Brisbane and Traintimes

I think I mentioned earlier that I was going to make my way up to Cairns, and last Thursday I started this crazy long journey. For all the people that complain about the NS: Australian trains, though very comfortable, are ridiculously slow. Looking through the window I’ve seen numerous TRUCKS pass us by, and the maximum speed for the Australian highway is only 100 km/h. In total the whole trainride to Cairns takes about 44 hours, and going from Middelburg to Borne and vice versa seems like a walk in the park now. 

One of the major bridges in Brisbane

On the way to Cairns, I had the opportunity (or actually; it was impossible not to as there’s no direct connecting service) to stop in Brisbane for a couple days. Although Brisbane is a big city, there’s surprisingly little to do there. The night life is ok, they have a couple nice buildings, but that’s it. However, they dó have a  “city beach”. Basically they juist built a beach in the middle of the city; with palmtrees and sand and everything really. It’s pretty strange to lie on the beach there, being able to see all the big office buildings from far away. That’s also the cool thing about it though, that it’s really in the centre of the city, as otherwise you gotta go quite far before you’re at the actual beach. At this neat little city beach, I even met a high school art teacher who offered to show me around the modern art gallery, which was really nice as it was so spontaneous (and I secretly do kinda like art).

The "City Beach"

Although I’m not overly fond of sitting in the train, it actually isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. On the way I met some really great people; there are even plans for going out in Cairns with a couple people I met in the train for next Friday! What was also really nice that at another part of the trip I sat next to an aboriginal family, and though there was a bit of a language barrier we had a really nice conversation and all had dinner together. These are really the kind of things that make me not regret travelling by train instead of plane, as aside from seeing things, meeting people is for a great part what travelling is all about (for me anyways). 

A fire hose box of the fire department - though not in an art gallery, I thought it was really cool

As for Cairns, where I’m yet to arrive by the way, it’s supposed to be warm and sunny there. Looking at the weather predictions, it sure is warm, but not so much sunny. As a matter of fact, it’s going to be raining with thunderstorms most part of the week. I think I’m just going to consider that “tropical” and try to make the best of it, and hope the evil weathermen are wrong and it’s gonna get better soon.