Australian cities are starting to look the same to me and hence I wasn't all that impressed with Brisbane. Although our flight was uneventful and the city itself was clean, that's not really enough. Our choice of hostel turned out to have been a bad one too. The City Backpackers seemed like a glorified karaoke bar with beds. It was more or less clean enough (except the kitchen) but it was crowded with people who liked nothing better than getting drunk and singing loudly (and often badly) until the small hours of the morning. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with getting drunk and having fun, it was just a lack of consideration that bothered me a little. That wasn't the worst thing about the place though, that honour goes to the kitchen.

My guess is that the hostel could sleep upwards of 100 people and it was reasonably busy while we were there. All of those people have to share the same kitchen. That wouldn't be too bad except that it was under equipped and filthy. There were perhaps only five or six saucepans and some of them hadn't been washed up very well. On top of that, we had to rent plates and cutlery from the hostel, something we haven't had to do before. It was pretty bad. Don't go there.

So, what did we do in Brisbane? Well there wasn't too much that we wanted to do really. We had some photos developed and tried to make omlettes. (Not at the same time of course.) The omlettes ended up a bit more like scrambled eggs than they should have done but it all goes down the same way. We also found our third Darrell Lea shop in Australia. I haven't mentioned them before but they make some jolly nice licorice that is also available in England. I've become quite partial to their "Jellea" beans since I tried them in Sydney.

The only other thing we did in Brisbane was make plans to leave. We found a bit of a bargain in the form of a bus ticket that takes us all of the way upto Cairns (it's a long way) but allows us to get off along the way and see stuff. Our first stop is Noosa.