Thursday 4th January – Day trip to the Gold Coast and bad news from the States

With a couple of hours’ journey to Surfers’ Paradise we thought we’d better get going in reasonable time, so we got a lift down to the South Bank and jumped on the 937am train.  That took an hour to get to Helensvale, where we transferred onto the light rail service to Surfers’.

Thanks to there being free Wi-Fi available on the train I was able to check my emails.  Sadly, what I read was not great news.  An email from Joe at Campers Inn in the States, with the update we had been dreading – it’s official, the sale of the RV has fallen through.  After all the messing around and delays caused by the buyer, apparently there was an electrical fault on the camper that broke the deal for him.  We’re gutted. And Joe was apologetic for the delays, but we are back to square one with no buyer or money in sight.  And I won’t go into detail but let’s just say we may have to reconsider our movements in a month or two as money is tight.  A cash injection from the States would have come in very handy round about now to keep our plans on track.

Pulling ourselves back together, there was no point on dwelling on the unwelcome news and letting it ruin the day. After all, we were off to the beach… in paradise! Getting off on a main street with plenty of shops and restaurants we made our way to the beach front.  It was very busy on the beach and in the City in general, being summer holidays. 

Where am I?!

It doesn't look windy but I can assure you it was..!

We found a small gap on the golden sands.  The sea was looking quite rough and the lifeguards clearly had their work cut out.  It was really gusty, which meant that as soon as we lay down we were getting sand-blasted continually from one direction.  We tried our best to relax, even though we were essentially being buried in sand the longer we lay there.  I spent time people-watching which consisted mostly of watching the lifeguards trying to keep everyone in between the red and yellow flags whilst in the water.  There was a very strong current that was moving all the swimmers along the beach and the lifeguards were understandably twitchy. So, I thought I’d better have a go!  The water wasn’t too cold, but the waves were definitely bracing. We took it in turns to have a dip and then stood on the beach drying off.  Neither of us wanted to sit back down on the beach and get covered in sand again and Simon was not feeling great after being wiped out by a violent wave and swallowing a load of sea water.  What a shame.  I love a beach, but sadly today was just too blustery, overcast and crowded for us to enjoy.  Having seen the lagoon at South Bank Brisbane yesterday, we agreed that looked far more inviting!

Well, we’d made it to Surfers and hardly spent a cent. But it was not our bag.  Far too commercial with chain fast food outlets and crowds everywhere.  It was time to start the two-hour return journey to good ol’ Brissie!

We were back by the lagoon by 330pm and had a lovely afternoon dip and sunbathe before grabbing a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant on the Southbank nearby.

Wednesday 3rd January – Reminiscing in Briso

I must’ve been tired – I got 10 hours sleep last night!  Following a discussion, we decided to extend our stay here until Saturday and bought three days more Wi-Fi each for $10 which meant that I could get lots more blogging done.  However, we really wanted to get out today and start exploring (Simon) and reminiscing (me!).

We caught the 1pm shuttle bus from the hostel to the Southbank (more on this later), crossed over the bridge to Queen Street Mall and walked to the VC where we got a couple of ideas on things to do and purchased ‘Go’ cards for public transport.  The important difference here being that you pay $10 deposit for the cards, but at the end of our stay we will get refunded for any credit left along with the deposit – great. That’s how you do it Melbourne and Sydney – listen up!

Then the reminiscing tour began.  We walked to the end of Queen Street looking for a bar I used to work in.  I was convinced that it had been knocked down and replaced with a shiny high rise but, just as we were about to give up… there it was…. The Hotel Orient.  No longer a heavy metal live music bar as it was in 1996, it is now ‘Johnny Ringo’s Country Rock Saloon’ – complete with Bucking Bronco!  Wow.  It still looked at seedy as I remember.   

Looks a little out of place in this context...

I had worked in the ‘normal’ music bar and only had to venture into the topless bar next door when I needed to get some change from one of the strippers…. Ah, memories! Sadly, the bar was not open yet, but I had a peek through the windows and we took some external shots to show how out of place the building looks in its modern surroundings. I was glad that it had survived… but for how much longer?

 

Then we walked down to Eagle Quay where we jumped on the City Hopper – a free ferry taking in the main section of Brisbane’s waterways.  We only went a short distance over to Kangaroo Point.  It was time to revisit another old drinking haunt – the Story Bridge Hotel.  Again, expecting that it probably wouldn’t exist twenty years later, instead I was shocked by how up-market it now is. Luckily, they look after their heritage buildings that have been around since 1886!  The entire building has been refurbished into four or five bars of differing levels of plushness.

The Story Bridge itself, after which the pub is named

Beautiful architecture on the main building of the Story Bridge Hotel

 

The beer garden under the bridge we selected for lunch

I recall taking part in drinking competitions and stumbling out into the beer garden with the bridge ironwork towering above me. Look at it now!  I had promised Simon a beer and some lunch if he put up with me dragging him around to my old hang-outs.  

We walked down to the river and got back onto the City Hopper to take in more of the City views:

The trusty City Hopper cruising past Kangaroo point

Brisbane's South Bank 'fake' beach

This time we got off at the South Bank parklands – again, somewhere that I was looking forward to re-visiting.  Brisbane is set on a river, a fair distance from the coast to the east.  To solve the issue of not being by the sea, they have created a ‘fake beach’ on the south bank for people to bathe in, but again it has been much improved and extended since I last saw it. I have many happy memories of sunbathing here with friends and a hilarious memory of a jaunt down here after a drinking session when a group of us were asked to leave by security for skinny dipping (NOT me…).

From there I had seen one more pub that I wanted to revisit, the Fox Hotel.  Today was basically turning into a pub crawl (and what, dear reader, is wrong with that?!). And, as before, I was amazed at how up-market the pub had become.  Brisbane has been very busy renovating and upgrading.  I remembered one of my favourite features of the pub being an inside courtyard with windows a few tiers above you with plants dangling down from the windowsills.  I was glad to see that this feature remains (right). 

A speedy drink enabled us to catch the 615pm STS minibus back from the Southbank, stopping off for some snacks and drinks on route. What an excellent day we’d had in Brisbane.  I got to remember why I love this place.

Monday 1st to Tuesday 2nd January 2018 - Recovery day and the trip to Brisbane

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.