Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
helloooooooooooooooooo
this is my first entry on the website and im infact telling you a bit of a white lie with the dates, as its nearly a month since we left brisbane and queensland behind and ive been massively lazy in not getting this journal thing up and running. anyway, it now seems such a long time ago that we touched down in beautiful brisbane on the 20th November and i'm wracking whats left of my alcohol destroyed brains to remember what we did there!
the first day was pretty random. swapping about 6 degrees in england for about 30 in a day was pretty sweet and after we had done sweating and checked in to the Backpackers Palace (palace in VERY inverted commas) we had a good walk round the old place. Brisbane is a genuinely beautiful city, with some amazing scenery, a vibrant culture and lots and lots to see and do, but nick and my first port of call was naturally, the Gabba (cricket ground), which would be our port of call later in the week for 5 days. The place is actually a bit of a s***hole, reeks of Aussie rules football and is about as much of a natural cricket ground as my back garden. Nevertheless we got to see an England net session while we were there (something which really doesnt seem that amzing now since we see them pretty much every day at the cricket that we go to, but on our first day was quality). We also met some pretty funny people there and had our firsts encounters with some of the nutcases that actually tour every year with England. We managed to blag some tickets to an Ashes Special evening that night with Michael Vaughan, Ricky Ponting, Hayden, Langer, Botham, Boycott, Benaud etc which was great fun, although jetlag had caught up on us by this point and we were officially cream crackered. Earlier that day, upon walking through the mall, we had without doubt our greatest encounter of the day, and arguably the highlight of my time here so far when we walked into the middle of a f***ing Westlife concert in the middle of the city at 2pm. Imagine our delight when they re-emerged at the Ashes evening but 7 hours later....
So we had to wait until Wednesday for our first encounter with the barmy army. Before that tho, managed to get down to the zoo of the infamous Steve Irwin (bit of a national treasure over here, kinda like their version of cliff richard or someone, dont ever sing "WHERES YER IRWIN GONE?!" to some rowdy aussies after a couple too many schooners, they dont like it...) and saw some great animals, sealife and a couple of the types of stingray that got the poor chap, but clever b******s here left his camera at the hostel that day so have no record of it whatsoever...
AAAAAHHHHH yes the hostel, that awesome place right in the centre of the town. Like I say it was a bit rubbish, but did have two absolutely amazing features. 1) a rooftop terrace with an amazing view of the whole of brisbane and beyond. This became the scene of many a nights entertainment, as we had the only room out of 501 on top of it, HA! 2) a top quality backpackers bar underneath, appropriately titled the Down Under Bar. It provided many a good night for us and our by now english and swiss friends along with the odd $6 meal. Anyway i am way off track. A lot of our time there was at first spent in the Barmy Army HQ (each city they go to, they designate a pub as an HQ, to where the masses flock) the imaginatively titled Pig 'n Whistle. It was here that we had our first run ins with these nutters/tossers/top blokes in the main from the BA and also our first experiences with Aussie boozing in general. The 6 of us that went there that night were horrified to discover that our commonwealth friends dont even drink pints properly, hence the reference to schooners, a smaller version about 2/3 pint. and their lagers crap too! still its better than that horrific drink of Goon, (yes, irv, the magnificent goon!) which is basically really cheap wine for about $3 a litre.
Basically if you're ever in Brisbane for a night, head to the Valley. its an area of the city, which is their club capital and was great fun on a friday/saturday night and the source of many an amusing story for young, naive(ish), british backpackers (these are for personal e mails, gotta keep it clean here!) So that pretty much concludes our time there. Apart from a couple of little wins and one massive loss in the Casino (and a night of big guilt, as my usually infallable gambling advice led to even greater losses for one poor swiss girl) we didnt have a lot of time there apart from the cricket. Oh yeah, that! well, the less said about the first test (read 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th so far) the better. 15 months of anticpation, excitement and optimism gone in 5 ridiculously early-starting (10am) days. But we did get to meet Monty Panesar in the street....
- comments