Rain rain go away

As we write this Brisbane is most possibly the wettest place on earth right now.  It started raining yesterday morning, had a little breather in the evening and then came back with a vengeance early in the morning – quite remarkable.

The fact that we have moved from New South Wales to Queensland caused us some confusion as we corrected the lady in the shop for saying it was 2pm when it was in fact 3pm - apparently you lose an hour when you cross the border, weird! 

We caught a bus from the camp into the city centre (2 buses in 2 weeks!) and were relieved not to meet the proverbial nutter.

As for Brisbane itself there is not really a lot to say.  It is a pretty unremarkable place (apart from the weather).  The river meanders through it, but no one really takes any notice.  It has a bridge but not one as impressive as Sydney.  It has malls but nothing like Hong Kong.  All in all it is pleasant but not inspiring.  One small point of note, the people appear to be fatter than anywhere else we’ve been in Australia.

We walked round in the rain for a while, saw the river, passed by the Botanical Gardens, looked at some old buildings before deciding that time would be best spent ‘people watching’ at the Pig and Whistle in George Street.  We whiled away a couple of hours watching the people go by in the rain, and supping a couple of beers/wines.

In the evening we went on a dinner cruise on an old paddle steamer along the Brisbane River. 

It had stopped raining which was a bit of a relief.  The evening was lovely, the food good and the wine flowed (seems to be a theme with our nights out?).  One of the guys working on the boat used to play rugby league professionally for Bradford, small world!

There was one good thing about Brisbane, it did cracking pies!

The following day we decided to take a slight detour on leaving Brisbane to visit a koala sanctuary.  Not a problem you would think.  However, it was again p*ssing it down, the sat nav went bonkers and the road system was like spaghetti so after an hour of driving around and getting precisely nowhere (still stuck in the centre of Brisbane!) we gave up.  Koalas are even elusive when they are in captivity!

We’ve headed further up the Pacific Highway to Hervey Bay (pronounced ‘Harvey’ unless you are Samantha who calls it ‘Hurvey’).   This will be our base for the next couple of days as we set off to explore Fraser Island, the biggest sand island in the world.  We are not expecting wild times, the guide book says it used to be known as ‘Gods waiting room’.

It may not be lively but it would appear to have sun – at last!  Not surprisingly after a walk along the beach (which is just gorgeous) in the sunshine, we had a quiet night with a BBQ at the camp and a new experience awaited us: an electric BBQ – now that really is like having a cooker outdoors!

Early to bed got to be up at 6am in the morning for our first trip across to Fraser.  Night night.