Brisbane

***This was written yesterday by Miranda. We've since safely gotten to our digs in Cairns***

Hello

I know you must all feel like you're getting the silent treatment but believe me this lack of wifi is so irritating for us too. The good news is we arrive in Cairns tomorrow from Brisbane at around 9am our time 11pm Tues yours and our hostel has wifi so we can hopefully catch some of you on Skype then.

We've been in Brisbane for five nights and it's been very chilled out. We arrived at the weekend and Brisbane at night is a small but perfectly formed bustling city. There's the normal central bars like you'd find in any city which host the spill from the offices in the CBD. Outside of this is 'the valley' a bars and clubs strip that would remind you more of Ibiza than a city. Our friends Nikki and Reece who we met in Florip live here so they were nice enough to take us around, showing us some good sights such as Mount Cootha for panoramic views of the city. The South Bank with Brisbane's artificial inner city beach, the Valley for a fun night out and a couple of hours up the Sunshine coast to the beach for some surfing lessons.

The beach trip started with a 6.30am pick up after a night out in The Valley (this is apparently a late start and beach trips usually go at 5am!). We dragged ourselves out of bed and started the 1.5 hr journey to a quiet beach. We got there at 8am and the sun was already scorching, no one even considers less than factor 30 here. Luckily my skin is finally accepting the sun so i'm now not like a lobster after 5 mins of sun with Factor 500 slapped on me. Reece took James out first for the lesson which he thoroughly enjoyed although now sporting a few bruises . I was next to go...having previously had a surfing lesson in Croyde Devon with my friend Caz, I was feeling quite confident. What I hadn't considered is that the board Reece had was not the huge giant yellow float i'd learnt on in Croyde and was much smaller and harder to balance on. Secondly was the size of the waves and the current. To cut a long story short it was so much drama even getting far enough out to start paddling, big waves breaking in my face for 10 mins and my bikini more suited to lounging on a beach rather than do anything sporty, I admit I was struggling.  After 30 minutes of 'challenging' conditions I decided that was enough and retired to the beach. To be fair to James he stuck it out much longer than I did and was exhausted by the time he came out of the water.

Today we've been on a tour of the city - amusingly run by an english guy from Dudley. Being sub tropical means when Brisbane gets rain, boy does it rain and our tour was cut short when each one of us was drenched to the skin and there was thunder and lightning directly overhead. I have never ever experienced thunder so loud, it was something I wont forget.

We're now off to bed as we have to be up at 4am. Hope all is well at home and hopefully get to chat to you tomorrow.