The plane was about 20 mins late leaving Singapore, but we arrived into Brisbane on time, this time carried by a slightly more modest Emirates 777. Our early morning arrival meant that the airport was quiet and this allowed a relatively quick passage through customs.
We eventually arrived at our apartment at 2.30am. Needless to say, we were very shortly in bed!
Up at 9am the next morning, we did a bit of laundry and hit the streets of Brisbane about 11am, to hunt down some brunch. We visited Brisbane about 18 months ago and not much has changed and it remains a very vibrant yet traffic-free city, thanks to the very cheap (in fact, in some cases free) public transport.
After a bit of brunch, we took advantage of the public transport by using the City Cat river ferry to take a tour, covering a great deal of Brisbane's riverside for about £3 each, which lasted about 2 hours... bargain!
After that, we took a stroll to City Beach and through the Botanic Gardens and some more of the city centre before heading back to the apartment to get washed and changed for dinner.
Our location of choice for dinner was Eagle Street pier, a relatively new development in the heart if the city's financial district. There are about a dozen large restaurants and bars here and they were all absolutely packed to the rafters! No sign of recession in this part of the world! We decided to eat at a place called Grill'd, which is a posh version of McDonalds basically!
After dinner, we aimed to check out a couple of bars in the city centre, however it appears that bar policy in Brisbane is to check the ID of all entrants. We didn't have any on us, (since it's not something you think about bringing out with you when you are well into your 30's) so we were turned away at the door! We eventually found a bar just down the road from our apartment which wasn't as strict, so we had a drink there and took a short walk back to our bed.
In the morning, after a bit of breakfast, we did a bit of shopping to buy a little tripod for our camera and also to burn the photos we have taken to date on CD, in case there is a mishap! We then picked up our hire car and headed south for the first leg of our road trip.
We are currently in Ballina, a small town just off the coast about 2 hours south of Brisbane, out of Queensland and into New South Wales. Unfortunately, due to a quirk that all other states of Australia observe daylight saving's time in Summer apart from Queensland,we lost an hour of our day on crossing the border and this meant the local tourist information office was shut by the time we arrived. We were somewhat relying on this to help us select our accommodation for the night, but instead we drove around the area and found the Leisure-Lee motel, which is a pleasant little place with a nice view, which I've posted for your viewing pleasure.
We plan to gradually work our way back north from tomorrow with the aim to get back to Brisbane on Thursday for the Australia Day celebrations.
TTFN
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