Monday - Despite our late night, I awoke too early in my
opinion, by 930am. The plan was to be as
lazy as possible today, so we started in good form, watching the film Dunkirk in
bed whilst also getting all of our washing done.
We finally left the flat at 2pm for our New Year’s treat –
seeing Star Wars. We are making it our
NY ‘thing’ having done exactly the same, watching Star Wars: Rogue One, at the
Cinema last year in Tampa. We went to a Hoyt cinema and, despite having leather
reclining seats and loads of space, it worked out cheaper than going to the
cinema in the UK, at only £12 each. Why
does it cost so much to go and see a film in the UK?! The film felt a little long for me, though
Simon really enjoyed it. Much like the
last one, I was left feeling like I was watching the characters get into sort of
the same circumstances as before! But it
had some cute animal-alien hybrid creatures in it and a casino full of weird
aliens, much like the bar scene in the first (or fourth more accurately) Star Wars
film. Anyway, no spoilers, in case you haven’t seen it.
After it ended, we headed straight back to the flat as we needed
to pack and get an early night… and eat all of the left-over Christmas cheese
and biscuits before our departure tomorrow.
Tuesday - Does it really count as a night’s sleep when the
alarm goes at 330am?! We had no problem ordering an Uber to get us to the domestic
airport for our 6am flight. Arriving in Queensland for the first time - they
don’t use daylight saving, so the clocks went back by an hour, meaning that we
landed before 630am!
We had a chance to feel like real actual backpackers as we
staggered with our bags onto the train into the City. We were still too early to get the shuttle
bus to our accommodation, so instead we had an amazing breakfast by Brisbane
South station (for me that means eggs benedict with salmon and avocado).
Here, I’ll briefly explain some history. In my gap year backpacking days, me and a
group of friends chose not to stay in Sydney where most people seemed to
stop. We wanted to get travelling. So we bought tickets for the ‘Oz Experience’
from Sydney all the way up to Cairns.
That meant travelling in buses of questionable quality (they regularly
broke down) but stopping at some really unique locations off the beaten
track. That was when I had a go at sheep
shearing and found my love of Port after visiting a distillery, to name a
couple of the experiences. So, instead
of Sydney, we were pretty skint and needed jobs by the time we reached Brisbane
(not that far up the coast then). My
mate Charlene (British, not Aussie) stayed at a Backpackers called ‘Somewhere
to Stay’ (STS) for over a month in Brisbane and I remember it fondly. In an attempt to re-visit this experience, I
thought it would be fun for us to stay there too and try to re-live my youth,
though this time in a double room with en-suite rather than a four-bed dorm as
I had done in 1996! So, following our breakfast, I gave them a call to pick us up
on the minibus.
I knew things would have changed, for example this seems to
be a hostel appealing to German backpackers, there were hardly any Brits there,
but they all spoke English to each other in any case. Some parts of the hostel are exactly as I
remember, whilst others are different than in my memories and the whole place was a bit run down to
be honest! Maybe this was a handy reminder of the backpacker lifestyle but also
why we are doing things a little differently (at our age!). The biggest surprise
for me was their attitude to partying.
Back in ’96 there were events most nights of the week and these usually
involved drinking competitions and cheap beers.
I was prepared for a heavy couple of nights, but apparently they ‘don’t
encourage that sort of thing anymore’.
WHAT!?!? I’m here to re-live my drunken days…. What happened to change
that?! I was dismayed…..
On our arrival our room was not ready, so we sat outside and
used some free Wi-Fi vouchers we had been given. Eventually, we got into our room, a little
jaded from our half-night’s sleep. The
room was also a little run down, but it did have a fridge, air conditioning and
a telly... and no other smelly backpackers!
I did more blogging whilst Simon caught some zeds.
We had no intentions to do much today but eventually we had
to venture out to get some food.
Unfortunately, we left this until 7pm when the deluge of tropical rain
began! We caught the minibus to the local shops to get some soft drinks and
items to put in our fridge for breakfast. Here’s another quandary about backpacking
versus campervanning – we now had nothing in our possession in the way of
utensils – cutlery, mugs, pots, pans, you name it. If we wanted to self-cater it would mean
investing in all of those things again. So, Dominos for $5 pizzas it was then! $5!! That’s about £3 for a medium sized
pizza. You’d never get that in the UK
for that price either! We didn’t want
our pizzas to get cold, so we chose to get drenched running back to our room so
that we could have our feast there in front of the TV before collapsing.
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