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It was a short walk from the Transit Centre to Base once we'd gotten our hands on a map and in the 4 necessary road crossings Lucy very nearly got ourself run over by a turning bus into an underground station she had not noticed, but onced checked in and settled in our dorm we were downstairs in the 'Downunder Bar" for a $10 meal deal of steak and chips and beer - bargainous! (Although it must be pointed out that the beer was not a pint as expected). I enjoyed a couple more drinks whilst we casually played a game of "Name That Song" being hosted in the bar, turns out I do not know the name of any of the dance songs I know or indeed the artist or anything useful for that matter. We still managed to get a good few tho and indeed we came second (alas there was no prize for second) and we very nearly got the $150 bar tab since the winner wasn't making themselves known to anyone, but he got in there right before they were about to give it to the runner up - b******. Late and a little tired I headed to bed, where Lucy had already taken herself away to and fell into a nicely deep sleep.
Indeed the next morning Lucy was up bright and early and I was doing my very best to ignore her chirpy cheery demeaner and roll over. And upon finally getting out of bed looked in the mirror, saw I looked like an utter mess and began straightening my hair to try resolve the problem. Lucy gave up and went for breakfast in the second of the Base bars "Z Bar" instead.
An hour later she was back full of English breakfast and I looked passable - we were afterall going to see the koalas today and many many photos were going to be taken - and we then went off in search of the bus stop after consulting reception on it whereabouts. In retrospect we probably would have found it easier without his help as he told us, verbatim, that it was on this side of the road at the very end of it. It was in fact nothing of the sort it was on the opposite side of the road half way down it, and the little flyer we had for the place confirmed we were at the correct (and intended) bus stop, as did the group of German backpackers holding similar flyers and using the particularly German word "koala." After all this finding the bus stop malarky, which honestly took us at least a solid 15 minutes as the road in question is long and we went down both sides of it, we had missed the bus we had intended to get and the next one wasnt for another 20 minutes, but would get us to the koalas just after noon at prime Koala viewing hour.
Now a little information about the place. The place in question is "The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary" and it is the biggest in all of Australia and, thus, the world. It even has a certificate from the Guiness World Book of Records saying so proudly on display in a back room we came across during our visit. It has been voted as one of the top 10 zoos in the entire world by AOL and has over 130 koalas on site!
The place is quite simply awesome we started out by having our photos taken with a koala. Lucy got a little baby koala and I got a full big mama of a koala, they are deceptively heavy - they sure aint loosing weight with all that eating eucylyptus and sleeping they do all day - and the reason for why children holding the koalas sat and had the koala sit on their knee became fairly obvious once she was handed to me. Whilst this did cost us extra in addition to our admission it was definately worth it, I had a voucher that got me 2 copies of my photos, you were allowed to take as many additional photos with your own camera as you could fit in really, and yeah well me and Lucy were getting our monies worth for our time with the koalas. Photos can be found on facebook.
Next we popped nextdoor to the small reptile show they were having which I felt in no way a need to be a part in that involved a few large snakes that were fairly obviously trying to make their continued way towards the fluffy koalas behind them (to no avail thankfully). We then watched a significantly more interesting koala show, which gave us another opportunity to stroke the koalas. The woman did come to a bit of a loss at what to do when a powercut ended her slideshow and it became apparent that she really didn't know too much about koalas so much as she knew how to learn a script, but still it was very interesting and some facts I did not know about Koalas were revealed (only to be veiled in destroyed brain cells once again through alcohol). We then had a bit of a wander about amongst all the different enclosures - different types of koalas, grandpa koalas, batchelor koalas, the cutest koalas you have ever seen in your whole entire life at the "kindergarten" enclosure. Many, many, MANY photos were taken of these and they can once again be found on facebook.
We then attempted to watch a bird show, but a brief and sudden strong downpour put a stop to that, so we sheltered for 10 minutes from the rain and made our plans for the rest of the park, our next plan being to see the kangaroos. And we were in luck as a couple of woman gave us a big bag of feed that they hadnt been able to get all rid of. Score. So off we went into the enclosure, it is litterally a massive field with s*** loads of kangaroos and wallabies in, that you can walk amongst and feed. We followed the parks instructions. Found ourselves a cute roo that was relatively alone, put some feed into our hands held it out flat and away from us and the roo hopped over and ate it. Awesome. And so off we went feeding roos left right and centre, alternately in many cases so that one of us could take photos of the other feeding them. And just as there had been many cute baby koalas there were a few baby roos to be found in the park and they were sooo cute. I assume the photos on facebook have been mentioned enough at this point, but check them out.
The last few enclosures we visited (but did not and cannot enter I should point out) were those of the dingos, wombats and tazmanaian devils. The dingos looked perfectly dog like and pretty cute, almost brilliantly white some of them and not at all like a predator that would snatch your baby away from you given the chance, and similarly the tazmanian devils and so small and cute looking that you feel Warner Brothers have done them all a great injustice in their portrayl.
We got the bus back to town at 5.30pm after spending a good 5 hours in the park and grab some food and a pint from the bar downstairs before going to buy alcohol with Phil (a different one, from our dorm room) from what he referred to as the nearest bottle shop. It was f***ing miles away. And indeed over the next couple of days we came across several much closer, but he didn't know and it was nice of him to offer to take us to it in the first place. Besides I was getting some good flirting in. We buy goon and back in the room get steadily more drunk, Phil telling us about how he's been traveling and working in Australia, us telling him about the previous 6 countries and then set off to try and get into Family (voted best club in Australia) for a cheaper price. But on the way we bump into 2 Aussie boys who tell us that its not cheaper to get in at this time adn that the drinks prices are extortionate and that we'd really be better off going somewhere else thats cheaper or at the very least going somewhere first for more cheaper drinks. We agree (Germany, the UK and Australia all being countries known for their drinking) and so head to where they're heading themselves, but its 20 dollars in and the drinks still aren't all that cheap and this is supposed to be a pre-venue! We try a couple more and by this point rather annoyed at being dragged to place after place that seem almost as expensive as the last. We end up making it to Family eventually and well the rest of the night is a bit of a blur...
Finally up the next day with a deathly hangover, after a serious effort from Lucy, we visited a food court down the road and sat down to a lasagne and garlic bread combo, I ate the garlic bread and an embarassingly small amount of lasagne before deciding my stomach was having none of it and quiting whilst I was ahead. I hadn't been sick yet and had no desire to provoke any such pyrotechnic display out in daylight. So we walked down Queen Street to Victoria Bridge and spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing by the lagoon, a large artificial beach (swimming pool really) on the river side that was full to bursting with toddlers and painfully screaming children.
A combination of sunbathing and walking shifted the hangover and walking back to Base I felt pretty good considering the sheer amount and mix of alcohol I had consumed the previous night. Back at Base we tucked into another steak meal deal, which was, this time, very well received by my stomach. Before going upstairs and all very swiftly fell soundly asleep.
Our last day in Brisbane, well half day, we checked out of the hostel at 10am and had a breakfast from Z Bar before doing some window shopping down Queen Street. I made a genuine effort to look for a new pair of jeans to replace the stolen pair, before being put off by the ludicrously preventative price tags. And giving up on the whole shopping idea altogether went to the cinema where we watched Angels and Demons, which I thought a significantly better book and film than The Da Vinci Code before rushing back to the hostel to pick up our backpacks and then the Transit Centre to catch our bus, off on our next mini adventure - Hervey Bay and Fraser Island!
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