Brisbane

So, bad back and all, we headed for Brisbane next. It was a seriously uncomfortable drive for me. I had to sit certin ways and couldn't move my arms properly so steering was a bit of a problem. I nearly fell asleep on this trip too so I had to pull over for a bit. Jason was already asleep so I pulled in at a truck stop and just went asleep for an hour.

When I woke up, my back was all stiff so I had to pull myself back up to the steering wheel, take some pills and start again. It was dark by the time we reached Brisbane so we used the Lonely planet to find a hostel close to the city centre. This was the first real city we had been to and so it was great to see the tall buildings and bright lights again.

The city was all one way so we had to do a couple of loops to get ourselves into the hostel but it was fun at the same time. There was a big bridge right beside the hostel which had an amazing view of Brisbane while we were crossing it at night.

The hostel was XBase and we booked in for 7 nights. Brisbane was a big change from everywhere we had been so far. It was a proper city and for the first time we were surrounded by shops and pubs and clubs, along with the high rise buildings.

We spent the first couple of nights in the hostel as I couldn't move much with the pain I had in my back. It was the morning time that was the worst but after about 3 days, it was a lot better and so I was able to go out and have some fun.

As nice as it was to be in Brisbane, it wasn't the most eventful part of our trip. We met up with some girls there that we had met in various stops along the trip so we went out with them for the first couple of nights. Then a few of the people from Fraser got to Brisbane and we went out with them a good few nights again. We were mostly chilling out in Brisbane, and enjoying being back in civilisation. We stayed a total of ten nights in Brisbane. There was a great Backpackers Bar called Down Under which we spent a lot of our nights in. Again, it had pool tables and cheap jugs of beer so we were very comfortable there. There was also an Irish bar that we went to and we had a nice spot there for the English football matches.

We went out to see the All-Ireland final while we were in Brisbane and Setanta were charging $25 per person to watch the match. We weren't too bothered though because there was United Vs Arsenal and Chelsea Vs Liverpool on the same night. None of the results went the way we wanted that night though.

The hostel was very nice too but was pretty expensive in comparison to some of the others. We had no bunks in the room, just four single beds spread out very nicely with our own bathroom with seperate toilet too.

It was finally time to move on and our next stop was Surfers Paradise, so we set off early on the 11th morning.