I arrived in Brisbane at 1:30am to a very wet and windy welcome as we had just missed the cyclone phew!! Although I wasnt booked into the hostel into 3pm I decided to proceed anyway and take a chance in getting a bed for the night, I was staying in Fortitude Valley which I was told was the clubbing district of Brisbane which soon became apparent with loads of bars and clubs pumping music into the early hours unfortunately for me they stopped letting people in at 3am so after checking in I missed out on my first oppurtunity for a drink :( although I did get to see one guy staggering into the hostel with blood pouring down his face nice welcome!!

The next day I spent exploring the local area although not for too long as there was a market on and we all know how I like to shop so I went and did the sensible thing of food shopping and also realised for the hostels here have kitchens, for a weekly food shop I spent about 80 dollars however if you were to eat out every day it would cost around 30-40!! That evening Caroline and I went for our free welcome cocktail followed by several jugs of Strongbow and black as after the cheap living of Asia we had to now tighten our belts, also coming from Asia where we were used to going out in shorts and t-shirts this was a sharp contrast with all the girls in tiny dresses and loads of make up we quickly nicknamed the area 'THe Only Way is Brisbane' or 'Brisaluf' we were quite drunk so obvs found this hilarious and giggled off to bed much to the annoyance of our room mates who we woke up oops!!

I woke up early the next morning to go to Steve Irwins Australia Zoo which I was sceptical about as I am not mad about the idea of zoos however was told this was more about conservation. We arrived a couple of hours later by coach and I firstly made my way to the tortoise feeding which was pretty cool and then proceeded to make my way round the zoo seeing tasmanian devils, red pandas, komodo dragons and crocs before heading to the Croceseum for the midday show. The show started with a moving tribute to the man himself Steve Irwin before several very colourful and beautiful birds flew into the arena with a rock them tune. They then proceeded to entice the crocs out of the water with the keepers going in and also throwing bits of meat, you could hear the sound of their powerful jaws across the auditorium the keepers were mental getting so close but I suppose its all part of the show and it was a good show. I continued the rest of the afternoon viewing the many other animals including the koalas which were soooooo cute although they sleep 18-20 hours a day so not very action packed although we were allowed to stroke them which was cool!! I am still undecided about zoo's and much prefer to see animals in the wild like in Borneo but the zoo seem to be doing a good job of eduacting people all the same.

After a really long day I was knackered however it was time for a quick change before meeting up with my very pregnant cousin Catherine and her husband Sean whom I hadnt seen in 5 years. It was fantastic catching up and we enjoyed an amazing dinner and even better dessert - gf chocolate and chia cake with hot choc sauce and strawberries n cream ice cream just in case you wondered - which was a perfect end to my time in Brisbane. I have already arranged to meet up with Caroline in Melbourne which I cant wait for but in the meantime I am ready for Cairns........................