Brisbane - Surfers Paradise

Hello Again!!!

Well for starters we have some bad news (although we can see the funny side of it now) There won't be many pictures on this blog because at Surfers Paradise beach our bag got stolen, so guess what.................we're on camera number 4 now!!! Luckily the lifeguard told us to go and look for our bag as the thieves usually dump them after they've taken what they want, so we went searching and like a sniffer dog I found it in the bush. They'd left our credit cards etc just taken some money, my watch that Rich bought me for my 18th and our camera. We'd already burnt some pictures to disc so we've only lost Brisbane and some of Surfers, still, we'd like to hunt the little beggars down!!!

Anyway we'll start in Brisbane.....

Our first big city for while and a refreshing change from little towns. Some of our friends from Fraser Island, Whitsundays boat trip and people we've met along the way were there so on our first night we went out to sample a Saturday night in Brisbane. We had a few drinks and good laugh, all in all a good night.

The next day we set off walking through the city to see the sights. They have gorgeous botanic gardens right in the middle of the city so we had a stroll around those and checked out the river and Kangaroo Point. That night we just wandered around getting our bearings around our hostel and had an early night. On Sunday we hired a tandem bike and went all over the city. We followed a route down the river towards south Brisbane, through Toowong and the Queensland university and took a shortcut on the way back. This 'shortcut' took us across some major roads, dual carriageways and bridges before we ended up back on a cycle track.....whoops!!

We met up with our friends again that night and went to see 'Australia', a great film about Australia (obviously) in WW2. On Monday we went to the Lagoon (Streets Beach) in Southbank which is a man made beach along the river with a swimming pool. Its a great place, Southbank, with lots of little cafes and ice cream shops all within a walkway covered in purple flowers.

On our last day we went to Mt Coo-tha, a gorgeous lookout point over all of Brisbane. There we also did a walk though some bushland and to some waterfalls, well actually they were dry so we climbed up them! That night we met up with an old friend from school (Ben Brooks) who lives in Brisbane now and we had some tea at a Chinese in Southbank, a lovely end to our stay in Brisbane.

Our next stop was Surfers Paradise. We didn't expect such a lively place!! It was a real holiday town where all the Ozzie's go for a summer break, great beaches, nightlife and awesome theme parks just outside, the place was really buzzing!!

On our first afternoon it poured down so in true Brit style we went for a few beers, in fact all afternoon we did a pub crawl around the town and even got shouted some drinks by a bar manager (everyone loves team RA!). That evening at our hostel they put a film on the outside screen and we all sat around the pool with 'all you can eat' Domino's for $5, a box of wine and watched the film. We met up with some friends who had made their way to Surfers and ended up hitting the town again!! A cracking day and an even better night!!

The next day we headed straight to the water park. We have never seen anything like this place, it was huge, it took us the whole day to get around, awesome slides with almost vertical drops, loads of tube rides and even a tornado one where we both sat in a tube and it whizzed you round, such a good day out!!! The hostel we stayed at also had a converted van where you can hire films and go and watch them in the van so after a big night the night before we decided to rent out 'A night at the museum' (with Ricky Gervais) and had a quiet night in.

On our last day we headed to the beach, the sun was shining and it was a great day to jump into the waves, we were having a great time until we realised our bag had gone!! So the rest of the day was at the police station sorting it out and ringing the insurance company.

Next stop is Byron Bay and working on a cattle farm for a few days (should be interesting!!)

All our love

Team RA

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