Is it Brissy? Or Brisso? What ARE the rules?

It’s not called Christmas here. It’s Chrissy! And it’s not Dave. It’s Davo! “Come and get your chrissy cards at Davo’s chrissy card store! They’re bonzer!” Actually, I made up the last bit – nobody has said ‘bonzer’ anywhere near us, but the rest is a radio advert, almost verbatim. It has to be said that advertising in Australia is not going to win a lot of awards, but they get their point across with very little messing around, which can also be said for Aussies in general. And that’s a good thing.

The 15 hour flight was fine in that we didn’t crash, we got quite nice meals (well, you know), a few bottles of wine were had, I got to watch ‘Superbad’, ‘The Simpsons Movie’, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ and four episodes of ‘Two and a Half Men’, as well as listening to three of the radio channels and reading half a book. And, as you might be able to tell, I didn’t sleep. Following the usual nervous routine of shutting her eyes and hoping for the best, which is always followed by a look of surprise when we actually leave the ground, Michelle watched approximately 10 minutes of, oh, it doesn’t really matter does it, before dozing off and waking only sporadically to either eat, go for a walk or start another movie to fall asleep too.

So, when we landed (with the same nervy routine, only with a surprised look when both wheels touch down and clearly haven’t fallen off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), Michelle was a lot perkier than I was, and saw a lot more humour in the customs officer’s question about whether we’d walked through any fields before we left the UK. I was about to explain to him that “not all of us drive tractors you know, mate, and another thing…” when she dragged me through the door, and we were in Brisbane.

We’d booked a van to take us to the hostel, and I was really struggling to stay awake while we stood outside the airport, sweating at 7.45 in the morning. When a van with the company’s name pulled up, I raced over with our cases, keen not to miss out, and the driver asked me “Where are you off to, mate?” “Central Brisbane, er, mate” I answered. “Not with me, you’re not. I’m going to the Gold Coast. Your bus is over there. Now pulling away.”
When we finally got to the hostel, our host John was sorting our room out, and we decided to have a shower and go for a walk to pick up some drinks and snacks. When we got back to the hostel I think I sat down for a second, and woke about 9 hours later. We made it down the road for an hour to eat some pizza, but headed straight back for more sleep, hoping to make it through to the next morning, which we nearly did – both ending up wide awake at 3.30am.

I’d never felt so jet-lagged before, and didn’t like it one single bit. Michelle, who suffers a lot, took it in her stride (like most things) and managed to get back to sleep. Did I mention that I’m not smoking on this trip? This was day 7, and was truthfully the first time I’d wanted one very badly. How nice would it have been to go and sit on the balcony overlooking the garden, next to the mango tree, and have a smoke…

I got through it, although I’m not sure how, and we got up at a more reasonable time – to rain. Brisbane is the state capitol of Queensland, and water supplies were getting so short that the powers had decreed that showers should take no longer than 4 minutes. The first morning we’re in town? It bloody well rains. By about 10am it had stopped, and the temperature was crawling back up. We took the scenic boardwalk along the river into town, stopping off for breakfast on the way, and after a 15 minute stroll found ourselves in a very attractive city centre, full of busy and attractive looking people, rushing around looking attractive and busy.

To encourage public transport, the local authorities provide a free bus service that loops around the city, and we decided it would be a good way to get our bearings. We jumped off at the main shopping centre and went in search of a mobile phone store. The first one we found told us that the cheapest deal he had for a pay-as-you-go was $130, so we moved on and found ‘Crazy Johns’. Christos sold us a phone, sim card and $40 of credit for $60, which we put together and tried in a café ten minutes later, getting through to our friend Kirstie at the first attempt.

Across the river is the Modern Art Museum, which is like catnip to me and grass cuttings to Michelle. We came up with a plan which gave me a couple of hours there, but once we’d realised that there was a major Warhol exhibition going on, I talked her into coming with me. She loved it. 300 of his most famous pieces in one place, put together very well, and I didn’t force her to see any of that Pollock stuff either! The picture at the top came from a photo booth at the exhibition.

From the Museum we walked along the South Bank to the artificial beach, which is an amazing thing to see in the middle of a city, stopped for a chip butty (or chip ‘sango’…) and then caught the speedy ferry back to New Farm, the district we were staying in.

Some noodles for dinner across the road, and an early night. All that walking…

The next morning and we head for the Alibi Rooms, a coffee bar down the road from the hostel, because it does breakfast, and has free internet access. We order breakfast, but have trouble getting online, so I ask one of the guys that is working behind the bar. James, a man covered in very cool tattoos, spends half an hour trying to connect us, before calling his provider to be told he wasn’t online. We chat about Macs (both agreeing that the Titanium Powerbook is by far the best looking), music and graphic design before he goes back to work leaving us to start planning the next bit of our trip. Over the next three hours, and six coffees, we book a campervan, a flight and three hostels while chatting with James from time to time. He offers to take us to a koala sanctuary outside Brisbane, and we swap numbers. We’d certainly like to try and fit that in, and we pencil in next Thursday, when we’re back in Brisbane for a day or two.

By the time we get back to the hostel it’s early afternoon, and we have an early evening date booked with Tom and Annette, so we sit around reading and snoozing, and it’s nice to just, you know, sit…

We met Tom and Annette about 20 years ago. They were friends of my good buddy Steve Mears, and had followed him to the UK after his permanent move a year or two beforehand. Tom wasn’t around as long as Annette, who worked in Ipswich for a while, and even came to our wedding in, ahem, 1988. They settled back in Australia and now have two kids, a classic car and a classic Rickenbacker bass, and had offered to take us out for the evening. It’s always a bit weird meeting up with people after so long. Neither of us had seen or spoken with Annette since she left the UK in 89, and I had briefly met up with Tom a couple of years ago, but all fears were swept aside almost immediately and they took us firstly to a bar under the huge bridge into the city, then back to theirs to meet the kids Declan and Kayleigh before hitting Fortitude Valley – the hip part of town.

The first thing we saw was an extremely tall transvestite, and the second was one of the singers from ‘The Veronicas’ – apparently. We eat food, drank beer, and they dropped us off at the hostel after making us promise to stay with them on our way back through. It was great to see them, and we look forward to meeting the kids again next week!

So, this campervan. One of our fellow plane passengers had told us about this website which lists all the hire vehicles that have been left in the wrong place after one-way deals, and for nominal fees the companies get people to drive them back to the right place.

We’d found a campervan which needed driving from Brisbane to Cairns, in 5 days, which was going to cost $5 a day, with gas paid for. So we booked it. Our journey will take around 400km a day, and to fit in with everything else, means we have to find a car from Cairns back to Airlie Beach to get our flight to Brisbane. Phew! So much for sitting on the beach…

The next morning we picked up our ‘campo’ (maybe we should call it Ivan) and set off towards Hervey Bay, with Michelle on the phone trying to find us a campsite for the night. And yes, it’s raining…