BRISBANE: 4th - 20th June 2006 Sunday 4th June: This morning I got up at 8am (I'd slept since 8pm the night before - I was THAT knackered) to get on my plane to Brisbane! When I got to the airport I saw Alex from Contiki who was flying to Adelaide, which was reallyyyy weird considering I'd said goodbye to her the day before at the hotel. The flight was good, it was amazing looking out the window for the 2 hours because we flew over the ocean the whole way - it was so blue and beautiful....I wanted to go back down there and go in it! I was talking to this old man next to me (you'd have liked him Clare, wink wink nudge nudge say no more! Haha) who was telling me all about the old days, and his son who was getting married, and also all about the England team (he knew more than I did! - well, durr). Anywayyyy...I had now arrived in BRISVEGAS BABY WOO!! First thing that happens is, I get a lovely phone call from Lachlan while I'm in the loo asking where I am. It was like hang on a bloody minute Locky haha but then YAY I saw Lachlan!! Bless....he looked very scared when I went up to him...hahhaa. Then we went back to his house, I met his mum, Carmel, who was lovely and leant me a Bette Midler t shirt to wear while I put my clothes in the wash, and unpacked! That night Lachlan introduced me to Big Brother, the Australian one (which I now love by the way and it's sooooo much better than any English one we've ever had). At this point I must say thankyou to Lachlan because I had his room for over 2 weeks, he must have hated me for that! It became a girls room, "eww!" he says! Monday 5th June: Today I went with Lahclan to his Uni in the City to hand in an assignment...it looks kinda like Heartbreak High, haha...well like clean & stuff, totally different from the Uni's I've seen in England! Oh yeah, I was having a totally spaz attack at one point because we drove down this road which I swear was the one we drove down when we went into Brisbane on Contiki! And then it was like OMG it's the XXXX Brewery!! I distinctly remember Dan pointing this out on the tour because I really like that beer and he obviously did too! Haha. We went to Indooroopilly (yeah, weird word hey) to the shops now and as we had like 3 hours to kill until Lachlan's interview at Kmart we decided to go and see Poseidon at the cinema. I can't tell you how much of a bad idea that was!! It was awwwfullllllllllllllllll!! Lachlan liked it, the freak. I mean the idea was good but jeubus would those people please go to an acting lesson or something, I mean Kurt Russell I expected more from you! Prfft. The tickets were only like $6 so nevermind! Tuesday 6th June: Today we went to Dreamworld!! Lachlan's friends Sharan & Jeremy and Kylie & Adam came too. Wicked day! Although by now my 'Contiki Cold' has really kicked in and I felt a bit crap. This was remedied by going on the Giant Drop (it's like REALLY high up in the sky and stuff and drops you, FAST) as it cleared my head out totally! Then we went on the Tower of Terror *dramatic music* which zooooooms you up really quickly so you're vertical upwards and the world turns on it's side! Then you zooooooom backwards to where you started. Weird ride that was. Brilliant tho, haha. Then what was it called, Wipeout? Yeah. This one I hadn't seem moving yet and Lachlan wouldn't tell me what it did, assuring me that it would be ok. Bloody hell this was the worst one! :O You drop down face first and then backwards and it spins you all around and ahhh it was wicked! And the shark was real I swear. Then it was The Claw (that just reminds me of Liar Liar!) which is the one you see at the beginning of Big Brother...not that any of you would know that...ah well, it was weird. And the guy next to me kept saying "we haven't done the big spin yet!" which was great. Ooh we watched a tiger show thingy!! That was good, but the tea I had was crap, eurgh. I love tea, hmmm. Anyway, yeah so Dreamworld is where Big Brother is!! So we went to the bit where the eviction stage is set, and you could see into the control room and see all the camera guys doing their job, how cool is that! That's crazy. Tuesday evening we went to the 'Australian Outback Spectacular!' This was AWESOME. It was all about being proud to be Australian and stuff, and they give you these free cowboy hats (wow!) and you get put into two teams. Basically, during the whole night these two men are the like leaders of our teams, and then these other people come out on horses and with chooks and race to see which team wins. Ours lost :( But it's ok, we got free food and drink! It was brilliant, and Lachlan was getting all emotional, bless. Wednesday 7th June: Today is officially called 'Sick Day'. My cold hit me hard, and Lachlan came down with it too. Lucky I had brought some lemsip on the Monday, mmm love lemsip. So today I watched the 3 episodes of Desperate Housewives I'd missed on Contiki that Lachlan recored for me and we watched Finding Nemo (love it!). Today Lachlan's sister Tenille came round with her 3 month old baby, Jack. He's so cute!! Thursday 8th June: Today we were both still feeling really quite crappy but we thought it's best to go outside for a bit, so we went to Mount Coot-tha (a really pretty look-out where you can see allll across the whole city of Brisbane) and also to the Botanic Gardens where they had some aliens! (Dad you remember those big plants with the orange bit we had by the back door, haha!!) This afternoon we went to the video store and watched Brothers Grimm (which should have been fantastic considering Matt Damon & Heath Ledger are in it ALL the time but it was terrible). Then we watched Teaching Mrs Tingle (weirdo) and Batman with Val Kilmer! Woohoo that made me feel better haha! Lachlan had an interview at Target tonight bless him even though he was feeling crap. Friday 9th June: Today was City Day! OMG today was weird....it;s just coz where we went in the City was right where we stopped on Contiki for the two hours!! We went past the Opal shop where we had the 'fascinating' talk about opals, and also the shop we got our shower curtains from! Awwwww! I swear I nearly cried :'( (Oh oh guess what Team, I got Lachlan onto Tigerbalm!! Hahaaa he was impressed I knew right where it was on the counter and everything, haha) Oh, the place where all this stuff was is called Queen Street Mall which is like where the main shopping bit is in the City. After this we went to City Hall and saw a weirdo art exhibition, then the Casino (just like veag but like a lot smaller!) and then the Anzac Memorial which unfortunately was all sealed up because it was being renovated and stuff. There's a flame inside it which is always...'flaming'. Then we went over the bridge to Southbank, where there's a man made beach (right in the middle of the City!). Then onwards to the Brisbane Musuem which was good, and in which Lachlan was talking to the lady who worked there about what it was like when he was younger, so we wrote in the comment book! Felt very special :) We went on the CityCat (like a water taxi/bus thing) back to Toowong, where we got a bus back to the car. OMG tonight was the most HILARIOUS Friday Night Games on Big Brother!! Hahahaa they dressed up in these huge costumes and became huge football people hahahahaaa I laughed so much when they did that! Saturday 10th June: Today, Lachlan went to work at the Gabba doing the tikitek thingy and I stayed home and kept fighting off my cold and watched films & Friends & chilled out, aww. Tonight we had a Games Night at Sharan & Jeremy's house! The England game was on then too (the one where we scored at 3 mins then did nothing afterwards). We played Eye toy, wow this thing, you have a camera attached to your TV and it must have sensor thingies, because you can play bowling and stuff on it so you're actually doing the actions and it shows it on TV! Clever! Although I sucked majorly. Then we played Buzz, and the Weakest Link! They're Anne Robinson is called Cordelia, and she SO wants to be Anne because she looks just like her!! I think I won that, which I know some of you will be amazed at as I have no brain! We also played this game where you play with someone and answer questions about them - rather funny that one! Me & Lachlan know more about each other than we thought! Although the coughing and hinting 'you like reading Harry Potter don't you *wink wink*' helped rather a lot. Sunday 11th June - Today we were joined by Lachlan's friend Gerard who took us to Springbrook - a gorgeous National Park where we went on a long walk and took in all the scenery....and Lachlan pretended to get lost, and peed up a tree. Nice :P. It was beautiful here, which you can see from the pictures (if I've put them up yet). Lots of pretty little waterfalls and stuff, on one of them you stand right at the top of it! How freaky! Tonight - Big Brother eviction - Danielle went even though we didn't want her too, prfft. Big bro evictions are great, it's such a huge show and they do nominations afterwards too. So much better than UK BB! Monday 12th June - Today, Lauchlan's Mum Carmel drove me north of the City, up to the Boondal Wetlands (these big swamps with lots of pelicans) where we did a little walk thingy, and used a loo which apparently some little creatures like frogs like to jumper up :S Then we went to Redville and had gorrrrrgeous fish & chips! Something I noticed here was how complicated it was order, coz like at home you just ask for cod or plaice or haddock and chips. Here you're got calamari rings, a fish 'box' - ooh!, barramundi, snapper, all sorts! And of course cod, too! I had snapper - beautiful. We drove all the way to Mount Mee next after trying to find an ice cream place that would sell Macademia nut ice cream (that's bit round here apparently) and getting lost. It was so amazing, driving for a while you go from beach to total countryside! It kinda looked like English countryside, but it was just SO different too. Hard to explain, but look at the pics :) . We found our own couple of little look-outs to take pictures at then eventually we got to the 'official' one! Lots of fields & motorbikes here. Then we went and drove round Lake Somerset on the way home, which is one of the lakes the area gets its' water supply from. Carmel told me about the water shortage they're on (v bad at them mo) and how the lake was supposed to be 6ft higher all the way around (and it's a bloody huge lake!). On the way home, we stopped by this place with loads of parrots (so loud!) and also a golf course inhabited by kangaroos - but that'll be further on! Tuesday 13th June - Today was a Jennifer Aniston film day; we watched Rumor Has It and then went to the cinema to see The Break Up. See, her problem is she's always in films that are basically the same. Try something different woman, blimey. This evening we went back to Mount Coot-tha to see what the City looked like at night! I do have some pictures of this but they didn't really show up all that well even with the flash off, but I assure you it looked beautiful! Aww..... We stopped of at Baskin & Robbins on the way there and had some gorgeous ice cream...mmm...and I got to try the macademia nut one! Wednesday 14th June - This morning we drove to Coolum, which is on the Sunshine Coast, to stay with Lachlan's Auntie Trisha. I'd heard many stories of how her & Locky's Mum were like Eddie & Patsy from Ab Fab and it's so true!! Hahahaa how funny!! On the way, we drove into Australia Zoo, which is the one that Steve Irwin owns!! Took some piccies of billboards but it was expensive so we didn't go in. I had my stretchy Steve with me so it's ok! We also went to Ettamogah Pub for lunch, which is one of those wacky type of pub places with lots of great weird pictures and all kinds of stuff! When we arrived we wanted to go for a walk at the beach but it was chucking it down with rain (fat rain like off Forrest Gump) so we watched Walk the Line! LOVE that film, aww. "I'm goin to Jackson....." sorry, I'll stop singing now. Anyway... That evening Trisha had to go away to see her friend who was sick, I spent the evening being homesick and stupid (all because it was Eloise's birthday today and we went to a shop and I saw one of those sweets that's a lollypop/whistle thing and it was called a 'Melody Lolly') and Lachlan watched the State of Origin game. Queensland beat New South Wales 30-4, haha. (For some reason this thing isn't letting me post the rest of what I need to write, so that's in the post to you by email ^_^ )