Big Bad Brisbane

We had scheduled in a late start to the day and we were both very grateful for the extra sleep. It was a reasonably comfy bed; a double bottom bunk with a single top bunk, the latter of which was mine. In the middle of the night I must have rolled over and knocked my water bottle off as I heard it thunk down onto the bed below, but as there was no cursing from underneath I rolled over and went back to sleep.

After a shower we headed to the local Coles supermarket to stock up on food for the stay – the Morrison’s of Australia, if you will. We had our late breakfast, although couldn’t find any cutlery or crockery so just assumed it was all in use at the time. There didn’t really seem to be a huge amount to actually do in Brisbane, so after lunch (we spent the time between the two meals catching up on a few things now that we were back online) we set out for what we do best – wander the streets and see what we come across.

Brisbane......not London!

The city looked great, but marred slightly by the grey clouds overhead that just made the place look a little bit too much like Manchester for my liking. We crossed over the large bridge and found ourselves outside the GOMA (Gallery Of Modern Art). It seemed like it would be free to get in so we slipped inside the front doors, checked our bags in and mooched round the three floors checking out the artwork. It was an interesting array of stuff and my eyes were drawn this way and that, but not in a good way. There was a lot of “fluff” in the gallery, and some of it really can’t be considered “art” in any way. I don’t particularly like all the pretence and precociousness of modern art, as you can essentially put anything on a wall/in an exhibition and so long as you give a drawn-out and complicated description of how the piece depicts the personification of seagull anger infused with ice cream loyalty, using a lot of overly-long words and punctuation it turns into “art”. Put it this way, there was only one piece in there that I would have in my house, and it was a giant sculpture made of thousands and thousands of shards of mirror.

So after the GOMA we followed the river down to South Bank (where the blonde girl from the previous night had advised we go to) and were a little disappointed with what we found there. It was another lagoon-type thing, very similar to what we had seen in Cairns, but at least in Cairns there was cracking weather to accompany it. Without that it just seemed a bit like Southport. We crossed back over the river and wandered through the park and ended up back in the town centre. Again, not really much for us to see around Brisbane! There was a no alcohol policy in the hostel as they had a licensed bar – something that was also in operation in Airlie Beach. We weren’t too sure of the consequences but we decided to get a couple of bottles of wine in, flaunt the rules and see what happened. We got the wine back into the room no problem, and had even bought some thin plastic cups as we were still unsure as to where the crockery lived. 

James "cooking" in the kitchen

After we made dinner that night (Heinz Big Soup tins, or something of that ilk) we retired to the room and opened the wine quietly and poured ourselves a nice big glass. As we were downloading some guidebooks and such we kept nipping back and forth to the eating area (where the Wi-Fi was) and having a cheeky couple of swigs from the contraband in the room. We finished the night back in the room playing some cards and finishing off the bottles of wine, well…almost, and then settled in for another nice sleep with a morning lie-in planned.