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Day 52 continued......
This was our first real day in Brisbane. We landed at 6.35am after having no sleep on the flight thanks to some horrid screaming babies. We were both cold after having become accustomed to a South East Asian climate. We settled into our accommodation which is a nice typical Queenslander house that has been converted into self catering bedsits. We took a nap to try and regain some of the sleep we lost on the flight before heading in to explore the city.
Our first impression of Brisbane is that it is so quiet considering the fact that it is supposed to be a city - there seems to be hardly any residents! We took a walk around and sorted some errands, but being a bit zombie like we didn't get much done! We then stopped off at a supermarket and bought some food to cook and noticed that despite the exchange rate, food other than meat is actually more expensive here.
Day 53
After a much needed lie in we spent the afternoon in town finishing off the errands from the previous day and went for a Nando's dinner - another home comfort
that we had been missing.
Day 54
We have become quite the public transport users since we began our travels and today was no exception. We made our way into town and caught the bus to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It was a really good trip out despite the fact it rained a little - the geeky berghaus rain macs didn't feel quite so silly. At the sanctuary we first stopped to look at a cockatiel, just before we left I waved goodbye to the bird and to my surprise he responded "bye-bye" which was pretty impressive!
We then sat and watched a very insightful presentation on koala bears and learnt that there are loads of different species of eucalyptus tree and that the koala is quite a fussy eater as to which type it will eat; that there are two different types of koala - the southern ones are brown and the northern ones are grey and that they aren't actually bears but marsupials most closely related to the wombat! After the presentation we got to hold a six year old female koala bear called Hazel, she was lovely. Queensland is the only state in
Australia where you can hold a koala and they even have their own employment laws - they can only be held for 30 minutes per day and have to have every third day off! Sounds like a good job to me?
We had our packed lunch in the picnic area whilst trying to prevent bush turkeys eating our lunch - we have a small horrible pest called a pigeon and they have the bush turkey that roams as a pigeon would and yes it is turkey sized and they are everywhere! After lunch we hand fed kangaroos in an a open reserve and the bush turkeys even tried to steal the kangaroos food!
We then looked at the other koala enclosures - the babies, the mothers with the tiny babies that were so cute, the bachelors and the retirement home before looking at the other Australian animal enclosures - wombats, dingoes and lots of different birds!
Day 55
We had another quiet day today, there is not really a lot to do in Brisbane but it has been nice doing normal things. We had some lunch in town before catching the bus to the Botanical Gardens.
The public transport is nowhere near as good here as in Asia so we only had an hour before the last bus back to the city, which leaves an hour before the gardens close! Anyway we followed one of the designated trails and saw some really different plants. It was evident from the trail that they get a lot of old people as it took us forty minutes to walk a sixty minute trail and that is with stopping to take pictures along the way!
We then went back to the city, had a coffee and then went to the cinema - something that we haven't done for so long. We went to a real nice old fashioned style cinema and watched Angels & Demons.
Day 56
We had an early start catching the train at 7.45 am to Beerwah and caught the courtesy bus to the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin - Crocodile Hunter). It was really well laid out and had lots to do. We started watching a presentation on giant tortoises before going and feeding an elephant, which was so cool, they are so gentle for such big animals. We then went to the Crocoseum
to watch the show that included a demonstration with a really big croc! We spent the rest of the day looking at all the different animals and listening to the different presentations. It was a really long day as we then had to make the hour and half journey back to Brisbane. We were too tired to cook so we went out for dinner.
Day 57
We added to our use of public transport today by going on the City Cat to the Southbank area of the city. The City Cat is a very speedy catamaran that zips up and down the river stopping at various mini docks along the way. We got off and went to the Queensland Museum, which had some insightful opinions on the disposition of the Aboriginal people under white rule. We then went over to the Museum of Modern Art and looked at the Chinese Project Exhibition. It was quite interesting having been to China and you can see that the artists were trying to get across opinions and messages that are prevented from being seen outside of China - In particular some photos that had been hidden for years depicting the darker
side of the revolution.
We then walked along the river front to have some lunch. On the way back to the City Cat stop we passed the Stanley Street Market and the Street Beach - a man made beach on the riverside. We then took the City Cat back over to the other side and walked through the Brisbane City Gardens.
This evening we are off to have some dinner, head home and then pack as we have to catch a Greyhound Coach to Hervey Bay / Fraser Island tomorrow morning.
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kat x
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Koalas!!
The picture of you guys hugging the Koala is soooooo cute!! I love love love them!!! please bring me one home.....pretty please! xxx