A taxi to the airport was apparently cheaper than the shuttle bus, and got there in about an hour less time, so we went with that option. We only had about 40 minutes to wait until we were boarding.They hadn't cleaned the plane since the last journey, so the tray table was sticky and there were crumbs everywhere, but the journey was only about two hours so it didn't matter that much. As we were landing a very aggressive steward asked me to turn off my computer, and seemed ready to call air marshalls to wrestle it away from me if I didn't comply. He muttered that he was only doing as he was told as I put the computer into my bag. I think someone was having a bad day.

As usual we were the last stop on the shuttle bus route, so we saw a bit of Brisbane. It was wonderfully sunny. The hostel looked nice enough when we got to reception so we paid for two nights in advance and put our bags in our room. It smelled of chlorine and feet. And there were no sheets on the beds. Reception said they didn't have any sheets at the moment but would provide us with some later. We spent the day in town, dropped some films off, found the shop that Mikey claims makes the best jelly beans in the world, and generally just wandered round.

Back at the hostel as it was getting dark we found that we still had no sheets. Reception were reluctant to hand any over to us, obviously suspicious that we really had plenty of bed linen and we were actually going to try to steal theirs. It took a few minutes but we managed to acquire some. Of course, back in the room, we found that the top bunk had no ladder and I couldn't climb up, so Mikey was forced to sleep there.

The hostel kitchen was the worst I've seen for a long time. Other than having forty people in it and nowhere to prepare food, we found that crockery and cutlery had to be hired. And they wouldn't let us hire any until we had both gone downstairs and requested it individually. The kitchen was filthy, there were only three sinks, all the pans were either broken, burnt, dirty or all three. And there was no dining room, just two settees with people on them. I didn't like this place.

I finally went to bed and read (unsurprisingly there was no light on the bottom bunk) and then tried to sleep while the band in the bar upstairs played until midnight, the drunken guys in the next room got in at about 3am, then seemed to have a fight and the girl in the room on the other side had to wake everyone up to retrieve her cigarettes.