Think it may become a habit to do my blog on the bus journeys... Danni and I are currently on our way to Noosa (what a fun word!) after having spent the last 4 nights in Brisbane.

I loved Brisbane as a city! It had a really nice vibe, clean, old in with the new and for the capital of Queensland it wasn't overly busy when we went out. There seems to be quite a few travellers who are looking to work there and I don't blame them.

After our little problem with the bus getting there, we eventually got to the hostel around half 5. Our room was very quiet, with only one other person's belongings in there. A little eerie! We went down to the main street nearby to go for some dinner, a good old Nandos as it was the cheapest (why is everything so expensive over here?!?!?!) Back at the hostel, we had the glass (couple of bottles) of wine mentioned in my previous blog! We got chatting to these Aussie boys who were all very friendly, one rather a lot with Danni if you know what I mean! ;) we went out to some of the local bars with them once the bar at the hostel shut. We found this really cool place (name unknown at this point) which had live music playing till around 3am. We all got out on the dance floor and had a boogy!

The next day, feeling a little worse for wares, we went to the Koala Sanctuary just outside Brisbane. Which was very cool! They had a few shows with the koalas and birds of prey, plus we got to cuddle a koala and feed the kangaroos and wallabies. They were so adorable and very gentle. Just want to take one home! Needless to say, it was a fairly short day as sleep beckoned when we returned!

We spent the day after exploring Brisbane itself. I needed to finalise my Aus bank account but annoyingly there had been a mistake and so now I'm a bit stuck! It was a bit of a rainy day so we hid in a cafe and got cups of tea, very British! It let up a bit later on so we headed over to Southbank where the artificial beach has been created. There's a little area with loads of cafés, restaurants and boutique shops. We spent a few hours here before heading back in to the main city. We decided to go to one of the travellers agencies where you can book tours as we still hadn't sorted out Fraser Island and the Whitsunday's! Thankfully, we've managed to get places on both :) so we will be camping on the largest sand island in the world for 2 nights and sailing around and sleeping on the boat amongst paradise islands! Cannot wait!

Our last day in Brisbane, we went north of the city to visit the Australia Zoo! It was amazing. There were so many different animals and we saw crocodile and tiger shows! It was an enormous place and you could tell how well kept and well treated the wildlife are. We learnt a lot more about Steve Irwin and his conservation efforts, and it really was quite moving the amount of work he had done around the world to protect every living creature. The zoo is a wonderful memorial for him, with plans to keep expanding and carrying on his work. I was very brave and held an alligator, which was quite an experience. He may not have been thaaat big but he could have still done some damage if he'd pleased!

In the evening, we had a couple of drinks in the hostel bar where, strangely for Danni, we met a couple of Ipswich guys (her hometown and has friends in common!) Dan and Simon and a girl from Liverpool, Karen. We had a chilled evening chatting and playing table tennis! It was rather late by the time we got to bed and considering we had to be up at 5.45am to catch the bus it may not have been the most sensible idea to stay up that late!