January 20th - 22nd Brisbane

January 20th

Legs and arms ache after yesterday, not as fit as we thought!

We checked out of the hostel pretty early and didn't have to wait too long for our Greyhound to Brisbane. Only look two hours to get to Brisbane where we were picked up by a courtesy bus and taken to the hostel. It was another dorm, but this one was much better with a big partition in the middle so everybody had their own privacy.We headed down to the bar for the evening and indulged in free fish and chips - you know the rules, free food is good food!

January 21st

Caught an early train from near the hostel to the South Bank area of Brisbane and walked to where all the museums were. First stop was GOMA, the Gallery of Modern Art.Outside there was a display like a fruit stall where all the fruit was made out of folded paper.I think it was mainly for children but I joined in and made a paper banana…..needless to say it was the best one there!

The gallery itself was huge and had some really cool exhibitions but as you'd expect, there was also some utter garbage. There was a series of video installations by this one guy who had filmed himself doing a serious of mundane (and odd) activities i.e. one imaginatively entitled 'chip mountain' in which he had filmed himself eating French fries, he then spat them back out and moulded the by product into a 'mountain' shape……absolute crap!

After a good few hours looking round there we headed off for a walk around the Southbank area of the city.There was a huge swimming pool lagoon and man made beach, so we hung around there for a while before heading back to the hostel. Didn't do much in the evening except another walk around the local area and watching TV in the 'cinema' room. It can get a little exasperating trying to think of something to occupy yourself with every day and so it's nice just to sit in front of a TV every now and then - especially when the Discovery channel is on…..'How it's Made' = quality programming!

January 22nd

We headed back over to the library today (next to the modern art gallery) to use the free internet for a few hours - you become quite adept at thinking of ways to save money when backpacking! We'd picked up some sushi for lunch on the walk over in the morning had a nice picnic lunch in the Southbank area.

We spent the evening getting our cinema fix as we found a lovely independent cinema chain, Laura was won over by the fact that they served hot chocolate and muffins to take into the Cinema. Ended up watching Sherlock Holmes, I didn't think it was that good but Laura enjoyed it though I think it was more to do with the fact that Robert Downey Jr was in it!

As we were leaving we noticed that Invictus was about to start (a film about South Africa winning the rugby world cup with Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela). We'd nothing else planned so bought tickets and went straight into see that film aswell. Bonus was it was shown on the adjoining IMAX cinema screen which was HUGE! Even bigger than the one in Sydney I reckon.