Queensland!

Pre-arrival

We left on February 18th. I went to work first with all my stuff and had to have Sacha take my passport since I had forgotten it. We decided to go to Queensland one day in December when we were both pretty bummed, me because I realised I couldn't go home this year and Sacha because she missed her family and knew she couldn't go home for a while either. We decided to go on vacation and thanks to Jetstar's start of the year sale we got return tickets for 98 bucks a pop, which is cheap.

I got to the airport before Sacha did but due to a malfunctioning ticket printer she was able to get in line with me when she arrived due to the delay. We had barely ten minutes to get to the boarding gate because of the delay and I got stuck eating chicken breast strips and chips because I was so hungry.

The flight was relatively uneventful and once we arrived we paid fifteen dollars each to get on a special shuttle that took us to our hostel. Our hostel was in south port which is ten minutes away from Surfer's Paradise, the main beach on the Gold Coast. Our room consisted of a bunkbed, a dresser and built ins complete with a ceiling fan that seemed poised to decapitate you the moment you sat up (pictures later). Sacha took the top bunk, which I figured wouldn't be good for me because I move around so much when I sleep it might make the bed jingle. The next morning, Sacha discovered the hazards of sleeping under the ceiling fan, or rather the ceiling fan discovered her when she got up and hit it with her head. It seemed more hurt than she was, as it went around for a while going wock-wock-wock in a pained manner.

We had pizza for dinner, take away from a nearby pizzeria and since it was pretty late by then we just crashed.

Day One
On the first day in the Gold Coast we had breakfast at Subway before heading out to the city. We hitched a ride with the hostel's van service and got to the main transit lounge where all the buses arrive from different parts of the country and most hostels go every hour to see if there's anyone who is checking in.

The Gold Coast reminded me a lot of Vegas with a beach, its got shopping malls and bright lights and its quite possibly the only place in Australia where the shops close at 10 (Thank God!). It was very, very hot that day so the first place we actually went to was the mall where I went in search of a Boost juice. We ended up in Baskin Robbins where Sacha had a smoothie and I had two different flavours of ice cream. We ended up exploring the mall, Sacha got a pair of shorts and I grabbed a pair of earrings.

Five minutes after that I went to grab money from the ATM and it swallowed my card, just because. After a short discussion with Commonwealth Bank they advised me that the card would have to be cancelled because once the ATM was opened it would be destroyed and that my replacement card would take 5-10 business days so I was stuck on vacation without any money. Thank God I had credit. This was also not necessarily a good thing, because having a credit card sort of just gives you a bigger spending limit, and I spent more than I had budgeted simply because I had credit. I had a list of things I needed that I was planning to buy over the next few months but instead, I just bought everything during my Gold Coast trip. Go Me. Go credit card bill.

But enough of that. After that incident I called my cousin, on whose credit card I have an extension as not being an Aussie citizen I'm not allowed to get one on my own, to make sure that we had enough money on the card for me to survive. We did.

Then Sacha and I walked over to Surfer's Paradise where we checked out the Beach Volleyball tournament, grabbed free stuff and spent the rest of the morning baking in the sun. The weather and the water in the Gold Coast is much much better than in Sydney because the water is warmer. Granted, I will never find calm waters in this country but at least there were no jellyfish and the water was not chilly at all. I managed to summon up the courage to hurl myself at the waves with the rest of the populace, despite the potential for flashing. Every other girl there had to adjust her straps everytime a wave flew over. There were lifeguards on surfboards monitoring the beachgoers making sure that we didn't go beyond the flags (which mark the safe surf limits)and huge waves that would come hurling through and knock everyone down.

Once we were done being baked we headed off to the mall and did some serious shopping. We intended to go home, change and head back out for dinner but we ended up staying instead as the van that was supposed to pick us up and take us back to the hostel didn't arrive. We had dinner at a nice italian restaurant where we had pasta dishes that Sacha was confident we could replicate at home. We took the bus home and crashed after a long day.

Day Two
On the second day we decided to head over to Brisbane and explore. We were supposed to meet up with my friend Nic but she fell asleep instead. The Gold Coast train system wasn't very hard to figure out. There's only one train that runs from the Gold Coast to Bris and it comes twice every hour. It starts from Robina and goes express to Brisbane Airport, or as we we memorized, "going on to Bowen Hills and Eagle Junction stopping only at Indooropilly..."

We got off at Fortitude Valley where the hostel we were checking into was supposed to be. We were originally planning to spend the night in Brisbane but upon discovering that our tour could only leave from the Gold Coast, we moved our booking to the next day.

We had breakfast at a quaint little cafe in "the Valley" as Nic terms it then we walked around the area. We found chinatown and in ten minutes hit the city centre. Brisbane is really just a small town with big buildings masquearading as a city. You can walk everywhere and nothing is very far from each other. Its only if you live outside the city, in the suburbs in the country that everything becomes pretty far (as evidenced by our train ride...).

We went to the Botanic Gardens and had a snack at their cafe there. It was nothing great but the paddle pop (ice block) that I had saved my life, it was soooo hot and sticky. After almost bumping into really cool giant spiderwebs we decided to head over across the river on the ferry. The wait for the ferry was longer than the ride. By the time we finished paying we were already at the dock for South port, which is the cafe/dining/entertainment centre in Brisbane. We attempted to find the museum and along the way I passed one of the venues that we sell for, the Brisbane Convention Centre and we stepped in for some airconditioning and to view some brochures.

We ended up at the Queensland Museum, more specifically their Science exhibit which was interactive. We had about 45 minutes before the museum closed so we didn't get to see very much although it was a lot of fun trying out the different objects and learning things. My favorite part was where you could stand under a certain light and have a camera take a picture of your shadow. We spent some time making funny poses and trying to see what the effect would be.

After the museum we had dinner at a chinese restaurant in South Port. It described itself as "fusion" chinese but it didn't taste any more remarkable then your average cheap chinatown restaurant and there was nothing great, especially considering the prices. There was a piano player who let Sacha play a turn during the evening. We had dessert at this nice cafe, where I had this lovely triangle mousse before we headed back to the Gold Coast on the train.

Day Three
We woke up bright and early and grabbed some takeaway breakfast (at Subway again) before rushing off to our tour. We had selected a 4 wheel drive tour to Lamington National Park and Mt Tamborine. Our tour guide, Trevor, was this full on Aussie bloke, who was in his fifties or so and had grown up on a sheep farm somewhere in the inland NSW area. He was semi-retired, he still owned a farm that was run by his cousin and he did the touring on the side.

Our first stop was an Alpaca farm, where we met Roy the stud Alpaca, had morning tea and I got myself an Alpaca wool poncho in bright colors. Then we moved on to Lamington Park. Trevor told us a lot about the history of Lamington as we drove through it.

One of the stories in particular that struck me was that of the O'Reillys, a family that moved into the forest during the early part of the century, when people were encouraged to move into the forests (which weren't national parks yet) to cut down lumber. During those times there was a weekly flight from Brisbane to Sydney and it flew regularly over the same flight path over Lamington. One day the plane didn't show up in Sydney and people were searching all over the place to find where it had crashed. One of the O'Reilly sons had an idea that it was somewhere in the forest so he hacked through all this jungle (this is the largest dry rainforest in the world) and found two survivors trapped in the plane crashed on one side of this mountain. So he left them with supplies, went back and got all the lumberjacks and they cut through a swath of forest to get to them and take them back to safety. There is now a monument in Lamington park to him and his heroically lead rescue.

We went through the park's rainforest walk where we climbed a series of hanging bridges throughout the forest. There were signs that said "No Jumping" but you didn't have to jump to make it swing eerily, reminding me of those movies where the heroes have to run across some cliff on a shaky bridge and it falls just as soon as they leap to safety. We also climbed this tree viewing station that involved going up a series of rungs. Walking down was a bit precarious because it was like walking straight down a ladder, except that you were several feet above the ground.

After the rainforest walk we drove down to a small town whose name I don't remember to have lunch. The winding roads triggered my motion sickness and I went off in search of soup. No one seemed to make soup when it wasnt winter so I bought a plain chicken breast sandwich that was the most boring thing ever, only to come back to lunch to find that there was plain roast chicken that I could nibble on.

When lunch finished we headed over to Mt Tamborine where we did the Gallery walk, checking out various galleries and shops. We ended up buying 6 different kinds of toffee, which I've just realized are probably still in the fridge. (Fortunately they keep for 2 months)Sacha did a little shopping while I bought a pair of butterfly earrings. I found several african style statues that I could actually afford but thought that well, I don't have my own house, where am I going to put them? So I didn't buy them.

Once we were finished, we had Trevor drop us off at the nearest train station and we took a trip back into Bris. Our hostel in Bris turned out to be a bit of a walk from the train station. We got directions from this guy who lived in the motel a few blocks from the hostel and ended up climbing uphill this one steep street that looked (and felt) like someone had attempted to draw a straight line on a hill. You really had to puuuuuush to get up to the top. Of course we later found out there was another way and that we didn't have to do that.

Our hostel was nice and cheery and we had our own bathroom attached to it, which was huge, possibly because it was designed to accomodate someone who was handicapped. That night we got dressed up nicely and went out to dinner. We ended up at this diner type place with jazz music playing next door. We had a good dinner and then we went back to the hotel to read our books.

Day Four
On our last day in Bris we went to the art gallery where I noticed that none of the portraits were ever smiling - which is probably the case in every other museum in the world. One of the exhibits involved sitting in a booth and writing letters that you felt you needed to send, if you put an address the museum mailed them to the person, if you didn't they would keep them till the end of the week and then burn them, it was a bit like a cleansing/healing process. I wrote a couple of letters and Sacha wrote one to her grandmother who was ill.

Another cool project was the one where you were supposed to make your own city, basically anyone could come in and make a building or a tower or whatever out of white lego blocks and add it to the city, every so often one of them would have to be taken down and someone else could take a turn, but your creation could stand for posterity for a couple of weeks. I made a short tower but there were some bad ass creations, including one eiffel toweresque giant made by this german engineering student that took a whole day, according to the staff there.

Prior to the art gallery Sacha and I did some book shopping. I was dying to get the sequel to The Curse of Chalion by Louis Mc Master Bujold (excellent, excellent book!) which I had just finished so I went to several different bookstores till I finally found it. Sacha bought a few books in each one and by the end of it - thanks also to my purchase of romance novels at a 2nd hand shop - we had to get extra bags from Dymocks to carry stuff.

We rushed home to take the train for the gold coast but since we had to walk back to the hostel and then to the train again we missed the first one. We counted all the trains as per the timetable flashing on the tv screens overhead but they seemed to come too fast so we actually missed the Gold Coast train - I could have possibly made it as I was right in front of the door but then that would have meant leaving Sacha behind. So in short, we took the third train and discovered, much too late that it was at least 20 minutes to the airport, meaning we had missed our flight. We had to pay another 70 bucks to get the flight on for the next day and so in effect our flights ended up not being bargains :( oh well.

We stayed at a hostel down the road from the airport which was a 20 minute walk on the side of a major highway and got up at 430 in the morning to get to a 620 flight. Consequently, Sacha and I were number 1 & number 2 on the planes respectively and we arrived so early they wouldn't let us in after we checked the baggage, we had to wait quite a bit.

David, Sacha's friend was nice enough to pick us up from the airport and the moment we got home I rushed off to work, having called the night before to explain that I would be rather late, so they adjusted my shift. And so that was our trip to Queensland.