ARRIVED SAFELY!

G'day!!

I arrived in Brisbane on Thursday morning, although there was a bit of a panic when I reached Edinburgh Airport! Murray and I arrived at the airport at 5.15pm, as planned, for me to catch the 7.15pm flight. As we looked at the board we found out that the plane was delayed by 40mins, leaving only 40mins to change terminals etc in London. We quickly popped to the ticket desk to be informed I had been moved to the 6pm flight which gave me 5 mins to check-in and quickly up through security. Therefore, the coffee Murray and I planned to go for was changed for a very quick goodbye. After that the flights went smoothly and ran to time which was good. However, it was the final leg from Singapore to Brisbane where it actually hit me as to what I am doing and how long I plan to be here!!

I arrived at Brisbane and was met by one the guys from the 'Outback Packers', the company I am doing this course with. He took us to the hostel to dump our stuff and then we headed into Brisbane centre to sort out bank a/c's, medical cards, visa, phone cards etc. After that me and 3 of the others on the course went for a walk round Brisbane and visited the Lagoons and the Botanic Gardens. We then headed back to the hostel for showers as it was too hot to be outside. Everyone else fell asleep so I headed downstairs and bumped into 2 other girls and went back into town with them to buy my first pair of thongs (the Australian term for flip flops!). We got back to the hostel at about 5.30pm and I planned to go for a quick nap before tea, however this turned into me going to bed for the night and woke up again at 5am - oh the joys of jet lag!

Today we got the Greyhound bus to Rainbow Beach and arrived here at 3.30pm. We headed down to the beach for a walk and it was amazing - lovely golden sand and clear blue waters! Thankfully it has been a bit cooler today although storms have been forecast for tonight. As long as they happen during the night I will be happy.

Tomorrow I am off on a surf and sand safari along rainbow beach which sound great fun. Will inform more about it when I next up date this.

Hope you are all well, missing you all. Keep in touch.
xxx