Brisbane day 2

 

 
Want to see day one…click here 🙂 http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp

You can see djd’s entry on day 2 here…bit more discription of the morning http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp

So after a morning stroll from the hotel, past manmade built inlets

and where we stumbled upon fruit bats

and unknown birds (Arbi how could you not know this bird surely our descriptive pictures should help you)

We then hit the road on the way to Brisbane where we stopped at garage for petrol and to buy a map.The maps this garage had were extensive…all but a simple map of Brisbane to get a lost tourist about. Oh no we would have had to buy a map book the size of a large dictionary to be able to find a way around. So that left us with our very unhelpful undescriptive map to help us.
 
I tell you, you make one wrong turn in this city and suddenly your on a fast road to goodness knows where…but we made it…to the Koala Sanctuary.
 
Oh what pictures…well I hope so anyway

 
Leaving ourselves plenty of time, back to our near useless map, we hit the road to make our way to the airport. Set ourselves what we thought was the best route off we went, got trapped in the wrong lane, had to change the route. Got caught again in the wrong lane and changed route again. There are no airport signs there to help us. Finally felt we were close, made a quick decision to go down a road that was looking hopeful to find we drove under the road that we wanted. Then took a wrong turn and had to back track again to go the way we wanted to…and we found our first airport sign. Much happiness and patting of backs was going on in the car….what was so difficult about that sweets??
 
Handed back car no drama’s
 
Checked in electronically no dramas
 
Went through airport security no dramas
 
Sat down with an hour to go and realised we were only allowed to take on 1 bag each and weighing no more that 4kgs.
We had, one lens bag, 2 cameras, one backpack, one laptop bag – the combined weight being closer to 15kgs!!!
That was enough to bring djd out in a sweat – me I’m not so worried about getting on the plane as I am with coping to reassure djd that we would be ok…..I mean they would have to stop everyone and weigh the hand luggage and I saw some hefty hand luggage. However we were sitting right in front of the attendants with the scales right beside them…do we confess or try to casually walk through and hope they don’t stop us. djd already saying we will just refuse to go on the plane if they stop us. djd also discovered that we had left our passports in his jacket pocket and was now too worried about taking it off! We were too tired and things just seemed so much worse than they should have been. Time to board having reduced to 4 pieces of hand luggage – we got through.
 
The plane trip wasn’t a long one to Mackay but boy was that plane hot, oppressive…and there was djd not taking his jacket off for fear of losing the passport…this I might add is something you need to remember……he was worried about losing the passports!!!
 
We stayed at Ocean International in Mackay and we had a most wonderful welcome from the Lee Anne at reception…who on seeing djd walk in the door was a bit worried as she had a full hotel and the only one missing was a female! Rather relieved when I walked in the door as well. She had used to live in Ohakune!!! After a long tiring day we could not have asked for a better welcome a smiling face and happy chatter. She had used to live in Ohakune!! Remembered the snow….not fondly I might add seeing how she now lives in a town that probably doesn’t see temperatures below 20 deg. We had a lovely room…with a balcony over looking the beach…well we could hear it anyway if we could not see if for the dark…however the morning would show us a clearer picture.