First things first - the flight! How long?! 8 of us flew out from Heathrow in my Changing Worlds group, and 7 of us managed to get seats near each other - the back 2 rows of the plane, which actually worked out quite well as we were near the emergency exits, so we had space to stand up and have a leg stretch and a bit of a chat. Unfortunately though they couldn't fit Freya in next to us, so she had to sit halfway up the plane on her own. I was going to ask the guy next to me on the way to Singapore to swap with her since he was travelling on his own, but he was a majorly nervous flier and had to sit near an exit and in the aisle to stop him having panic attacks! Not fun, especially when we hit some bad turbulence for about 45mins, and even the crew had to strap in. He went through the whole repertoire of "I knew this flight was a bad idea - we're all going to die!" to a few "Hail Marys" and a surprisingly wide array of swear words! Until he suddenly noticed that I was just concentrating on Casino Royale and trying to ignore the turbulence, and obviously decided this was a good idea and did the same, and was completely chilled out for the rest of the flight! The food was pretty reasonable too (I was especially pleased about the peas with the first meal!!!) although they did have a bit of a choc ice obsession! Singapore airport was nice though we only had about 30mins there, before getting back on the plane. This time I managed to talk the lady next to me into swapping with Freya so we were all together to Sydney. We were a bit rushed trying to get through really strict customs, immigration and quarantine and get our visa stickers sorted before transferring to our domestic flight to Brisbane but we made it - just! Sophie, the Changing Worlds rep met us when we landed at 10:30pm and put us into a taxi to Tinbilly Youth Hostel which was nice - though our room was right over the bar which plays really loud music till 1am! Half the group decided to go out, but the rest of us just had a shower and went to bed, only to get woken up at 3am by the others coming back and then at 5:30am by other people in our dorm of 13 leaving. But hey, who needs sleep! Very strange though as several of us kept feeling like the building was swaying - I'm assuming it's something to do with the jetlag but very strange all the same.

Yesterday we just chilled out around Brisbane, had a look at some shops and said goodbye to the 3 people who had to leave a day early to get to their zoo placements. Then Sophie met us in the bar for dinner at 6pm - where you could have rump steak, chicken or fish and chips and salad for $5.90 which is about 2.40 quid. I decided against drinking as the room was still swaying and was feeling dizzy and sick, but felt a bit better and managed to last till 11:30pm watching everyone else getting drunker and drunker which was really quite funny!

Today we had to check out at 10am but were able to leave the bags in the room while we wait till 1pm to go our separate ways. There's 4 of us catching a plane up to Mount Isa for outback placements and 4 getting a bus down the coast to Surfer's Paradise to work in bars. Going to be sad saying goodbye to everyone but I'm looking forward to actually starting the placement.

Ah well, better go, money's running out and can't cope with the typing to screen delay any longer!

Time to go catch another plane...