The alarm rang all too early, and it was time for Drew to be off. I walked with him down to the train, and sat with him on the platform, and waved when his train took off. Back to being alone. I miss you, Drew!

I went back to bed, but didn't really sleep, so went downstairs around 7 and had the friendly hostel staff book me two tours... all day sightseeing of Brisbane today, and Moreton Island and water fun tomorrow.

Brisbane is the capital city of Queensland, and has all the typical government architecture to go with it. We drove around this morning, having all the principal buildings pointed out. One I found interesting was the old treasury building now turned into a casino. I guess you could lose your money just as effectively gambling it away as you could paying taxes. At least the gambling is voluntary! The architecture is quite nice, and there are alot of parks and public art here. For morning tea, we stopped at the Breakfast Creek hotel, where they still serve beer in wooden kegs every day at noon and 7pm.... Hmmm.... it's 7pm now! There is quite a bit of history associated with this place. It was surveyed by the Surveyor General for a potential penal colony, but the natives were very aggressive, and that boat stayed for breakfast only... hence the name. Next, we went on a river cruise and saw some expensive real estate. Then we had an hour and a half to ourselves, in the area known as South Bank. South Bank has an urban beach and lagoon, totally separate from the (grey) river. It's school holiday in Queensland, so there were about 27 million kids there today. The coach met us at 1:30, and we were off for a drive through the suburbs, and off to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. They have a ton of different animals there... koalas (go figure), wallabys, kangaroos, birds, wombats, lizards, dingoes, more birds... lots of them. The kangaroos are very tame, and you can feed them and pet them. I did the photo op with a koala, the money goes towards their upkeep. It started as a refuge for injured animals in the '20s, and they still do that today, although those kangaroos didn't look too injured to me.

After leaving there, we went to a lookout with great city views, and then back here.

That's about it for today! I have one roomie tonight, her name is Carolyn. She's probably in her 50's or so, and she's in town learning to teach ESL. Her old job was made redundant, and she is then going to travel & teach English. She's gone out for a class, so I have the place to myself till 10:30 or so. And I'll be long asleep by then!

Tomorrow, off I go to Moreton Island for some more adventure!

Cheers,
Marie