We arrived in Brisbane Monday lunch time to glorious sunshine and unbelievable heat, add the humidity to it and it is quite a sticky situation to be in! The sun seems so much harsher up here when its out, you can literally feel your skin instantly burning!

We are staying in a very cool hostel in a great location in the city.Brisbane seems to be a very cool city.Very modern and chilled out, we are loving it here.

Monday afternoon we explored the city centre which is on the river front.We wandered around and then went to the Gallery of Modern Art to see the Andy Warhol exhibition.It was really interesting and we were in there hours wandering around.I had never been particularly interested before but Andrew was very keen to have a look and he was right, Andy Warhol did much more than just the famous Campbell's Soup tins and colourful portraits, he was involved in everything from art, music, film, media, he was quite an oddball though!

Tuesday we headed over to Australia Zoo and met up with our Irish friends Rob, Denise and Orlaith who we met in Byron Bay.Australia Zoo (also known as Steve Irwin Zoo) is is about an hours drive from Brisbane and is totally amazing.It is a big area, with beautiful enclosures for the animals who seem to be very happy there.I had not realised that the Irwin family actually owned the zoo and although I knew all about Steve Irwin and how tragic his death was, I don't think I had considered before how much he actually did for wildlife conservation, making his death even more of a loss.

We saw the famous wildlife warriors show in the Crocseum, where they showed the elephants, snakes, birds and the Crocodile feeding.We had a croc called Monty and Terri Irwin was there feeding him with Steve Irwin's best friend.Apparently the children Bindi and Bobbi Irwin were around the park as well but we didn't see them.Bindi at 7 years old is now due to be the new face of Australia Zoo!We wandered around the zoo, which is a pretty big place and also fed the kangeroos, sheep and goats!

There were many animals there from crocodiles, koalas, kangeroos, lizards, birds, snakes, dingos, tasmanian devils, foxes, camels, tigers, cheetahs, elephants, the list goes on.There are also huge plans to expand the zoo to eventually reach 500 acres! It was a great day very exhausting though and I was very glad when we got back to Brisbane.Our hostel is just around the corner from Chinatown so we went out for a very yummy Chinese in the evening!

Today, Wednesday it is raining, lots! So our original plans of going on a boat ride along the river and wandering around the Botanical Gardens have had to be scrapped for lazing around instead, but its probably a good thing as we have a very hectic couple of weeks coming up so now is a good chance to catch up on some much needed book reading and sleep!

Hope everyone is well and having a good start to the New Year!

Lots of Love

Sarah and Andrew xxx