Brisbane Trip 17-18/06/08

I have the opportunity to fly to brisbane for a day last Tuesday. Brisbane, is a new name to me, as i never been there before, even Gold Coast i only been there last time for a transit to Air Asia X to fly to Malaysia. To be honest, already being to so many places for the past decade, excitement and anxiety is always there when I am about to discover a new place. However, the facts that I know my car my accommodation is being organised properly already makes me feel better and more secured prior to that.

I decided to go green this time by catching Sky Bus to the airport. Afterall it is simple enough for me to travel from my office to Spencer Street Station, or the Southern Cross Station they called now. Talking about Southern Cross Station, I am not sure about you but I like the design of the wave like roof there. I did a simple homework about the roof and it was claimed that the roofs are designed to discharged the diesel fumes and smoke produced by the trains and vehicles, very high-tech roof actually. But if you study structural subject before, or have some physic common sense, these kind of curved roof are actually hard to design hard to be built as there are still no direct formula that you can apply in the design. What you can do is merely guessing, and this is where the experience of the designer plays a big part.Skybus, running every 10 minutes during day time from Southern Cross Station to Tullamarine Airport. They claimed the whole journey only took 20mins, which sounds to be a very convenient way to get to the airport. Tickets only sold at $16 one way or $28 return, which I reckon is much much cheaper than catching a cab.
I did a quick head count on the numbers of passengers that travel on the same bus with me. In total there were exactly 30 passengers, with a simple multiplication of $16 will give me a total figure of $480. Earning $480 in merely 20mins, not a bad business huh? No wonder they can afford to run it every 10 minutes.

Distance away is the famous Melbourne Eye. What I don’t understand is that why suddenly all the countries in the world start building this Ferris wheel? With London, Malaysia, Singapore, Melbourne and more to come. I learned that the one in Melbourne will cost about $80millions. It is a lot of money, well, to me at least. I am sure there are more appropriate channels where this money can go. Anyway, according to Bickie, the construction had ceased for some reason… leaving the big question mark, when will that be finished?
Upon arriving the Tullamarine Airport, I proceeded straight to the Virgin Blue section. What I like about their counters is that they got these self service kiosks in which you can check in yourself without going through the long queue at the counters. I remembered last time when I returned Malaysia, in LCCT there were similar machines there but then, none is working. Same thing to the monorail in KL, there were ticket selling machine, but none is working, what a crap. I think I better stop here, if not someone will call me anti government again…
However, one bad thing about the self service kiosks is that they virtually allow anyone to check in and get the boarding pass, providing you got the booking number. Looking at my boarding pass, my name “Dennis” is printed there, however this is not my formal name in Australia! Meaning, if something happened to the flight, and when they start checking the passengers list, they most probably wont find anything under this name. anyway, its only domestic flight, so, who cares?

It had been quite sometimes since I last visited the Tullamaring Airport, Melbourne. And then I am quite surprised to find out that some new stores had been opened there, and among them that catch my eyes are the SUSHI shops! Feel like being in a Japanese airport with so many sushi bar around.I think Melbournians really like sushi, and there fore there is not one, but three available in the small shops area of Tullamarine. Anyway, sushi is considered as healthy food anyway, so, no complaint.

second one....

another one...

If you are a fan of Border Security then you probably understand how tight the security is at the Airport Screening Point. Funny enough is, the machine beep when I passed through the door, then the officer asked me to take of my shoes and pass through again, and it didn’t beep now. They put my shoes in the X ray machine, and I am sure there were no metal parts in my shoes. Eventually I was cleared, but it just a bit strange…

Virgin Blue, I don’t know about you, but to me, I think that is a funny thing to name a company Virgin. This is my second time flying with Virgin Blue, the first time the Annual Conference Australia pay for me and now my company pay for me. So basically VB hasn’t got chance to earn my money yet. For this two hour flight, VB is offering Foxtel on board for just $4.90 or selected movies for $9.90. They are smart enough to offer 15 mins free after take off to tempt you to buy their services. Anyway, $4.90 is reasonable price to me, just that I cant find a programme that really interested me…

Tullamarine Airport, looks like some sort of extension is underway…

Toyota Aurion, that was the car the company hire for me. I must admit it’s a very nice car, very drivable, and nice look as well. Well at least that’s my first impression about the car.

And my nice hotel room with a comfie double bed. I saw the bill, $149 for a night, luckily I am not the one paying for this.

Brisbane city view outside my room in the morning
Brisbane city view outside my room at night.

Queen Street Mall, is a street in the city in which it is closed to traffic and got all the shops along the street. It is something similar to Rundle Mall in Adelaide, in fact the design and layout of the street is a bit identical, except there are a lot of restaurant in the middle of the street here. It was not a late night shopping day, so most of the shops were closed then, except some restaurants and bars, and a strip club!

Another picture of Queen Street mall

Krispy Kreme! The reason I took this picture was that on the flight I saw a lot of people taking Krispy Kreme on board back to Brisbane. I was thinking, okie, probably Brisbane hadn’t got a Krispy Kreme. But then, on the Queen Street Mall I saw this familiar Brand. So why bother taking donuts all the way from Melbourne while you can get it fresh at your doorstep?

Some kangaroo sculpture made of junk from machineries found on the Queen Street Mall, reminds me of those pigs on Rundle Mall….


On the way returning to Melbourne when I reached Brisbane Airport, I just realised how big it is the Brisbane Airport is (it was night time when I arrived the day before). No Kidding I think the size should be at least double or triple the size of Tullamarine, not to mention the international and domestic terminals are separated and you got to drive between two terminals. In the domestic terminals, I got some spare time to walk around the airport and just to find out that there are 50 gates for boarding there, double the amount in Tullamarine. Questions now, why build such a big airport while I don’t find the airport itself to be very busy?
Virgin Loo, thats what the Virgin Blue called their toilet in their terminals, creative? thanks to the little man there, if not for sure i wont know its a toilet there...

Lastly, to those who dunno which company i am working with now, this is the visitor pass issued to me during my stay in Brisbane.