The One with Mannface

From Noosa, we head to Brisbane, and a chance to catch up with my housemate from Uni Lisa, and her boyfriend Mick.

For those of you who don't know Mannface, I'm not being mean with the nickname - as you can see she's totally gorgeous and in no way masculine, but once someone is branded with a nickname, it's very hard to get out of calling them that.

I had two objectives for Brisbane - 1) see Mannface 2) hold a Koala at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.

So on the Saturday morning, after a wander around the New Farm Farmers Markets and a yummy al fresco breakfast, Mannface drove us to said sanctuary and I got to cuddle a koala.

Cuddle is an interesting word. Avoid getting my eyes scratched out by, might be a more apt description. For some reason this Koala took a dislike to me. It was taken a way - given a stern talking to, fed some Eucalyptus leaves (which obviously drugged it into a stupor) and it came back happy to pose! She was very soft though so I forgave her.

We also got a chance to feed the kangaroos. They ate right out of our hands (sticky work), but were also very cute.

The weather was unbelievably cold, so after a hearty lunch, we just chilled out at the flat in fron t of the heater, before heading out to "The Valley" to sample Brisbanes night life. I like it here, the city has a funky style to it!

The next day I was glad to see the sun was out, and we caught the ferry into the city centre. Here we saw the "beach" - a sandpit by a salt water paddling pool - complete with life guards - looked around more market stalls, stopped for several coffees, and even
went for a culture stop at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)

Here my favourite piece was by a Buddhist Thai guy, who every day chose one article from the paper, used the paper to make a Papier Mache model of something which represented the story, and then wrote his response to the story in Thai on the model. He did this over 2 years and there were over 300 models. Very interesting.

We caught the ferry back to New Farm, had dinner, and then went to see Pirates of the Carribbean at the cinema (the less said about that the better)

I've had a great time in Brisbane, and it was so good to catch up with Mannface. Thanks for having us dude! Look forward to seeing you again soon!