After spending our last two days in Asia shopping in Bangkok we headed to the airport on Dec 19th to catch our "afternoon" flight to Sydney. This did not go to plan however, as on arrival we were told our flight to Sydney had been cancelled due to the cancellations at Heathrow. After being told they could put us in a hotel until we could next get to Sydney, we discovered that there was a flight that could get us to Brisbane, leaving at midnight. After 10 hours in the airport we headed to Brizzy/Brisvegas (Brisbane). We arrived the next day and headed to the city, found a hostel and immediately found out how expensive Oz really is. Our beds in a four bed dorm for 1 night cost the same as we paid for the nicest place in Cambodia for 1 week! We were lucky though as no one else checked in so we had the dorm all to ourselves. That night we found a free xmas show in the city centre and had a really nice night. For xmas we decided to splash out and rented an apartment right in the city centre for a week.

We did a xmas food shop to save some money on eating out and cooked our first meal in over 3 months. On xmas eve we went out for our xmas meal to Nando's however were left slightly disappointed as it was in no way as good as England. At 11.30 pm we were sent outside due to a fire alarm going off not a great way to bring in xmas! We spent our xmas day relaxing and had chilli and rice for dinner. The next few days were spent exploring the city and visited the Queensland Museum along with the boxing day sales (the only time we could buy bits in oz!) One evening before we left our lovely apartment we had our friends we met in Thailand Kirsty and Chris over for a few drinks. We did not get to see all the Brisbane sights as it rained everyday but we may stop in again on our way down.

Brisbane Part 2

We checked in to Chill hostel for 3 nights, spending the 1st just chilling in our room watching movies. The next day we were up early and went to visit Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was incredible. Throughout the day we saw three shows: a birds of prey show; a sheep dog show and a koala show. Along with these animals we also saw kangaroos; snakes; wallabies; wombats; crocodiles; dingoes; tasmanian devils; parrots; goats; Shetland ponies; guinea pigs; sheep; lorikeets; emus; warraburas; lizards; frogs; turtles; bats; platypus'; peacocks and chicks.

We got a photo done holding a koala and whilst Antonio was holding the koala it decided it was toilet time and shat in his hand! After the eventful day we went out for dinner before again chilling on the evening. On our final full day in Brisbane we decided to visit the man made beach and lagoon. This is a really nice setting and we enjoyed the sun for a few hours before going to a sausage sizzler at our hostel that evening.