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The title says it all. I was not the only one who expected it to be relatively hot (if not as hot as Singapore) when we got to Brisbane. And we were all of us surprised when we arrived to a city that was as cold as a British Autumn. Apparently, while we were away, there was a heatwave at home stressed .

That night we ate out at a Chinese restaurant, after having another look around the shopping centre. Afterwards, we would have hit the nightclubs, but one of our group was underage and we had been told that they were very strict about age limits in Oz. Though she had an ID under from her friend back home, she wasnt confident about using it, so we tested it out in an off-licence on the way back to the Youth Hostel. It worked; the guy didn't even ask for her ID!

Anyway, we got back to the YH and got smashed in one of the rooms. The YH was disgusting. The bathrooms were in an horrendous state and we didn't have a window or any means of air conditioning in our stinking rooms! But we only had to put up with it for three days (thank God).

A few days later, three people from the Conservation Australia group turned up and we packed our cases into the back of their trucks and set off across Queensland to a place called Kooralbyn. We were to spend the next week in a groups of chalets outside a golf course. It was amazing. The course was enormous and had a forest on one side, where wild kangaroos lived. The chalets were well furnished and very comfortable (we were delighted to discover our telly had sky!). We were as prepared as we could be for our conservation work, which would begin the next day.