Day
8:
Today was a traveling day. We didn’t have anything planned for the day, all we
know we are stopping at Glenn Innes to spend the night as we booked an
accommodation there last night. From Newcastle we took the New England Highway.
We took a different route back to Brisbane, as we didn’t want to follow the
same route hoping to experience and/or see something different to our way down
to Sydney.
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| Scenery along the New England Highway |
The parallel
route to New England Highway is the Pacific Highway, which uses the coastal
route. This route is the inner land route and usually less busy than the
Pacific Highway. Even though it’s the inner land route, don’t dream of going
above the speed limit as there’s static speed cameras along the route and mind
you it will cost you AUD300 if you ever caught of speeding in Australia.
We passed by a
few towns along the route and for some towns, the highway passes through their
town centre. The town centers were very small with single storey buildings. You
will not see buildings more than 2 storeys high in most of the towns.
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| Some of the towns that we passed by |
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| Friendly reminder at the roadside |
After all
the driving, we decided to stop at First Fleet Memorial Garden, Wallabadah for
lunch. This garden is a memorial garden
for the first fleet of ships that arrived in Port Jackson carrying convicts and
professionals from England in the late 1700. This garden was initiated by a man
named Ray Collins whose ancestor was on one of the ships part of the First
Fleet to Australia.
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| Stopped at First Fleet Memorial Garden for lunch |
The weather here
was very windy and it was cold, so we ate our lunch quickly and carried on with
our journey. We stopped at Tamworth to take photo with The Big Golden Guitar,
which is a symbol of recognition for Australian Country Music singers. The annual
Tamworth Country Music Festival celebrates country musicians throughout
Australia. After that, we also made a short stop at one of the lookout point
overlooking the countryside and New England Highway.
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| The Golden Guitar at Tamworth |
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| A lookout point overlooking New England Highway and surrounding area |
Then we drove all
the way to Armidale , passed by the town centre and head straight to Glenn
Innes. Arriving at Glenn Innes, we stopped at Celtic Standing Stone, a symbol
of the Celtic population in Australia. The Australian Celtic Festival is held
here annually.
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| Standing Stones at Glenn Innes |
Glenn Innes is
one of the high altitude towns in Australia. Even though it’s summer, the
weather here is quite cold, especially at night. It was so cold that we
switched on the heater and even used the electric blanket that the
accommodation provided. The motel keeper was very warm to us but the internet
here was a bit slow.
Day
9:
Now we’re making our way back to Brisbane. The trip is nearly coming to an end
and I feel sad to leave this place. We made our way back to Brisbane still via
New England Highway. We made a stop at Sutton’s Farm in Stanthorpe, hoping to do
apple picking but the fruit was not in season. The apple picking season is from
February to June. Since we’re already here, we had apple pie and apple juice
for morning break.
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| QLD-NSW State Border |
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| Big Apple at Stanthorpe |
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| Sadly, not in season |
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| Settled for these treats instead |
We then made our
way to Brisbane but we couldn’t use the Callerham Highway to get into Brisbane,
so we had to reroute over Toowoomba and follow A2 into Brisbane instead. We
planned to stop at DFO Jindalee if we reached Brisbane early but due to the
change of route we only entered Brisbane about 3pm. Since it was too late, we
stopped at our friend’s place where we will be spending the night and the
remainder nights in Brisbane. We freshened up and head out to Miss India, an
Indian shop near UQ to have a very late lunch. I settled for butter chicken
that used to be my favorite dish whenever I dined here.
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| Butter chicken with rice. Delicious! |
After lunch, we
head to Guyatt Park to catch the city park to city (disembark at North Quay).
This was the first time that I had to pay a full adult fare for public
transport in Brisbane. It cost me AUD 5.60 one way to the city. I used to pay
about AUD 1++ and not more than AUD1.50 only for student concession ticket. But
I guess I felt that the transport was expensive was because I had to concert to
MYR where before this I don’t need to.
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| The view from citycat heading towards Brisbane CBD |
We left Hana and
my aunt at the city as Ciktie and I went to South Bank first to buy movie
tickets for later. We wanted to watch a movie here to relive our student
memories. However, this time were not entitled for student price of AUD 5, but
we paid AUD8.50 as the show as after 6pm (show before 6pm cost AUD6.50 for
adult ticket). If you don’t convert the
ticket to MRY it’s quite cheap right. I think because of this I found it
ridiculous to pay RM14 for a movie ticket in Malaysia.
Then we met with
the other two at the entrance of Queen Street and walked along the street till
the very end. Then we went to Big W to buy some chocolates to bring back home.
Luckily the chocolates were on sale so we ‘borong’ the chocolates to bring
back, especially Whittaker chocolates and the Cadbury fun size range.
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| Hello again Queen Street Mall |
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| Brisbane casino |
After that we to
Myer Center to buy Easyway (a famous bubble tea shop in Australia) for a dose
of bubble tea. I remember we used to go gaga over this drink. There’s once I
was so stressed out during my final year that I went to city just for a dose of
Easyway and come back home, crazy right? Then we head to South Bank to watch
Delivery Man. The movie was quite good and funny too. We went straight home
after the movie.
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| All time favourite bubble tea |
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| Casino at night |
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| Night view of Brisbane CBD from South Bank |
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| Wheel of Brisbane, South Bank |
To be continued...
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