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Published: January 10th 2011
Friday 24th December
Brisbane (pop 1.8 million people) is capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia.
Brisbane is named after the river on which it sits which, in turn, was named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, the Governor of New South Wales from 1821 to 1825.
Once we've booked ourselves in we headed for the local supermarket where we bought food supplies for our Xmas day dinner. I promised I'd cook a proper Christmas dinner for Jill and judging by our mood we're in dire need of something chrismassy! At least we still have our santa hats from thw whitsundays!
We did a quick stop at the bottle shop on the way home for a bottle of Cava for our Buck Fizz treat for xmas teatime.
We kind of got settled in the best we could with it being xmas eve and all that. At least they are showing some xmas movies on the tv in the common room which got the mood going a wee bitty.
Christmas Day
Merry Xmas everyone!
Well santa hasnt been for us today as we have no prezzies
to open but we arent too bothered as we've got the santa hats on and heading to the kitchens for breakfast.
When got there you would never have guessed it was xmas morning as no one was dressed any different an we were the only ones with santa hats on! It was shocking to be fair. What a bunch of miserable buggers everyone is this morning....hello, its xmas morning!!
Maybe they are missing home too. Mind you it doesnt help that its pretty bleak weather outside as it has rained non stop all morning and shows no sign of letting up. Theres flood alerts for much of Queensland so we had best keep an eye on things for our travel onwards.
We lounged about the tv room and our dorm doing very little at all. Around 3pm we started to get Xmas dinner ready and cracked open our bottle of Cava and all of a sudden we started seeing happier faces walking about with santa hats on and more people actually enjoying their day! At last we say...Lets get a chorus of jingle bells going?! maybe not! 😊
Dinner was really fine and we tried really hard to
get into the spirit but we've realised that Xmas is all about family and we are both missing our folks back home.
We did our phonecalls back home and that helped to get a bit more feeling plus it passed most of the night as we phoned some friends too. If only we could have bought a extra bottle of Cava as we didnt realise its illegal to seel acholol on xmas day from shops or bars so nothing was open. We shall make up for it tomorrow no doubt!
Boxing Day
We got up quite late and had brunch before heading down the road to the lcoal Irish bar where we sat and watched the cricket and got drunk with some Irish lads who all live in Brisbane. It was all a good laugh until we realised we had to walk home in the heavy rain without jackets or a brolly.
We are soaked by the time we get home and we drunkenly get changed into jammies and fall sound asleep in our bunkbeds back in the dorm. Oh, did I mention it was only 6pm at this point? Im blaming the bloody Irish 😊
Monday
Brisbane
From right to left.
Merivale-William Jolly - KurilpaBridge27th December
We woke up surprisingly bright and breezy unlike the weather outside which I mistook for Aberdeen on the first hazy glance..
We grabbed our rain macs and headed into Brisbane City centre for a look around.
Brisbane is a nice city and it very busy around the shopping districts and people are out for the boxing day sales. We had lunch and walked back along the river to the hostel later on in the afternoon.
We passed by the man made beach which has to be seen to be believed. There's an artificial Beach called the Streets Beach which has been built on a large wooden raft by the river side and it looks really cool, even in the rain!
We walk by the beach and its surreal as they have beach loungers and unmbrellas aswell as a lifeguard hut! If only we could see what its like in the sunshine.
We walked along the river observing some of the sixteen bridges that span over the Brisbane River such as the William Jolly Bridge, Victoria Bridge, Cook Bridge (shock horror!) , In Between Bridge, Kiripla Brisge and Merivale Bridge.
Worth noting is the Nepalese Peace Pagoda
thats been built here to celebrate the hosting of the World Expo in 1988. The gardens are lovely here as you would expect as this area was transformed for the World Expo and is now a heritage site.
Its a lovely walk to be fair and amazing to see such diverse designs of bridges as no two are the same. The views from our YHA overlook much of the river and we sat and dinner out on the large balcony in the common area which was fine as we felt we had actually done something today.
Its a shame its rained so much as we would have liked to have done much more sightseeing around Brisbane and out to Moreton Island. We had cancelled a dolphin tour for today around the Islands which was a pity. Another boring evening of watching movies on the laptop followed by the usual packing of bags which signals another move on. Its starting to lift our spirits abit now that we know that the sun is shining down in our next stop, Sydney!
Tuesday 28th December
We made our way to the International Airport in Brisbane where we caught our flight
down to Sydney which is in New South Wales. The flight lasted less than two hours and felt like minutes as we managed to occupy ourselves by writing out lots of postcards and reading newspapers. I read that there's severe disruption in Queensland due to the flood waters and more rain forecast for at least 5 more days. Its not much of a Christmas for the thousands of people who are homeless.
We are so lucky this hadn't happened the previous week or we wouldve been right in the midst of it!
Im feeling a bit bad that this blog has sounded a bit blunt compared to previous blogs. sorry.
Its time to get the heads up and give ourselves a shake.
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fred
non-member comment
I know the feeling
Oh I do so know the feeling being away from home on special occasions and surrounded in all directions wth rain add to that lack of funds and it feels as if the world is ending, and suddenly it dries up and the sun come out and all is well again but it is a gloomy patch whilst it lasts, so on and forwards and Sydney will do the trick, sorry I thought you were to be in Sydney for Christmas, guess it was for N.Year, we are off on the 16th to Africa, sounds more impressive don't you thinkl, or more exotic!