Australia - Brisbane

  Brisbane, Australia
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Day 1

Having awoken at 8, packed our bags and caught the hostel shuttle bus to the bus depot we jumped on the 10am Greyhound out of Surfers heading for Brisbane. The journey was only a quick 1hr 40 mins, our shortest yet, and as usual passed quickly.

We had booked in at 'Bunk' youth hostel so gave them a call from the transit centre for them to send their mini bus to collect us. A few days older and a bit wiser we requested to see the room before we parted with good money for it - luckily it was pretty nice (PIC) so we decided to stay.

A voucher that we had found in the Greyhound magazine meant that we were entitled to 4 free meals in the adjoining pub if we stayed for 4 nights - we paid up.



Bags dumped in the room, we settled down to trawl through all the magazines and brochures for Brisbane to discover what there was to do and how we were going to spend the next few days. After a good hour of this and not that much wiser, we trundled out and around the local area; Fortitude valley, before catching a tube over to the beach (man made) at South Bank and enjoying a picnic there.

Food finished we caught the bus from South Bank across the river into the centre of town for a wander around. While there we decided to text Steve to see how he was progressing with his travels up the East coast, by sheer coincidence he was also in Brisbane staying in a hostel in the Valley. A few texts later and we had arranged to meet him back at our hostel for dinner and to watch the live covers band that was playing.

Dinner was paid for with the free meal vouchers we had recieved but with a free garlic bread and a couple of free jugs of beer thrown in as they forgot to charge us - bargain! The band was pretty good and saw us staying out and chatting with Steve over a few more drinks until 1:30 when we said our goodbyes and retired to bed.


Day 2

Waking up at 9ish to grey angry looking clouds and pooring rain we decided to crawl back under the sheets and stay there, getting our first extended lie-in. The rain still hadn't subsided when we finally did emerge from our pit at 1:30pm but not wanting to waste the ENTIRE day we braved the warm showers and headed out into town.

The tourist info centre in the middle of town was our first stop, to try and get some more advice and make a decision about a day trip to Moreton Island (the third biggest sand island in the world) but Queensland's non-council run tourist info places being what they are, there was little non-biased information to be had as the 'helpers' continuously tried to make a sale.

Eventually we came to the decision that the trips were quite expensive, we were going to do most of it on Fraser Island and it didn't look like the weather was going to improve much while we were in Brisbane so the money was better left in our pockets for the time being.

We took the rainy day as an opportunity to catch up on our travel blog and do the laundry - boring but essential.

Another free meal and more free drinks in the adjoining bar and we headed to bed at midnight.


Day 3

Another rainy day meant that the grand tour of Brisbane's sights and sounds or a lazy day on the beach, were out of the question. Instead, with the rain temporarily subsided, we strolled into town and treated ourselves to a breakfast (scrambled eggs on toast) at a local deli while mulling over our plans for the forthcoming week.



We continued our stroll into the main pedestrianised shopping area of the city and stopped for a while to watch the acrobatic street artists.

The continued miserable weather afforded us another 'website update' opportunity as we spent the rest of the afternoon tucked away in another 'Peterpan's' travel shop on their cheap internet.

With the website up to date we ventured out onto the flooded streets and jumped into a taxi back to the hostel to grab a quick shower before meeting Steve in the bar again for more free food and drinks. Steve actually managed to win us even more free beer with his performance in the bar table tennis competition!

Fed, beered and entertained, we made our way to bed at 1:30.


Day 4

With the weather looking more like an Australian summer we strolled around the Valley weekend market looking for cheap books and en route, met up with Steve before heading over to the book fair in the Exhibition and convention centre, that he had told us about.

The book fair was huge, with thousands upon thousands of books neatly laid out in their appropriate sections; autobiographies, fiction, hard back, travel etc. There were three main areas that they were grouped into; 'high quality' (i.e popular books that they could get away with charging a lot more for), 'Priced' and 'Unpriced'. We spent a couple of hours there trawling around the rows of books in search of a few bargains until our eyes could no longer differentiate between a Ben Elton or Mills & Boon.

We all did pretty well with most of the books averaging $6; Verdi purchased a couple of autobiographies (Richard Branson & Frank Skinner), Andrew a couple of books by Anthony Bourdain (the chef/critic we've previously mentioned on numerous occasions) and Steve was spoilt for choice with Ben Elton and John Grisham books a plenty, finally managing to whittle his choice down to just five!

Pleased with our purchases we meandered over to the beach at South bank to stroll around the market there (much nicer than the Valley's with more 'boutique' type stalls) get some lunch and soak up some sun. Plumping for falafels we sat on the boardwalk between two of the pools and enjoyed a leisurely lunch while deciding what to do for the rest of the afternoon.



We toyed with the idea of going to the cinema but thought it was a shame to hide in the dark when it was the first sunny day we had enjoyed for a while, so instead opted to catch the bus back over to the centre of town where Steve was going to go to the park to start one of his new books and we were going to catch a bus to Mount Cooltha.

Yet again 'the best laid plans..' - after sitting at the bus stop for 10 minutes we remembered that it was a Saturday and the buses ran to a 'different' timetable on weekends so checked the board only to discover that there was an hours wait for the next bus to Cooltha and it was that same bus that would be the last bus back from Cooltha, affording us literally no time to even get off let alone look around. We resigned ourselves to some more time strolling around the shops and on the internet!

With the sun still staying out to play we decided to make the most of it and actually walked back to the hostel (only about 30 mins), again meeting Steve in the bar for EVEN MORE free dinner and drinks (thank you Bunk!). The bar at Bunk is obviously popular with locals and students on the weekend as it was fairly packed by the time we had finished dinner so decided to say our farewells (Steve was heading back down South for the Country Music festival and to do a farm stay) and made our way back to the room to do our packing and hit bed at 12:00.