Banana-Drama

Banana-Drama
Brisbane, Australia

Brisbane, Australia

So this blog actually requires me to go back in time to January 2013 when we had been on the road for just 6 months. Throughout this time we had met pretty much no other travellers and were beginning to get a bit sick of just talking to each other. When we arrived on a tiny little beach in Koh Samui in Thailand and we finally made some friends. We met the lovely Barry and Laura who were en-route to their new lives from London to Australia. Through the power of facebook, one night sharing a few beers led to a facebook friendship where we were provided with a wealth of tips and advice for our travels and amazingly an offer of a house to sit over Christmas.

So after our plans fell through to work in a hostel over Christmas Barry and Laura were our knights in shining armour giving us a stunning house to look after and just 5 plants (which were close to death anyway) to water.

Being on the road for such a long time had changed us, we now turn up at strangers houses and mow their lawns, walk their dogs or just play cards or board games to keep them company for a free room. A few years ago I would never have dreamt of doing this. Just as an example, before we had the offer of somewhere to stay from Barry and Laura we had been applying for house sits in Brisbane and usually our applications lead to radio silence, but we actually got a response from one house sit. A rejection; but a response none the less. The home owners had found a relative who was available to house sit for them but they had read our blog and our profile and having travelled a lot themselves wanted to meet us and invited us to join them for a cuppa and a chat. So without hesitation we set up a date and headed over to some complete strangers and had the most lovely afternoon with Claire and Lasse drinking coffee, eating cake, hand feeding kookaburras and exchanging travel stories. In our previous life we would never do this, but that is what I love about our life.

I may have already mentioned this but Australians just astound me with their generosity, it is just so natural for them to offer a house sit, a place to stay or a coffee and a cake after just getting to know you, it is such a different mentality to pretty much the rest of the world, but I like it a lot!

In our usual form we sniffed out free things to do in Brisbane and we discovered (with the help of the to-do list kindly provided by Laura) Mount Cootha Viewpoint. This is a great spot to get a view over the sprawling city of Brisbane and has the added bonus of a very nice café serving cream teas. We always consider it rude not to partake in a cream tea when available.

After a few other trips to the city and to Manly beach we decided to return to Mount Cootha at sunset. It just happened that we planned this on Christmas Eve as with no dinner to prepare and no presents to wrap we had little else to do with our evening. It was pretty funny as we were pretty much the only westerners at the view point which was packed full of Indians and Chinese who clearly considered Christmas eve to be just any other evening. The sun set was pretty cool and we are pretty sure that we saw Santa starting his sleigh and setting off on his world travels.

Barry and Laura had mentioned that they had a Possum in the garden who regularly sits in the tree next to their balcony and after a few days of stalking out the said tree there had been no sign and then it was like Santa sent me an early present, sitting just feet from the balcony was the biggest and cutest possum just sat posing for his photo, so cute. We decided to name him Pork Pie, as he is a very well fed possum.

So what do two lowly backpackers do on Christmas day in Australia? We make a picnic and go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary for a cuddle with a koala of course. We thought it was unusual that this would be open on Christmas Day as who other than us would show up. The answer to this question is ‘The whole of China’. I have genuinely never seen this many Chinese people outside China. Needless to say we had a great day, we watched a dog round some sheep up (very badly), watched a sheep get sheered, watched a bird of prey show, had a delicious picnic which we had no choice but to share with a rather large brush turkey who took off with our flat bread, oh the irony!! And finally we joined the long queue for a cuddle with a koala. Here is an interesting factoid for you, did you know that it is illegal to cuddle a koala in New South Wales but not in Queensland. I have no idea why but it is a good factoid. So we got to the front of the queue and the man stood me in the required spot, set my hands where they needed to be and placed the koala on me, I was astounded at how heavy the koala was, it was at least 8kg. However my cuddle was short lived as this koala seemingly didn’t want to sit still so was taken away and put to bed, next up they bring another koala which resulted in the same short cuddle and then back to bed and finally they big boy came out and was quite happy to cuddle me for at least long enough for a photo. I guess it is good value for money as I actually got 3 cuddles for the price of one and the last koala was kind enough to do a poo which was stuck to the print of my t-shirt which was a lovely surprise! Tim seemingly has better koala karma than me, his first koala was well behaved and cuddled him perfectly for the photo and didn’t leave him a souvenir, hmm.

As usual after a lovely night relaxing on the sofa I went to walk out onto the balcony to see if Pork Pie the Possum had been to visit and thankfully my lightning fast reactions and 20/20 vision came into play. At eye height hanging from the middle of the door frame was the most enormous Golden Orb Spider. Whilst not deadly, the Golden orb does has venom which contains neurotoxins much like the black widow it is not as toxic but can result in some nasty allergic reactions so obviously I really had no desire to get up close and personal with one of these eight legged critters. So Tim comes to my rescue, armed with a box and broom to move the spider out into the garden where it belongs. After a 5 minute battle of man vs spider, thankfully the spider was relocated in one piece out into the back yard. Almost unbelievably the next day we returned home from a trip to the city to find (who we expect to be the very same spider) hanging again at eye level in the entrance to the front door. Why do these spiders want to get on our faces so much. Again Tim reached for the broom and this time we relocated the spider to the neighbours trees in the hope she could make herself a nice new web there, out of our doors and windows. Thankfully this was our last encounter of the arachnid variety as I don’t think I could have taken anymore.

As it had been a while since we did any random trip we decided that the Ghost tour of the Brisbane Gaol was just what we needed. After the terrible tour we had in Perth of the Freemantle Prison our expectations were low and thankfully they were fully exceeded. The tour guide was awesome, taking on the role of the angry prison warden (possibly a little too well) and taking us on a tour through the grisly past of the old gaol. The ghost stories were largely not too scary and there were no bumps in the dark or movements in the shadows until a story arose about an inmate called tripod; the prison cat who hoped around the prison on 3 legs keeping many of the prisoners and guards company. Rumour has it that this cat has on occasion joined the evening ghost tour weaving in and out of unsuspecting guests legs as they stand in the dark corridors. Tim is adamant that tripod rubbed up against his leg. Spooky.

Our most extravagant tour in Brisbane was our Day trip to Morton Island, this is the third largest sand island in the world after Fraser Island and North Stradbroke Island. We booked a tour package which takes you over to the main resort on the island and you can choose from a variety of activities. We had a stupidly early start and on our arrival we headed to the watersports centre to book ou
r days activities. I had planned that we would do the snorkel tour, a boat tour and a Segway tour but when we arrived the woman at the booking office seemed to want to talk us out of the boat tour and so we looked at the other activities. Sadly one of the activities was banana boating and Tim has never done this to understand just how much it sucks being dragged behind and thrown off a large inflatable object. I raised my objections to this activity and was faced with a barrage of “you never want to do the fun things”, “you are so boring”, “Where is your sense of adventure”, so beaten down by the moans of Tim I agreed to the banana boat. Our first activity was the one that I was most looking forward to, snorkelling through the shipwrecks. Moreton Island has 15 shipwrecks which were intentionally placed to create a breakwater for boats to safely moor behind, they are shallow enough to snorkel and are the home to the wobbegong or the carpet shark as they are known, a fish that is right at the top of my fish to see wish list. So we turned up at the dive shop and were quickly kitted out with wetsuits, snorkels, masks and fins. We were then sat waiting whilst every idiot who decided to turn up late got kitted out. Then just as we thought we were ready to go the guide asked who had not snorkelled before and much to my surprise at least 10 chinese tourists all put their hands up and were then taken to the pool to have a trial snorkel. Needless to say my patience was waning by this point. Eventually we got on the boat and were taken out to the shipwrecks and then the chaos really began. We were meant to be in groups of 10 with a guide but it quickly became mayhem with 30 people all smashing into each other. I had one screaming Chinese child who decided to seek refuge by holding onto my fin, great. To top it all off the visibility was terrible and I could barely see my own hands so I gave up hope of seeing anything let alone my long awaited wobbegong. Eventually I dropped to the back of the pack, kicked the annoying child off my fin and just took my time letting all the crazy idiots who decided a rough day in Australia was a good time to learn to swim and snorkel go ahead. Unbelievably there was a patch of clear visibility and right underneath me at just 3 or 4 meters was a magnificent wobbegong. I looked around for Tim and he was ahead of me in the chaos, sadly with the camera, but my mission was complete, I saw a wobbegong!!!!

Back on dry land it was time for the next activity, the banana boat. I was totally dreading this and willing Tim to change his mind, but no, not a chance he was going on that inflatable on the back of the jetski come hell or high water. Which coincidentally Tim experienced both. We took it in turns, Tim on the inflatable and me on the jetski facing backwards to shout when Tim fell off. I have literally never laughed so hard from the back of a jetski, the look on Tim’s face was an absolute picture. He was most definitely not having any fun, he was holding on for dear life whilst waves smashed him in the face. Eventually he admitted defeat and let go. The jetski driver was adamant that he needed to get back on to finish his ride, but Tim clearly had no energy left to even get onto the inflatable let along hold on for another second. So the jetski man tried to pull Tim aboard and this resulted in the jet ski man nearly falling overboard and Tim remaining floating in the ocean. Eventaully I agreed to go on the inflatable. So I hopped on the inflatable and left room for Tim to get on the jet ski. As if in slow motion, Tim climbed onto the jet ski and literally fell off sideways and had to start again, ha ha. My laughs were soon over when the jet ski took off and just as I remember banana boats are no fun at all. I held on for dear life, had waves smashing me in the face and eventually managed to raise a hand to make the stop signal, to which I heard Tim say “I think she wants to go faster”. Thankfully the jet ski man stopped and I very clearly communicated that I was done and wanted to go to shore. Battered, wet and aching we headed to the beach for our much needed picnic. Needless to say, I don’t think that Tim will be accusing me of being a bore and killjoy anytime soon. So our final activity of the day was segwaying on the beach. Having braved the icy pavements of Prague I didn’t think that we had anything to fear from our rugged 4×4 segways, but I was wrong. Tim decided that he was a Segway stuntman and fell off not once but twice and ended up with one rather sore twisted ankle, idiot. Thankfully we survived the day without further incident and headed to the boat home. After such an early start I was asleep within minutes and woke up as we were approaching Brisbane after the rumble of thunder and the flashes of lightening woke me. Thankfully the storm held out until we made it home and even then I was finding myself closing the doors and windows as the claps of thunder got closer and closer and we could watch the lightening hit the railway lines behind the house.

After 2 perfect weeks of travel planning, relaxing and touring it was time for Barry and Laura to return from their travels just in time for NYE and they kindly invited us to stay with them and join their dinner party. Needless to say with Tim and I invited the sensible dinner party quickly became a much less classy affair when I whipped out the silly hats and glow sticks to provide for a variety of awesomely ridiculous photos. We ate great food, played fun games, Laura entertained us no end with tales of Barry singing the wrong words to an array of songs (I will never be able to listen to Africa without singing “A million men from Mars”) and we had a fantastic night with new friends.

Thank you Barry & Laura we really can’t thank you enough for making our stay in Brisbane amazing.

Next stop, inland Queensland!