So here we are in Australia’s third biggest city Brisbane. We arrived early in the evening after a long day wandering around Australia Zoo and checked into our hostel. Everywhere we have been I think we have been pretty lucky with hostels, obviously some have been better than others but generally things haven’t been too shocking, well apart from this place! For a start off we only managed to get beds in different dorms meaning we weren’t together. Also the hostel itself was in the process of being rebuilt with the front reception brand spanking new and the back building resembling something like Broadmore prison. To top this all off there seemed to be old people wandering around all other the place and I mean old. Linz was sharing a room with too birds the wrong side of 70. Now not that we are ageist or anything but when they are wandering in their pants and see through tops, ya kinda thinking that this might not be the place for us! Needless to say we paid that little bit extra dollar and got ourselves a twin room for the night and luckily this room was in the front building and in contrast complete luxury!  

After getting over our initial shock of the hostel we explored the city, taking a ferry down the river. Brisbane is a pretty good looking city. It kinda reminded us of Sydney as there are plenty of high-rise and lots of people working away. Although as we are in the heart of the Australian Gold Coast (number one holiday destination), there are tons of hotels and holiday apartments. I can totally understand why this is so popular as the whole time we have been in this region it’s been total sunshine, glorious you might say. We walked all over the city, checking out the serious shopping and then had a couple of beers in Fortitude Valley, an area of the city where China town is and loads of bars. I reckon we walked a fair few miles that day and so just had an early night and prepared for planned day out at Wet ‘n’ Wild theme park.  

Wet 'n' Wild is one of about half a dozen big theme parks just below Brisbane. This one is a big water park with loads of flumes of all shapes and sizes. We spent the whole day there going on everything it had to offer. There are your classic flumes, big wave machine pools and some other pretty special water rides. A couple of note were the Tornado and the Jet streams. The Tornado was dead cool and not like any other ride I've been on before. You go in two's on this rubber ring and travel down a flume for about 5 seconds before it chucks you out in this massive funnel. Its like a huge cement mixer and you fly up and down the sides before finally popping out the bottom. We went on this a few times and as I went on with Linz each time, I could hardly hear by the end of the day due to the intense screaming! The other top ride was the Jet streams which are basically huge super fast flumes. I think they are the highest and fastest flumes in Oz. We both were totally bricking it but managed to pluck up the courage to do them, I think we used our skydiving experience as inspiration! While at the water park we meet up with a load of the guys from the Fraser trip. All I can say on that is Eoin, well done for plucking up the courage to go on the black hole, you big girl!!!! 

Later that evening we arranged to meet up with all the Fraser people, plus Keiran from the Alice Springs trip and get wasted. We all meet up in this bar called Tin Billys and had a top night. Plenty of drinking, banter and laughs were had by all. A big congratulation should go out to Keiran who won the drinking game for Scotland, well done fella although I’m sure you felt the effect in the morning!  

Brisbane is a cool city and we could have stayed longer but the open road was calling and off we headed south once more. 

Grant