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September 6 - 10th. Brisbane.
- Back to square one and tea
And so 214 days after I arrived in the country all the long way back at the very start of February I returned to the capital city my plane had touched down in and wherein I had wallowed in jet lag to a backdrop of public parks, the river and...well, more public parks. It's been an eventful loop and around three states (and Fiji!) but its been such a long time since I arrived in a place that was even remotely familiar that I confess I was rather looking forward to being back in Brisbane...plus, especially after out last WWOOF host, the prospect of shops, tall buildings and civilisation in general was simply appealing in and of itself. It had been a long time.
The Greyhound pulled into Roma street station in the middle of the afternoon and we quickly hopped on a train (a train! I'd almost forgotten what one looked like!) over to Fortitude valley, the region our hostel was in. It was a bit of a sweaty up-hill walk but we made it in the end and quickly discovered it only took a third of the time berift of our bags. The hostel was small and very quiet, we can only have seen a dozen people at maximum during our four nights there, but was a decent enough place all considered.
There was lots of organisation, lots of planning, lots of dull time spent in dark internet cafes on sunny days...but you don't want to read about that.
Actually thinking it over not much of what we did would seem exciting to you. We looked around Queens street - the heavy people crammed street at the centre of the city. There were shops. Lots. We went to the Roma street parklands where I had spent much of my initial visit to the city. I brought an ice cream on route. We spent half a day sat in the city botanical gardens. It was again sunny but a second ice cream seemed decadent. We looked around Fortitude valley, which was disapppointingly like the CBD and then headed down to the West side which was more like I expected Forititude valley to be like, all random local shops, cafes, pubs and clubs that looked like they would close next week but would be amazing for that brief time. We went into an ace cafe called the three monkeys, ordered a chai and a slice of cake and read free music magazines about local bands I'd never heard of and shows I'd never see. For some reason it was fantastic.
We designated the Wednesday as our one year anniversary, in spite of it actually being a year and three weeks. It was a really great day in which we wandered around a farmers market, buying carrot cake, had a look around one of the art gallerys, did the above mentioned west side stuff and in the evening went out for a meal at a tibetan place where we ate good food and drank the bottle of wine given to us when we left Vintner's. Good day.
As much as the wine was toast to ourselves it also served as a goodbye to Queensland, the state we have gradually made our way down the coast of since mid-May. I've written about it all elsewhere. Morning came, New South Wales beckoned.
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