Out just before 8, and check the bus times for tomorrow. Soon it is 1000, and I go to the City Hall and look around the museum that is situated there. It is small but interesting - the development of Brisbane as a city only really started in the 1860s. There is also a fashion display of dresses. I go up the clock tower, though there are no particularly good views as there are too many other high buildings. You couldn't get out of the clock, so no Robert Powell as Richard Hannay type adventures to be had here.

I found a leaflet which led me to my next museum, one about Australia in the Second World war - its role, how it affected the coutnry, and the role of General Douglas MacArthur, an American based in Brisbane. Have an interesting chat with a guide, and there is some fascinating microfilm of the front pages of the local paper from pretty much every day of the war. There was also a section on the Australian Land Girls too!

After this, I return to the hostel for a siesta, and go out again just before 1500, walking down to the South Bank to take in the Da Vinci exhbition. $20. Excellent little show, with explanations of all of his drawings, as well as models (some of them working) including models of those which Da Vinci never actually had built. There were an amazing array of ideas - a Trench Excavator, a Robot Knight, a Scythed Chariot, Systems of Wall Defence, Assault Techniques, Tongs, Double Hull, Scuba Dive, Inclinometer, Parachute.

Watch a ten minute documentary, which is taken from a longer version. After this, walk down the riverbank, across a bridge and back through the Botanic Gardens which, even though darkness is falling, don't appear blessed with too much colour at the moment, just the usual greens and browns. Pick up a free paper, Metro style, on the way back through the city - the written English really is very colloquial and frustrating! A quiet evening, ready for a trip to the Gabba tomorrow!