Gee, it's awful dark in here . . .

Our last day in Sydney . . . and the clouds had appeared. We had gorgeous weather the previous days here though. This receipt I'm looking at is from Sydney Tower. Oh yes, I remember. Twenty two dollars. Half past ten in the morning. The twenty two dollars covered going up Sydney Tower, having a wander around, as long there as you wanted and then there was some kind of audio-visual show downstairs, should you be interested. Yeah. So I just went up the tower. Rob waited around at the base of the tower, in the gallery area . . . or whatever it was called. The picture above is (obviously) from earlier this week.

Commonwealth Bank, EFTPOS, Indooroopilly Hotel, Drive Thru, QLD. I think it all means something. We have the name of the bank, EFTPOS is something to do with electronic point-of-sale . . . it just refers to the machine you swipe your credit card through, I guess . . . and the hotel bit? God knows . . . maybe it used to be a hotel, or maybe there is a hotel somewhere above this drive through 'bottle shop' (off license), but I can't recall. This was apparently at 21:40:02, and I see no reason to doubt that. It was a long journey back from Sydney, 'engineering problems' (whispered) having brought down our first plane (18:30?) . . . not literally, you understand.

"You guys here for the rugby then?"
I heard a voice, as I stood in the queue for our re-scheduled 19:45 plane. Rob heard it too, but neither of us reacted. Maybe it was just one of those voices . . . middle-aged, kind of tired and gentle sounding . . . inoccuous.
"Are you guys here for the rugby then?"
I turned around, trying to face where the words had come from . . . a man in a suit, I'd say about 58/59 years old, smiling slightly, waiting for an answer. I felt a bit uncomfortable that I had not responded to him the first time.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I was . . . miles away, I didn't realise . . . no, erm . . . we're on holiday. We don't really follow sport all that much."

So we told him where we had been, and why we were heading for Brisbane, and I tried to prise out some conversation from him, but nothing much was forthcoming (he probably thought the same about us) . . . almost as if we were just trying to kill time until we could reach the check-in desks . . . and it worked . . . before we knew it, we were at the front of the queue.

So the bottle shop I referred to above, we did pop into on our taxi journey from Roma Street Transit Centre back to Dave & Gladys's place . . . Indooroopilly (love the word). I bought something like a six pack of Toohey's ('New'), a bottle of Duvel (yes, I know, European beer, imported, expensive, blah blah blah) and some kind of salami stick that looked a bit like a Peperoni (but tasted nothing like). All this came to $19.40.

I couldn't place it, but when we got in that taxi and the driver started talking I knew it wasn't an ordinary Australian accent . . . there was something English going on there. He was originally from Birkenhead, which was kinda weird (but then during the course of our holiday, most Australians we had spoken to had been able to drag out some tenuous connection with the UK), that being Rob's birthplace and all. So, yeah . . . they talked about Birkenhead and the driver knew bits of Sheffield. And then this joke . . . he started telling us this joke . . . we reached Jerrang Street and still the joke went on. I would re-tell it, but it wasn't really that funny. We kinda politely laughed nonetheless, Rob muttered something about, "and not at all predictable," and we hurried ourselves outta there.

DOMESTIC AIRP TO BNE SPECIAL2 . . . eh? What? Oh, I remember . . . yes . . . the backpackers coach. 20:32. $15 for two single tickets. We got back from Sydney, a hour or two later than expected and thought it reasonable to get the train back to Brisbane Central . . . maybe even Indooroopilly. Hurried to the bridge to the train just as the last train left . . . Thursday night and the last train from the domestic airport to Brisbane Central left at about 20:15 or thereabouts. So . . . we get these cheapo mini-bus back to Roma Street, full of . . . 'backpackers'. The driver drove like an absolute maniac but we only had one near-miss. At one point Robert remarked, "We should travel faster now," as two enormously, hideously obese gentleman squeezed themselves off the mini-bus on perhaps the second or third stop . . . it was many, many more stops before we finally reached the Transit Centre, as the driver called it. And it was then that we got the taxi with the guy from Birkenhead. During the mini-bus ride, we fly through the Valley, past a few vaguely remembered bars and pubs . . . their names will come back to me . . . just a moment . . .

11:48 . . . some kind of music shop . . . 'The Basement', maybe . . . discount CD's and DVD's . . . I'm getting . . . George Street . . . Syndey, of course . . . yes . . . and . . . you bought . . . True Stories, for $11.95 . . . god, that ain't much. $11.95, eh? Wow.