Above: The Treasury casino in Brisbane.
We touched down at Brisbane at our scheduled arrival time of 1055. We had to wait onboard seated for the Australian border force to give their announcement and then their clearance to disembark.
It was just the normal immigration process upon arrival with no one checking the Australian or Queensland declaration barcodes. I was out pretty swiftly and waited briefly for the train to the city.
I was bound for the city on the train within 30 mins of disembarking. Pretty good, helped by the fact I was seated near the front of the plane.
From Roma Street station, I walked across to Base Brisbane Uptown where I had a private room with bathroom booked for an economical rate.
Brisbane City Hall.
I explored, chilled and killed a few hours before meeting up with my former boss and friend Ivan at 1630 at Queen Street Mall. We wandered underground to the bus station and took a bus to Warragul where we met his family at a Sichuan Mala restaurant. Being winter, it was nearly dark when we reached the restaurant around 1700.
It was a nice catch-up and a delicious dinner. I felt a lot better after eating. My headache and neckache was starting to bother me but once I had food in me, I was nearly back to normal.
I took the bus back to the city centre and was in bed by 1930. It was very considerate of Ivan to organise an early dinner in view of the fact that I was on New Zealand time and had an early start to the day as well.
The outing to the suburbs of Brisbane impressed me. The underground bus station, partially underground busways and the long dedicated busways were all big infrastructure investments. Combined with the motorways along the riverbanks, numerous cross-river bridges (train, pedestrians, vehicle), suburban trains, the city’s transport infrastructure is excellent compared to Auckland. Auckland’s population is smaller than Brisbane’s but larger than Adelaide’s.