Bris Vegas aka Brissie aka Brisbane

China Town
China Town
View from the pedestrian bridge over the river
View of the city sky scrappers from the south bank
Tibet Peace Pavilion in South Bank
At night on the river
On the river at night
On the river at night
On the river at night
On the river at night
View from the look out over the city
View from the lookout over the city
On the walk back down from the lookout
Aboriginal art walk along the way
Aboriginal art walk along the way
Aboriginal art walk along the way

Alice Springs from the city lookout
Alice
War memorial at the top of the look out

Well i finally reached the end of my time on the Oz Experience bus. I finally reached Brisbane!!! It was kinda weird though as there was only me and another person on the bus and so the driver didn't bother stopping at the national park for us to do a walk but just drove straight through to Brisbane!!!

The hostel I was staying at was in a old renovated building in the heart of Brisbane just opposite the train station. It wasn't my first choice as it was one of those filthy hostel chains they have on the east coast. It did though have a balcony thing around each floor of the building so you could walk around the building on each floor and see the city. I checked into my room and did what i always do now, that is check the mattress for bed bugs. I checked the free bed in the room and found that it was infested with the little buggers!!! I then checked everyone else's bed in the room and they had them too. Nice. I went back down stairs and asked to change rooms. They treated me like I was a martian, but moved me to another room. I checked my new bed and thankfully that was bed bug free. I also, just being nosey I guess, checked the others in the room and found that they had bed bugs too. I was quite lucky.

I met up with the person I was on the bus with and we went for a walk around Brisbane. We started off walking up what felt like a motorway to Chinatown and the valley. The valley is where all the bars and night clubs are. Chinatown has a lovely arch as gates to the town and inside where some lovely smaller buildings. We quickly found out that Chinatown is not that big. More a ChinaHamlet actually and we walked the row of restaurants in less than a minute!!!

After China Hamlet we headed to the southbank which is a park that has set in its grounds a number of attractions and is good for a stroll. We set off and walked over one of the many bridges crossing the Brisbane river. It was a lovely sunny day and it wasn't too hot. Perfect walking weather. The park has musuems, gallaries, a lagoon. sports arena and shopping centre thingy set around the grounds and it was a really nice walk stopping every so often to have a nose around some random structure. The Tibetan Peace pavilion was particularly ornate. The lagoon looked lovely and even had a real sand beach!!!!

After walking about for a few hours we decided to catch the ferry back to the city and have some food. We had McDonalds, of course, as that was the cheapest restaurant we could find in that part of town. After waiting for the sun to set we got on a catamaran and went for a tour of the city by night. The catamaran was full of commuters and I think that they thought we were a little weird as we ran around the front of the boat trying to get the best picture.

The next day I headed off to the Mount Kootha (I think that how is spelt?) Park and lookout. I caught the infrequent bus up to the park and the look out as it is way outside the city. The lookout was really good and the weather meant that you could see way past the city. I enquired about a walk down to the bottom so that I could look through the park and unfortunately the lady behind the counter at the lookout was no help as apparently she only worked there.

From the map she dusted off for me it looked like there was another bus stop at the bottom of one of the tracks and so i thought that I could catch the bus after i did a walk down.

I headed off down the steep walk and on the way walked around an aboriginal artworks walk. The works weren't that well signed posted and so I only saw six out of the ten works - I couldn't find the others??? To be honest they weren't that spectacular, nor was the narrative that great to give the pieces any meaning, so i'm not going to loose any sleep over that!!!

I found my way out of the never ending BBQ park that was at the bottom of the trail and found what I was hoping was the road with the bus stop on it. I walked up and down that road trying to find it but to no avail. The road was in the middle of nowhere and it was too far to walk back into town. I was basically stuck. I walked off the road and heard a bus thunder past the road and so i thought bingo, bus's do come down this road after all and thought I'd wait and hail a bus as it passes. I waited for half an hour and thought that maybe this wasn't such a good idea and so headed off down a side road and to my horror i heard another bus speeding down the main road i had just left. Bugger. I went back to the main road demoralised and waited another half an hour.

This time i saw the bus coming and picked a good spot for the bus to pull over into and hailed the bus. The bus driver just looked at me and kept on going???? I was so shocked at this point i started talk to myself.

I thought I better go for help as i didn't have enough rations to last the night. It was getting late and the last back into town was going to leave in less than half an hour. I couldn't walk back to the top of the look out because: a) it was crazy steep and b) there now wasn't enough time. So i found a street with some houses on it, just up the main road. They were nice houses and they must have been expensive due to the view they must of had. I tried one house but no one was home. The next one i tried, a lady in an apron (obviously doing some baking, as one does in the afternoon) and told me that the bus stop was a 15 minute walk down a side road. Well i am furious with the Mount Kootha or whatever the hell its called as the map is so badly wrong - it shows the bus stop in totally the wrong place!!!! I eventually found the bus stop and the bus came a few minutes later. The bus was strangely decorated inside with lots of bunting and stickers of Australian rules football stars??? I got on and almost got back off after taking a lot inside as it looked like someone had nicked a bus and was trying to lure kids aboard with all the homemade decorations!!!

The bus was going back up to the lookout (typical) and so I had to go back up, wait for the driver to have a break before he headed back into town. By the time I got back to the hostel, which was around 5pm, I was feeling emotional, knackered and hungry!!

I had arranged to go out to the local comedy club in the evening and so I hastily got ready and turned up late. The comedy club was a 30 minute ferry ride away on Kangaroo point. We found it with the help of a kind women. Lucky she helped us otherwise I'd probably still be there now looking for it. It was tucked away in a housing block. How random. The evening was really funny and the host was actually more funny than the acts themselves. The Australians do love to bash the British though. Being outnumbered, hundreds to just two we kept quiet. After getting the ferry back we went to the club that is on the basement floor of our hostel. After downing god knows how many shooters, we had a bit of a dance - although at that point I wasn't in control of my limbs, and headed to our rooms at around 3am.

The next day I had an horrific hangover, but I needed to get the last of my jabs for JE. Probably not the best idea to get the gabs with a hangover. Wouldn't recommend that to anyone.

The next day I was flying to Alice springs and so I spent the evening packing and re-packing my bag.

I had an early flight to Alice the next morning and so I was hoping for a good nights sleep. The rest of my corridor didn't seem to agree and decided to have a corridor party. This was in the face of the signs on every available board in the hostel that said that no noise after 9pm UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. They set up a nice little music system in the corridor and were parting the night away, what felt like just outside my door. I must have had an hours sleep max. I checked out to find why no one had bothered to stop the party. It was because the staff were parting themselves and actually people were running around reception at 6 in the morning drunk out of their heads throwing stuff at each other. I didn't have time to care at that point and so headed towards the train station to catch my train to the airport.

The flight to Alice took three hours and was pretty smooth sailing. I landed and then waited for the hostel staff member called, and i quote, "Kitty Cat", to come and pick me up and take me to the hostel. After finding me she said that we had to wait for the next flight to come in before we could leave and so i spent my first hour in Alice, sat in the back of a van waiting.

After getting to the hostel I was told that the tour I had booked with the hostel wasn't running!!! I only had one day in Alice before I was supposed to go on this tour and then straight after I was booked onto another tour. She said that there was no problem and that she would arrange for me to go on a competitor's tour. I was a bit shocked but it seemed okay as I would still be able to do a tour of the outback which was the whole reason I had flown to Alice in the first place!!

I had a walk around Alice and decided very quickly that I didn't like it. It was really depressing and I couldn't work out what was happening with the Aboriginals. On the high street, an aboriginal man came over to me and offered to sell me a painting at an astronomical price. After i said no politely, he demanded money in an agressive way?? I walked away. I saw loads other just sitting around on the parks, I wasn't sure what they were doing. Others were getting drunk by the base of the look out and I saw one man being taken away by ambulance after he collapsed in what looked like a drunken incident. All in all I wasn't sure what to make of the town. I headed up to the lookout and walked past the broken bottles that were all the way along the foot path. The view was good and it was getting hot. I headed back to my hostel and avoided the hundreds of used condoms that littered the streets. I didn't go out that night as Alice is the murder capital of Australia and LP doen't recommend going out at night, except in a taxi!!!!