An old friend I met in the shopping centre!

Brisbane

On the 26th November, exactly 4 months since we first set eyes on the land of Oz, we touched down in Brisbane. It is a 1 hr 40 minute flight from Mackay to Brisbane, or a 14 hour drive (the equivalent of driving from Dundee down to Land’s End to put that into perspective!). It is slightly cooler in Brisbane than the temperatures further north in Mackay, but it is by no means cold, averaging around 30 degrees while we were there!
After dropping our cases off at our hotel in Brisbane we had a walk through a lovely park into the city centre to do some much awaited shopping! There is a main mall lined with shops right in the centre which is pedestrianised and also a few shopping centres at either end of this street. My hard earned cents from Coles were jingling with excitement as the big name shops came into view, shopping is so much more exciting when you are deprived for so long! In the centre there are international shops like HMV, Borders, Nike and Tiffany’s as well as big name national shops and department stores with all the designer handbags, perfumes, clothes etc. in. We decided to split up and meet in a few hours so I ran off like I was on a 1 minute trolley dash and started spending. I managed to buy a record 5 pairs of shoes, CD’s, DVD’s and 2 bags! The shoes were mostly ‘thongs’ because that is all anyone wears, it is too hot for anything else, and it is just not practical wearing heels in the bush!! My current shoes looked so jaded that I changed into a new pair I had bought - yes, you will be wisely saying that that was not a good idea, and indeed it wasn’t as I still have the scars to show for the blisters I endured that afternoon and couldn’t wear thongs for a week afterwards!! When I met up with Andy I could hardly get down the street with all my shoe boxes and other bags of stuff, and he, bless, had one postcard-sized bag containing 6 postcards he’d bought!!