Shonandgraham's travel blogs:
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Back in Brisbane
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Arrived in Brisbane on Monday afternoon and very kindly got a free pick up from the bus station by the hostel we were staying at. After having fans in the rooms at Surfers Paradise and Byron Bay it was a welcome relief to have air conditioning in the room. We are staying in Fortitude Valley this time, which is where most of the restaurants and bars are. They're not easy to find though.
Tuesday was a lazy day. Graham went to the hairdressers to get blond highlights put in and then we went to the Queensland Museum. It's free to enter and has some very good displays, such as the scale models of blue whales that you walk under to enter the museum, and a dinosaur garden with life size models of a T-Rex and another dinosaur whose name I can't remember.
Wednesday we decided to go to Mt Coot-tha. It was easy enough to get to, just catch the bus 471 from Adelaide St in the city centre. It took about 30 mins to get there and the bus stops at the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens and then Mt Coot-tha Lookout. We got off at the lookout as we didn't fancy the long climb up to the top from the Botanic Gardens. It has amazing views of all of Brisbane and on clear days you can see right the way across to Moreton Island. (We were lucky enough to have perfect conditions to see this). There is also a small shop and cafe with reasonably priced food and drink. After taking in the views we decided to follow the Summit Track to JC Slaughter Falls and then back to the Botanic Gardens. All fine in theory. However we didn't take into account the signposting in Oz is a bit haphazard! So 1.5hrs later on a walk that was supposed to take 30mins we were lost! Luckily for us we had plenty of water, and we were on a track that eventually came out onto a road. We followed the road down and it came back to the Mt Coot-tha lookout. This time we were clever and caught the bus back down and into the city!
In the evening we went to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery for a tour. The tour is really interesting and well done and you get to drink 4 beers at the end. There is also a shop full of XXXX goodies. All for a reasonable cost of $18 or less with YHA etc. The brewery is in Milton, 5 mins walk from Milton train station and while we were there we discovered the Brisbane restaurant from My Restaurant Rules. Thursday was quite a lazy day. For the first time since we've been away we didn't get up until after midday. Well it has been hard work travelling! We walked down to the river and caught the City Cat (a ferry service) and cruised up and down the river for a while before getting off at South Bank Parklands. This area looks like it has recently been developed and they have shops, cafes, restaurants and even a beach and lagoon. They also have a lot of parkland and gardens. We walked from the parklands to the Gabba. This is the Brisbane Cricket ground but it also hosts the AFL games. AFL is Aussie Rules Football and the opening game of the season was on Thursday night, against St Kilda, which we had tickets to go and watch. AFL is similar to rugby but it is played at a much faster pace and the game flows much more easily. It's also a lot more exciting to watch! There isn't any segregation so we were sitting amongst Brisbane Lions fans and St Kilda's fans. Lions won 116 to 97 or something similar to that.
Friday was an early start to catch the 8am train to Beerwah which takes about 1hr and then a courtesy bus to Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Good timing for us as Steve was actually at the Zoo and did the Croc show. The zoo is one of the best we've seen in terms of really caring for the animals and we were also lucky as the new exhibit, Tiger Temple was opened for the first time on Friday. There are a lot of shows all round the zoo, but the main one is at the Crocoseum. This involves Crocs (obviously) and they also have a snake show, bird show and tiger show. We had about 5hrs in the zoo and still didn't see all the shows so it's not a quick visit by any means.
In the evening we went to the Louvre, the Brisbane Restaurant from My Restaurant Rules. I have to say the food was pretty good and we met Francesca, who seemed really friendly and down to earth. We sat at a communal table - room enough for 10 people to eat, and met two really friendly women from Brisbane who were giving us tips on where to go and visit. Not convinced I would like to sit at that table all the time though! The hostel we stayed at is above the Elephant and Wheelbarrow pub in Fortitude Valley. It has a reasonably sized common room with sofas, a TV and a pool table. It also has an internet cafe that isn't too badly priced. However, on the weekend there are live bands on in the pub and then loud music until the early hours of the morning. Our room was on the first floor and was vibrating from the speakers downstairs until around 4am. You have been warned!
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Where I stayed:
Surfers Paradice
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