Back to big city life

One event that has to be documented occurred when packing to leave Coomera. We were busy pulling down our ‘fancy’ awning to the camper when we soon discovered that we had been left some little presents during the night. Sticky, smelly Bat Guano was peppered all over the tarpaulin. This stuff is nasty! We also later found out that fruit bats in Oz (just like in most countries) carry a rather lethal variety of Rabies. This was of course long after I had busily wiped all of the crap off with some sheets of toilet paper. I still shiver at the thought of how close I may have come to a rather gruesome death. Lovely : )

This stuff was nasty - and surprise, surprise it can kill you too. I love Australia!

The drive from Coomera to Brisbane was really only about an hour or two which suited us all fine. We quickly got into the heart of the city and found an underground car park to leave the van for a couple of hours while we found some accommodation. However we didn’t realise it was the main city Casino car park with some flashy prices to boot – Doh! Anyway, we did look rather flash walking out of the Casino in our ruffled shorts and t-shirt, hats and sunglasses. We must have looked like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas!

There were loads of hostels in the city to choose from so we took a walk around a few of them, eventually settling in City Backpackers just a little north-west of downtown. The hostel was really nice and pretty cheap which is always good. We checked into a six bed dorm, sharing with a couple of Dutch guys and a German girl who were all really cool.

The first day in any city calls for a bit of a scout about so we soon headed out into the town to check out what Brisbane has to offer. The city is a good deal smaller than Sydney which means we were in walking distance of all the main locations. Most of the main shopping and dinning areas are within quite a small area of the city meaning you don’t have to go too far to find what you’re looking for. I found Brisbane a little more chilled out than Sydney, although it obviously didn’t have the breathtaking waterfront.

The first night out in Brisbane was rather uneventful – spending some time visiting some different bars to get a feel for the place. We heard that ‘The Valley’ was the place to go for a good night out so headed down there for a couple. Being a Monday night the town was pretty quiet but we did find a small bar with some live music to entertain us.

We soon got talking to some people nearby who turned out to be following the All Blacks Rugby team for Sky TV in New Zealand. So our quiet night out turned out to be quite good fun, meeting TV presenter Melanie Redmond, her camera man and editor. This woman bore quite a striking resemblance to Jennifer Lopez so we were kept well entertained for the evening! She promised to try and get us on TV, or at least meet us later in the week for a drink so we were more than happy.