, my connection is too slow to upload them) I awoke early today, as usual, and spent the first few hours of the morning using what I would later learn to have been some of my last free wireless internet access for some time. Checked out of the Brisbane City Backpackers around 9 am and headed east over the William Jolly Bridge to the South Bank, and eventually on to the Conservation Volunteers' Home Office. We were to arrive at 11am, I showed up at 9:30 and they ...

Another overnight, red-eye flight, this time from Perth to Sydney and on to Brisbane. I wised up and dressed properly for the ride. Virgin Blue night flights are horribly cold, almost too cold to sleep. Arriving in Brisbane at 9am local time, I experienced a strange sense of nostalgia. Hard to imagine that just 145 days ago I was flying into this same airport with all the hopes, expectations and unknowns of the trip in front of me. This time, I rolled in a veteran traveler, privy to the proce...

My last full day in Australia. Hard to believe that it is all nearly over. Again, I didn't do that much with the day. After breakfast and fighting with the free and consistently broken wireless internet at the City Backpackers I marched down to Fortitude Valley to find some decent souvenirs. I had no such luck. I did, however, find a nice, non-English speaking barber shop and got myself a $9 haircut, which despite our language barriers, actually turned out as I desired. I think the words "tri...

We said goodbye to Donna in the morning of 28 Jan and made our to Brisbane, arriving some time after midday. We checked into our hostel which had a pub, swimming pool and a great rooftop view of the city overlooking it's river and attractive bridges. After we sorted ourselves, we went to explore a little for the day and visited the South Bank parklands on the other side of the river to us. We ended our first night in Brisbane by checking out a small bar nearby that had an open mic night going...

I finally made it back to Brisbane! I was quite happy to be back to civilization. I took a walk all around the central city area, across the river, through the park, and back up to the street that is one gigantic shopping mall. It was nice to be with the people again and to do whatever I felt like doing because I didn't have to rely on anyone else to drive me anywhere.

The hostel I stayed in had a nice view of the river, but unfortunately the room was not the greatest, so I switched t...

Well we made it through the thick and thin of south east asia! and what a ride it was! We took a 10 hour flight from Hong Kong to Brisbane with Quantas Airlines, it was a nice flight, already the Ozzie mad mentallity was showing in the flight attendants... After many films and a bit of a snooze we arrived in Brizzie! (as the locals call it!) Got some money out of the machine, jumped on a bus... half hour journey to the hostel, which was to be our home for the next 3 weeks... Brisbane city bac...

Wow! I can't believe that it is 1 Nov already! Time flys! This weekend I visited Brisbane for 3 days. Brisbane is about a 1.5 hour flight north of Sydney. When we arrived in Brisbane Jessa and I were shocked to discover that the trains had stopped running so we had to scramble around looking for transportation to our hostel. After a little confusion and panic we found a shuttle bus for like $10. We arrived at City Backpackers on Roma Street around 11pm. The place was no Marriott, but it was f...

As is becoming a recurring theme the Greyhound was once again late....and rather than the expected journey of just under 2 hours, it took us over 3 hours to arrive in Brisbane! Hummmmm can't wait til we've finished our final journey with them! Arriving in Brisbane was fine, but as our hostel didn't pick up from the Transit Centre we had to walk the 15minutes....UP A HILL!! I swear my backpack just gets heavier and heavier, I will definatly be going home a few inches shorter! Staying at City B...