Brisbane

Was up in Brisbane last weekend to see Dave and a few other lads living up there. Went clay pigeon shooting on Saturday after arriving a little later than expected in the afternoon. Qantas had a mechanical fault on the flight I was supposed to be on, which is pretty topical over here given their recent record. Luckily they fly every half hour between Sydney and Brisbane so it was only a minor set back.

There was a bigger set back at the shooting range. Now, I love Queensland and there really is no other place like it that I've been to, but they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. We turned up at around 2pm and the guy behind the counter says there's a pretty big queue and to come back in an hour. "Any need to book in?" we asked. "Nah mate, you'll be right."

Fair enough we thought, went off down the road, had a beer and came back in an hour. That chap had gone and another old fella was behind the counter. "We'd like to do some shooting please." "Oh, that'll be about an hour, big queue today." Ballex. So, we stayed put this time and had a beer on site playing cards.

Eventually we got some ammo, although the little old lady who was now behind the counter couldn't see the boxes of bullets sitting right on the bench in front of her before we pointed them out. Then a phone rang and she started looking into the air wondering what the noise was. Really.

When it came to shooting a target we were all surprisingly successful at shooting a load of clay pigeons to smithereens. Got back to the city around 6pm and spent the night touring round various pubs, which was a better night out knowing a bit of local knowledge than the last time I was in town. Ended up in some dodgy strip club for quite a long period of time if memory serves me right. Thankfully, we didn't take up Eddie's suggestion of going to the casino afterwards at 5:00am.

After a very long lie-in on Sunday we spent the afternoon in the Story Bridge Hotel by the river laughing about how keen Dave 'Grimace' Cropper had been in the strippers. It was a brief but welcome trip out of rainy Sydney.