On Monday 5th July, Evie and I headed for Brisbane, which is only a 90 minute flight from Townsville, managed to get through a couple of magazines in that time!

We were staying with Evie’s best friend, Tarsh, but first we had to go and meet her at her work – Allan Border Field, as she works for Queensland Cricket. The first person we saw when we got there was the former Warwickshire wicket-keeper batsman Trevor Penney, who’s recently taken over as the Queensland Bulls assistant coach.

Due to the travelling we had a lazy evening, sat on the bed watching Good News Week and eating spring rolls from Red Rock, which is a takeaway noodles restaurant, very nice.

Tuesday brought about my first introduction to the City Cat, which is the ferry that goes along Brisbane River, as Evie and I went to explore the centre of Brisbane. The ferry cost $7.80 for a day ticket; once again there was no student discount, only for Queensland students.

Having got off at North Quay we went straight for Queen Street Mall, where I learned that in Brisbane city centre the vertical streets on the map are named after English queens and the horizontal ones after English kings, very handy!

I was introduced to one of Evie’s favourite fast food places: Oporto, which sells mostly chicken burgers and nuggets and so on. It was very nice, not too keen on the chips though, they tasted quite sweet, strange.

In preparation for Wednesday’s final game of this year’s State of Origin series, which is a 3 match rugby league series contested between Queensland and New South Wales, Evie and I bought Queensland shirts for $99 each. They wear maroon, which is a lot nicer than the light blue that New South Wales wear!

We also went to the South Bank, which reminded me a lot of London’s South Bank. It’s a lot quieter and prettier than the North Quay with a nice array of shops, restaurants and greenery. They have a big wheel too, like the London Eye, only it moves a lot faster!

After having a lovely crepe at the Crepe Café we proceeded to use our ferry tickets to good effect, taking a tour on the City Cat down the Brisbane River before settling down in the evening to watch the new DVD from the Scottish comedian, Danny Bhoy, who I hadn’t heard of until I came here! He was brilliant though, we watched both of his DVDs during my time in Brisbane.

Wednesday was State of Origin day so after a relaxing day the three of us in our maroon jerseys headed out to The Caxton Hotel to watch the game. The bar had Bulmers on tap, which made Evie and me very happy as we hadn’t had cider yet on our trip! Pre-match the television screens showed an old Bledisloe Cup game from 2000, getting me all excited for our trip to Melbourne, where we will be watching the first BC game of the year. It was a bit of a nostalgia trip watching the likes of George Gregan, Stephen Larkham and John Eales (more on him in Sydney) playing for Australia and Christian Cullen, Andrew Mehrtens and Justin Marshall playing for the All Blacks.

L-R: Tarsh, me and Evie at The Caxton Hotel. Photo taken by The Caxton Hotel.

Having watched the second match of the Origin series at home with my Queensland supporting relatives David and Claire, I had already known that Queensland had won the series 2-0 but this one was to seal the whitewash over New South Wales. It was also the 5th year in a row that the men in maroon had won the series! Oh and it’s also prone to a few fights in the games – always good!

I found the game confusing at first as I am more used to watching rugby union but I found it enjoyable, especially with the atmosphere in the bar and the final score line, which was 23-18 to Queensland, thus sealing that white wash! And then came the cheesy celebration music, starting with We Are the Champions by Queen then Simply the Best by Tina Turner.

We stopped by Windmill Pizza on the way back for a snack, which was very nice, who knew that BBQ Sauce would work on a pizza? Then we detoured to the Suncorp Stadium where we posed for photos with the statue of King Wally, aka Wally Lewis, who is a Queensland rugby league legend. It was the perfect end to the sporting evening.

Due to the Origin the night before we had a late start on Thursday, deciding on a spot of retail therapy followed by the cinema. We went shopping at a factory outlet place called DFO where I managed to pick up a couple of pairs of jeans from Jeans West for $90. That and we went to the Coffee Club (continuing my tour of them) for afternoon tea, I had a really nice lemon meringue!

Later on we went to see the film Eclipse, which is the third film in the famed Twilight series. I had read the books, and not been keen on them, but the film wasn’t too bad, I just still don’t like the character Edward! I really liked the character of Jasper though, played by Jackson Rathbone, I thought he was excellent in it.

With Tarsh having turned 25 recently we went out to the restaurant Aqua Linea to celebrate, with all three of us trying one of the cocktails that they had called a Tim Tam, which is a well known brand of chocolate biscuit here in Australia. Consisting of Tia maria, Kahlua, Baileys, cream and chocolate, it was absolutely gorgeous! The food was really good too, definitely worth going to!

Saturday brought about our last chance to watch the Australia A boys in the deciding ODI against Sri Lanka A at the Allan Border Field. With Sri Lanka A having won the first game and the second one being tied, this one was essential for the Aussies to win. Which they didn’t unfortunately, but it was close and an excellent game!

Inbetween innings at the cricket we took the short trip to the famous Breakfast Creek Hotel where we had possibly the best steak that I’ve ever had. It was done perfectly and just tasted amazing. I want to go back there!

On Saturday evening we went to see the genius that is Bill Bailey perform at the QPAC on Brisbane’s South Bank. Needless to say that he was hilarious, he’s a comedian, duh. I won’t go into the details about it but I just love the way that he links his jokes throughout the show into a video montage at the end, it wouldn’t make sense if you’d seen it first! And now I can’t listen to Cars by Gary Numan, Goodbye My Lover by James Blunt or Hallelujah without giggling…

Sunday and our last full day in Brisbane before going to the Gold Coast for a few days. We spent it on the South Bank where we had a wander around the craft markets, eating Churros, before going to The Plough Inn for some lunch and a catch up with one of my friends from Brisbane, Hayley. It was on another look around the markets after lunch where we were looking at some cartoons of animals and I mistook a possum for an upside down cat! Bearing in mind that I hadn’t seen a possum and it really did look like a cat that was upside down…

I also tried Cold Rock Ice Cream for the first time. What you do is that you choose a flavour of ice cream from the ones available and then pick a couple of fillings to be added to it, which they do on a cold rock, hence the name Cold Rock. Evie had been raving about it for ages and she was right, it was delicious! Just a shame they don’t have one in Canberra…

So from Brisbane we then headed to the Gold Coast on Monday, which is where my next blog post will be about…