December 3rd – December 6th 2019
We landed on Continent number 2, Australasia, at 5 am into Brisbane Airport. Thanks to us being on a form of economy flight you would expect as short haul in Europe, we didn’t catch much sleep on the plane. We were aware, however that checking into the hostel could not be done for a while yet.
After having done sums during our flight it transpired that Indonesia had been massively over budget! This was due to the fact that because it was so cheap, we did oodlesof activates. It was a case where quantity had pushed the extremes of our wallets. No regrets, of course, we had an excellent time, but we realised we would need to dome some cutting back now or risk having to end our trip early. Using the Project Management view of the world, a mixture of our Cost and Quality would have to come back to ensure our time could remain the same.
note: I’m not entirely sure the APM Project Management qualification was designed to be used this way but hey, it really does help having some key skills to keep travel optimisation up!
So, we thought we would relax at Brisbane Airport. We sat at the terminal coffee shop for come breakfast and a coffee each, coming in at a cool 20+ dollars. Yup, sadly the land of high numbers but low prices was now behind us and we were again in a pricing structure not to dissimilar from home. We also noticed a Vodafone store nearby and I was keen to try out the e-sim functionality on my phone (it allows you to add a communications network by using a virtual embedded sim card in the phone). On asking about prices it was quoted that a simple pay as you go sim with 35 Gb of data was 25 dollars! About the same price as breakfast, as well as call time to the UK and Australia all included.
We arrived at the hostel and went to check in. It turns out that I had not fully considered that we would be flying through the night, and thus would be arriving a day after that we had departed. This meant that the hostel was expecting us to arrive the day before. Whoops! (Top Travelsty points to me!). Thankfully the hostel was really nice and altered our booking free of charge! We were still far too early to check into the hostel on our new schedule so we left our bags and explored the city.
After a good few hours ambling it was time to have a nap at the hostel. Waking up a few hours later in the and wanting to not lose the day entirely, we had to get up and do something with ourselves. This concluded to be a trip to the hostel bar, located in the basement, for Ladies Night. The main draw for us was the happy hour pricing of 5 Dollars for a drink. This turned out to be for small measure drinks (scooners) however we were able to get pints for 7 dollars each (3.80) which seemed like a good deal. Katy brought her cards down and I learned how to play blackjack. Not the 21 variant I would know from casinos but a game of Uno using a traditional deck of cards. I lost all games bar the final one, so I came out the overall winner.
The next morning, I woke up and had a quick search of nearby activities. The main attraction nearby appeared to be the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. About an hour bus ride away we had our cheap breakfast of peanut butter on toast at the hostel and protected ourselves with free hostel provided sun cream. Did I mention we were trying to keep to a budget?
So, we walked to the bus station and I discovered that the bus route in the middle of town goes underground! Thats right, a concept which I believed would have made sense on a transportation project I had worked on before was actually in full implementation here. And it looked like it worked well! We caught our bus with ease and read for the hour-long bus ride.
Arriving at Lone pine was great. A somewhat pricey excursion for us (at 42 dollars each), this place was easily worth it. We were able to see a large variety of Australian wildlife. First off was the platypus, which was much smaller in real life than I had mentally pictured. Next, the Koalas, who were all very sleepy in their trees occasionally glancing at the guests with a look of [not caring]. We had a sneaky ice cream and noticed the shop also sold some treats for kangaroos. We bought these and headed to the kangaroo area. They were very friendly (obviously able to tell we had snacks for them). It was really fun to watch them bounce around the place but far more interesting to see that when moving slowly the use their tail as a third leg (it did seem that their two hind legs could to be moved independently from one another). Once our snacks were gone (a fact some roos couldn’t believe as they continued to follow us) we headed around the rest of the reserve. Was saw Dingoes, various lizards and a sleepy wombat.
We stayed until closing time when we caught the bus back into town. Another hour bus ride we arrived into central Brisbane near sunset. Illuminating the city in a wonderful red glow we crossed the river to the south bank to enjoy the calm. We were tempted to get on the big wheel to get a good view of the city, but at costing 20 dollars each we decided it was out of our price bracket. Instead we chilled on the embankment for a little while before heading back into town.
We picked up some groceries for dinner and cooked another nutritious concoction involving instant noodles. It was also like we had gone back to our days in Japan. Whilst cooking I had spotted a leaflet that promoted the nearby bowling alley, which on Wednesday nights offered 15 dollars for unlimited Bowling, pool and laser tag. We decided this was worth it for a good evening of entertainment and headed over.
We were ID’d at the entrance (amazing, haven’t had this happen in years and despite it probably being a uniform policy, made me feel like I still had some youth about my manner). We paid our entry and found out it was also 5 dollars for spirits and mixers. Get in! A few drinks, a couple of games of bowling and a few rounds of laser tag later and it was suddenly closing time. Now a more decent time for us to sleep we headed back to bed.
Our next day had us booked into the free walking tour offered by the tourist information centre in the middle of the city. Starting at 10:30 we had a leisurely morning lie in and relaxed breakfast. We headed into town and found the starting location. The tour guide greeted us and she was really friendly. She did say that the tour, given that it was slap bang in the middle of Brisbane, would be focusing more on the European side of the history of Australia rather than the aboriginal.
After the walking tour we headed back to our hostel and had some cheap lunch in the form of a rotisserie chicken from Woolworths (yup, a shop that I believed was only an etching in my memory from childhood at home [they went into administration in the UK years ago] was in full business in Brisbane, minus the Fischer Price toys and pick and mix selections).
Following the advice from the tour we walked to the nearby pier and waited for the free city boat. Brisbane’s river transport uses fast catamarans (much like the river boats in London) which you can pay for using the contactless travelcard. However, they also offer a free boat which is much smaller, and slower, at 30-minute frequencies. This, as well as the free loop bus in the middle of town show how well together the transportation system in Brisbane is. The boat provided lovely views of the riverside parts of the part of the city and we enjoyed sitting on the deck for our trip.
In the evening we decided we would go to the cinema to see Knives Out. We found a local place that looked really nice. It was an old theatre which had been re-purposed to be a 3-screen cinema. This little gem came complete with original interiors meaning the wooden bar and wood panelled walls added a classic feel to the establishment. The film was excellent, providing a great murder mystery throughout it and Daniel Craig’s performance as a Deep South American was well portrayed (the accent took a little while to correctly tune to).
We headed back to bed and the next morning packed up all our stuff for our 10am check out. We were originally going to head straight to pick up the campervan but the night before, on the way to the cinema, we had come across a publicly open exhibition on the new CrossRiver Rail project being constructed in the city. We decided, being the rail geeks we are, to head on in and get the low down. The exhibition was really well laid out, and provided the stakeholders of Brisbane’s travelling public all the information they would need to learn about the project. Sadly, from a professional railway engineering perspective the information falls a bit shore of things I normally dive into (requirements, management plans and system engineering) but Katy was able to offer some warmly received advice on their accessibility requirements using her expertise from her Step Free Access work on the London Underground.
We picked up our bags and got on the bus towards the location of the campervan. Now let me explain what we have found here. We were able to get what is called a “reverse rental”. This is an offer where a rental agency doesn’t charge for the rental of a vehicle, pays tolls and a nominal amount towards fuel in exchange for the hirer getting the vehicle to another location in a set period of time. Useful to them as it moves their fleet at low cost, useful to us as we bag a free rental.
We arrived at the camper office and signed all the paperwork. Slightly unexpected was the costs associated with the policy. Turns out we were not allowed to use any of the bedding, nor leave the van in any dirty state (as it would be ready for the next paid for rental agreement). Having been made to feel sufficiently like freeloading losers, we left feeling a bit on edge and bit upset, but at hey, we had a free rental vehicle!