8/04 Oh oh oh is that Brisbane?

We left Maze punctually with two big suitcases, two bags weighing about 10 Kilos each and a big bag of food. The Australians have the habit of naming the first floor G instead of 1, so while it looks like we were living on the second floor, but it’s actually the third. There was no elevator in Maze and this meant that I would have to carry on the pieces of luggage down from the stairs. Roxie and I were lucky to have explored the route to the Train Station, so it was a pretty smooth trip “up” there. (Central Station was located on the top of a hill)

Countrylink offered the service of an early check-in and the weight of each piece of luggage would be 20 and under. My suitcase weighed about 19.9, almost exceeding the limit, while Roxie’s past with a 17 KG with some weight to spare. Our tram would be leaving at 4 in the afternoon, and that meant we still have some time to kill. It’s gonna be a long walk back to the CBD, so we took the free 555 instead of walking. We visited Hyde Park, QVB and the underground of Myer for the last time as a tribute to Sydney. It had been a lazy morning and I must say that I’m going to miss Sydney a lot after we left, for it was now the number 1 city in our Australian tour so far : )

We had a drink in the underground market and bought our lunch at Woolworths. Since we would be staying overnight on the XPT tram, it’s best to get prepared beforehand. I bought a bottle of 100% pure apple juice (1.5l) just to prevent getting thirsty on the tram, we also purchased a sausage roll, beef pie and a cheese&bacon pie for the main course. The sausage roll was a disaster and the beef pie wasn’t much better, so much different from the one I ate at the Melbourne’s station…

Roxie’s cheese pie was so much better HAHA.

Another free 555 picked us up and took us back to the Station, we spent the rest of the time playing UNO at the station. I just kept losing…

Our XPT would be arriving at Brisbane the next morning at 6 o’clock. Chill backpackers would be quite near to the station according to the map so it would n’t be a big problem carrying all the baggage. But I guess it would be a pretty long walk to go shopping for ingredients or exploration every time to the CBD.

I was having some nice chats with Roxie on the tram and we never lacked a topic to talk about. Time flew, but the air seemed to become concrete, making it harder for me to take a breath. There was this pair of Chinese mom and daughter jittering loudly on the right of us, really annoying; two German ladies sat behind us sleeping and snoring lightly, it wasn’t even 8 yet. I just couldn’t figure out how most people could get on the train at 4 in the afternoon and just fell asleep, I was awake the whole time. Both Roxie and I weren’t at all hungry at dinner time, we stuffed ourselves some cookies with juice and that’s it.

My ipod was down for the battery was fully drained from the music playing and games. I was so dumb to have put both the mobile charger in the check-in bags… all the lights on the tram were switched off at directly 10, it was extremely dark outside and we were speeding forward.

I just couldn’t get myself to sleep, like the trip from Melbourne to Sydney. I even tried to lie on the table or sleep with my body sitting up, none of that worked and I was feeling exhausted.

It was about 2 or 3 in the morning and I found the tram stopping, we couldn’t have arrived at Brisbane already. I shook Roxie up from her sleep and we both stared out of the window into the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t like we were stopping for a 10-minute break or something, thoughts and ideas were spinning in my mind: we were abandoned, something broke down, and something’s moving outside! Eventually passengers were starting to wake up and some questioned the chief constructor about the halt, who just responded: everything’s fine, do not worry…

What if we were under some kind of secret experiments? What if there were ferocious beasts outside which were really hungry? You can say that I have watched too many scary novels or movies, but it’s really starting to frighten me. Luckily we continued moving after about an hour, but nobody came to explain the incident.

At 6 am sharp the first glimpse of sunshine hit our tram and I was relieved to be ending the journey. I was exhausted, again and not feeling well. For I didn’t sleep much.

There was this bus travelling in the city, Brisbane and it had this writing on its body: Brisbane, Australia’s new world city. It’s not hard to get that Brisbane is trying to take over Sydney’s place in the world! So I figured that the civilians of Brisbane must really dislike the ones in Sydney HAHA.