Peculiar sleep pattern continues, with a 5am awakening, but didn’t really want to get up and distub the other girls in the dorm, so managed to stay in bed til 7am, when some of the others started moving about. Took myself upstairs to the roof top veranda and made myself a cup of tea, which I had with a TimTam (white chocolate flavour – deeeeeeeeelicious!) whilst enjoying the views of the city and reading my Lonely Planet book.

At 8.30 I eventually decided it seemed nice and sunny enough for a sun bathe by the pool, so got myself all set up on a sun bed and enjoyed listening to my ipod whilst laying in the sun. A few tiny tiny specs of rain fell but instantly dried out, so I didn’t really worry about it and just let it pass. A while later at around 11.00 a few more specs fell but this time they seemed to be joined by some fatter droplets and weren’t immediately drying up, so I looked across the sky and saw a vast and incredibly dark cloud – this indicated that perhaps this time the best thing might not be to just let it pass, but to retreat. No sooner had I started getting my bits together, when the droplets felt a bit fatter and faster so I dashed for the door. Then the clouds opened for the most torrential downpour I have ever seen in Australia! I took a seat and resumed my reading and then Jana appeared. We sat and chatted over ideas for the next part of the journey while the rain poured down, then suddenly it stopped as quickly as it had started. I let it dry off for a little bit and then headed back to my lounger by the pool and resumed my sunbathing.

In the early afternoon, we got ourselves together and headed for a wander down the river to South Bank – very similar to London’s South Bank only with less skateboarders and graffiti! They have what looks a bit like a very small London Eye, which we may go on later in the week. After wandering through the park, we found Streets Beach – an artificial beach/lido. It was so hot and the water looked very inviting but we hadn’t brought our swimmers with us, so vowed to come back later in the week! At the weekend they have an open air market, selling all sorts of hand crafted things, so we mooched around that before sitting with our feet dangling in the lido and grabbing an ice cream before our walk back to the hostel. I was excited at seeing my first indigenous wild creature – a big lizard! Woohoo!