I stayed in Brisbane (Brissie) for 5 nights. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of Brisbane (sorry). It was busy with traffic (more so than say London), the hostels were really out of the way (approx. 20-30 mins walk from the city centre) and there wasn’t an awful lot to do unless you had a car or were willing to get taxis, ubers or trains. If it hadn’t been for going to Australia Zoo and a spot of diving, I probably would have stayed overnight to break up the journey north but not as long as I did.
Australia Zoo
Where do I begin? This was THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE! I have been dreaming of going to Australia Zoo since I was a young child and now, I can say I’ve actually been. Home of The Crocodile Hunter (the legend, Steve Irwin) and the Irwin Family, Australia Zoo is around 1.5 hours on the train from Brisbane. The zoo covers around 700 acres and has over 1000 animals – be prepared to spend the entire day there. We arrived at the zoo around 10am. We got the shuttle to the Africa exhibit, the furthest point away from the entrance, as advised. Armed with our maps, we wandered from exhibit to exhibit seeing all the wonderful animals. We headed to the Crocoseum after lunch for the hour-long bird and crocodile show which was fantastic!!! Saltwater crocs are enormous! As we left the crocoseum, we got to have our photo taken holding a koala. We then bought Roo food and headed off to the kangaroo and wallaby enclosure to feed them, super cute! When we finished looking round the zoo, we headed across the car park to the Wildlife Hospital for a quick look. What an incredible facility they have for injured and sick wildlife! We left the zoo at 4:30pm (the last bus). We could have spent so much longer at the zoo, I can see why they do a 2-day pass.
Diving the Tangalooma Wrecks, Moreton Island
This was an early start to catch the ferry over to Moreton Island. I felt like royalty when I was met by a guide at the end of the jetty who showed me round and organised my dive. It was a pretty windy day so I tried to find shelter out of the wind and end up sitting by one of the enclosed pools listening to an audiobook and working on my tan. I headed to the dive centre for 1pm and was sorted out with my dive kit. As I was the only diver, it was just me and the instructor heading out with lots of snorkellers. It was a great dive despite the relatively poor visibility. We swam along all 15 wrecks, all of which were purposely sunk to create an artificial reef and barrier to cyclones. We saw turtles and wobbegongs and could swim super close to the wrecks.
One last note for Brissie… if you are looking for somewhere to eat, head to the Pancake Manor. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT! As well as a huge array of pancakes, they do hot food (steaks, burgers, beer-battered chips). We also visited City Hall and went up the clock tower (around 85metres), worth doing for the cool city views.
Thanks for reading!
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