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Published: March 14th 2006
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Naughts and Crosses
Me and Carrie playing naughts and crosses at a pizza restaurant in Byron Bay PHOTOS COMING LATER
Sitting here in Buzz’s living room I’m finally getting round to writing about what I’ve been up to in Australia 11days after arriving.
Early on the 3rd of March I landed at Brisbane airport after my nightmare journey from India. My stomach was back on track and having had a couple of hours kip on the last leg of my plane journey I was feeling ready to take on the new Continent.
My Uncle and his family had arranged a short holiday to Sea World followed by a Short stay at Byron Bay to celebrate his new job and they were kind enough to invite me along. So a couple of hours after landing I found myself sitting in the middle of Sea world with my Uncle Charles, my Aunt in law MJ (Mary Jane) and 3 cousins - Kate, James and Carolyn aged 3,5 and 7 respectively. Katy I had never met and the other two I hadn’t seen since they were babies so it was pretty strange at first.
The main feature of the day was rain but it was still good fun and we saw some impressive shows and animals there.
Later on we stayed in a great apartment in Byron bay and hoped the next day was going to bring better whether so that we could stay and enjoy the beach. When it didn’t we decided to make a short trip to the lighthouse there (the most easterly point of Australia), which actually probably looked better surrounded by the dramatic stormy whether and then headed back to my Uncles house in Brisbane.
The next couple of days I spent playing with my cousins climbing trees and playing cops and robbers in the park etc. I had zero previous experience at looking after children and this time with my cousins made me realise just how much credit parents deserve. To say it’s a full time commitment looking after children is drastically short of the truth. You need superhuman powers to be able to watch them all in different places at the same time, talk to and listen to each one of them at the same time and help them constantly with different things like climbing tree’s trying to make sure they don’t fall out and crack their head open or something like that. The few hours I spent alone with
the kids made me realise that it will be some time before I feel I’m ready to take on the responsibility of having my own. I did love spending time getting to know them though and they are adorable kids.
At some point or another my grandparents arrived from celebrating their Golden wedding anniversary to look after the kids for about 4 days while Charles and MJ went off to Malaysia for another short holiday. One of the days I went to the Koala Sanctuary with them, which houses loads of the typical Australian wildlife including Kangaroos and Wombats etc. It was pretty good and interesting to see the animals up close but after wondering around for a while feeding the kangaroos etc we decided we’d had enough and headed for the exit.
Just as we got to the exit I heard what sounded like a familiar voice and looked up to see an old college friend of mine Dan Gent walking in through the door with his girlfriend Emily! I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years and yet here he was on the other side of the world in exactly the same place as I
was at exactly the same time!
I stayed in the park with them for a bit longer and later they came back to my uncles house for a drink with me and we agreed that the following day (their last in Australia) we would meet up and wonder around Brisbane for a while. The main aim of our day being to sit on the artificial beach, which has been set up in the heart of Brisbane, and relax. The beach is fairly impresseive and has been set up next to the Brisbane river in a pleasant park called Southbank facing the central business district giving you great views of the city.
In order to get some exercise and save some of my ever dwindling money supplies I decided to take my uncles recommendation to cycle into the city centre. It took me about 45 mins each way but this is as long as the bus would take and powering down the side of the Brisbane river with Led Zeplin blasting down my earphones and great city views was awesome and definitely better than being stuck in traffic on a bus. I ended up bumping into Dan and Emily
early so we wondered around the shops together for a while, while they did some tacky souvenir shopping, before heading down to Southbank.
Having originally meant to head back to Brisbane that day I later found myself falling asleep late that night as a stowaway in their hostel with a belly full of Beer, Kangaroo, Emu and Crocodile. So all in all a pretty good day. The nights sleep however wasn’t so successful and we were kept awake by the very loud and drunken other people in the dorm, some of whom had extremely irritating Brummy accents. Dan and Emily headed off at about 4.45am that morning to catch their plane out of Australia and left me with instructions of how to find the remaining food they left behind in the hostel fridge. I got up at about 7.00am as did the drunken roommates surprisingly - who were headed to the Steve Irwin Zoo for the day. After a stealthy breakfast of fruit bread and a tin of spaghetti and sausages I headed out to explore Brisbane for another day.
The previous day with Dan and Emily we had wondered into the city hall but had seen only
Southbank
This park has an artificial beach where you can hang out for a while doing what you can to increase your chances of getting skin cancer appalling art exhibitions so wondered out quickly but according to the lonely planet book you could scale the clock tower for impressive views of the city and so I thought I’d give it another crack. I arrived before it opened so took a seat on the wall outside and passed the time people watching while I waited for it to open. After a couple of minutes a blonde girl came and sat next to me with the lonely planet book in hand. Before long we’d got chatting about the usual stuff and it turned out her name was Miia from Denmark. She was on a short holiday in Australia and had something like only 5hrs in Brisbane! We ended up going up the clock tower together (which didn’t have very good views after all) and then spending the next couple of hours wondering around the places I hadn’t seen like the botanical gardens and then sitting in Southbank for a while until it was time for her to leave. After she disappeared I was just about ready to go home but popped into the Brisbane Museum for a little while in an attempt to be cultured. It entertained me for
Fishing on the Brisbane river
My Grandad and I went down together one evening and caught a few ot these an hour or two but my now empty belly urged me to return to my Uncles house so I jumped on the bike and headed back. Somehow I managed to get all the way back with only two minor wrong turns.
That was pretty much the end of my time in Brisbane really as the next thing I did was go away with my Grandparents for a weekend before catching a flight to Melbourne where I am now.
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