After three fun but too-short days in Adelaide, it was off to Brisbane to meet up with my friend Oliver.

I met Oliver about 6 months before in Oakland, when he was traveling down the west coast of North America from Canada to Baja. His ride to San Diego had fallen through, and he contacted me through the website couchsurfing.com where I'm a member, to ask if I could give him a place to crash for the night.  We hit it off really well, and he ended up staying for four days before continuing on south. Since I was going to be in Australia, I contacted him before my trip and arranged to spend a few days in Brisbane before flying home to the States from Sydney. It worked out that he had just finished with final exams at university, so had some time to spend with me.

My first impression of Brisbane: hot! Man, was it sweltering!  Of course, looking at its location on a globe that makes sense, but I was reminded one again that I'm of northern European extraction. And this was only early spring, I'm sure it gets worse in midsummer.

I made my way from the Airport to Oliver's place in the suburb of Indooroopilly (have I mentioned that Australian cities have great public transit?  Perhaps its just that US cities have crappy transit, and even the best ones are mediocre compared to most of the westernized countries) Once I got settled we we joined by Oliver's sister, and we all had a quick dinner at an indian restaurant nearby. They had to head off to a previous engagement for the evening, so I headed around the corner to the Pig & Whistle, a fun  British-style pub that seemed pretty popular. I hung out for a while in the cool, air-conditioned pub and had a few pints,  making sure Tripper got his traditional pint of Guinness.

The next morning was warm and sunny, and Oliver took me in to see some of central Brisbane. We took a ride on the recently constructed waterfront Ferris Wheel - which had blissfully enclosed and air-conditioned cars that could hold 4-6 people each. It was pretty cool to ride it, and it gave great views of the city. More walking through the botanical gardens and other spots downtown eventually led us to the ferries, which are part of the city transit system, and run fast catamarans up and down the river through town. I really like the feeling of Brisbane, and aside from the climate, it seemed like a great place to live.

Early afternoon, and rising temperatures, led us to a nearby shopping center where we ended up watching a movie to stay out of the heat. By the time we got out of the movie, the clouds had come in heavily and  it was threatening rain, which I didn't mind at all.  By the time the rain started, we'd rejoined with Oliver's sister and we were in her car headed south to their grandmothers house on the Gold Coast, a little over an hour away.

Once we got there, we found out that we'd left Brisbane just in time! Within a couple hours of our departure, the storm grew massively and Brisbane was hit with the worst storm in years, with wind speads up to 80mph, power lost to over 200,000 homes, and thousands of homes flooded, damaged or destroyed (see this wikipedia article ). But we were already far enough away that we never experienced anything other than some heavy rain.

The next day was mostly also overcast and/or rainy, but it was pleasantly warm and in the early afternoon I headed to the beach with Oliver - he was going surfing, and I was just checking it out (me - on a surfboard?? ya right...) The Gold Cost is Australia's equivalent to the Southern California and Florida coasts in the States - the primary always-warm, beach-surf-vacation area in the country. The beaches here are much more like what you'd expect. The water's colder than that in Adelaide, and there are real waves, mostly because it's the full-on Pacific Ocean. When you look east out from the shore, you're looking directly to South America, while Adelaide is located on a big broad shallow bay, in a broad, shallow bight.

I left Oliver to his surfing, and I headed to a grocery store to get some last ingredients for dinner that I was cooking for everyone that night. The afternoon and evening were spent prepping and eating good food with good company - what a great way to spend the last evening of them trip.

The next morning I took a commuter train all the way back to Brisbane airport, making it just in time to check in to my flight to Sydney, at 10:32am on Tues morning. The two hour flight was uneventful, but in Sydney I had to collect my bag, then get myself over to the international terminal to re-check in to my 13-hour flight back to San Francisco. That too was fortunately uneventful (and thanks to the sedative-powers of benadryl, I was able to sleep for most of it) and we touched down at SFO at 10:32am on Tues morning - the exact moment I checked in to the flight in Brisbane. Gotta love crossing the dateline.

A BART ride back to Rockridge, and I was home. The rest of the day was just some decompression followed by a pint at Barclays, and then getting ready for the arrival of Sarah and Bethany on Thurs night for a thanksgiving visit. Those photos and posts will be coming along eventually.

I'd like to give a huge thank you to everyone in Australia who opened their homes and hospitality to me. It was great to see you all and I hope I can return the favor again soon here in Oakland or wherever I happen to be.

(All the pictures from the Brisbane part of the trip are at http://notlost.org/gallery/v/chris/travels/Oz08/bris/)