7/1/09 After a day's driving from Airlie Beach, we spent the night at Gladstone; on the way there our front left tyre burst! - meaning we had to buy yet another spare tyre at the next town along. Gladstone is quite industrial, with a power station and not much to look at, and we travelled around for ages looking for somewhere to stay, as the town isn't mentioned at all in our guidebook. We didn't come across any camping sites, and we were getting quite worried when I finally spotted a sign on a little side street saying 'Backpackers'. Following the sign up a little hill, we discovered Gladstone Backpackers. We were the only people in our dorm, and there was even a double bed in it, which we bagged quickly in case anyone else came in (the last time we slept in a double bed had been in Singapore, due to the tent, and the beds in the dorms so far in Australia all being singles.)

8/1/09 We arrived in Brisbane in the evening, but earlier on we had stopped at Bundaburg. We had hoped to go on a tour round the rum factory, but it was more than three times more expensive than what it had said in the guidebook, so we just settled for some photos by the statue of the Bundaburg Rum bottle, and some rum fudge from the shop. We spent our first night in Brisbane at a caravan/campsite, arriving only just in the nick of time before they closed up for the night.

9/1/09 Today was a frustrating day, as we spent ages looking for hostels that did working for free accommodation, only to be told by all of them that they either didn't do it at all, or already had enough people working. We'd planned on staying for however long it would take to get the car serviced, so we thought it would help the finances if we didn't have to pay for accommodation as well at the same time. (Our contract says that we have to get the car serviced after every 5000 km, and we'd already gone beyond that.) The one way traffic system didn't help, either, and after a couple of hours I was ready to put my forehead through a brick wall! This was the first city we'd come across that had a one way system, you see (neither Darwin or Cairns did, and both of these are smaller than Brisbane anyway.) Finally we found a hostel where the girl at reception told us that there might be work available, but we'd have to speak to the manager about it the next morning, and that if we spoke to someone called Frazer at the bar attached to the hostel, there might be work going handing out flyers for free accommodation. The bar didn't open until 5pm, so we had a few hours to kill, but we had been encouraged by what we'd just found out so we didn't mind. After all, even if we waited until later and found out that the flyer job wasn't available, we still had the chance of getting work the next morning.
We were both tired after a stressful morning (though more lighthearted now that we had two chances of something coming up for us), so to fill in the time until 5, we drove to a Woolworths (a supermarket in Australia, and apparently going strong) and bought some late lunch and some drinks. We stayed in the carpark to have our lunch, and as it was seemed to be practically the only free long term parking for miles around, we just read until it was time to drive back. When the bar opened we got told we had to come back later on, so we checked into the hostel for the night and lay down for a while. There was a deal on at the bar where if you bought a drink, you got some free fried chicken wings, so we did this. Then we asked about the flyer job again. They told us that they didn't need anyone else now; it turned out that a couple of girls, who had come in after we'd gone away at 5 but before we'd asked now, had got given it instead! I wasn't very amused, though it also turned out that we wouldn't really have ben suitable for it anyway, because they wanted people who were going to be in the city for about 3 weeks.

10-11/1/09 The next morning we were given more bad news; we spoke to the manager of the hostel and got told that as it happened they didn't actually need anyone else to work after all. At this point we decided not to bother servicing the car after all, and just stay in Brisbane for another two nights before moving on. It wasn't as if the car needed servicing for mechanical faults, and if we just left it they'd just take a bit of money off us at the end when we gave the car back. I can't remember now where we went after deciding this, but as we drew up to a red light, we ran out of petrol! Luckily we were only a minute away from a petrol station. Dave stood by his door, guiding the front round the corner as I and a couple of girls who were passing by pushed the back. Once it was out of the way of oncoming traffic, Dave nipped over to the petrol station with our 10 l container, filled it and came back again to put it in the car. Just as we were about to drive away, Dave wound up his window and the pane slipped out of the side groove! It was just the side that slipped out, luckily, so it didn't actually fall out. What we did was drive straight to the caravan park we'd stayed in the night before last, and then Dave took the inside of the door off (using a dinner knife in place of a screwdriver, which we don't have), reached in and put the bottom of the side of the window pane back in its groove, and put the door together again! I was much impressed.
The rest of the day was spent quietly, putting up the tent, resting and swimming in the pool - we felt we deserved it, after the rather too exciting events earlier. The day after that, I set up our official postal address with Travellers Contact Point, and tried to get my tax file number online for when I work in Sydney, but the website was under maintenance so I had to leave it for the time being. We also sent a parcel home with books etc. in, which we had collected gradually from India onwards.