Trundling into Brisbane Roma Street train station nearly 2 and a half hours behind schedule was actually fairly helpful as instead of arriving at 9am, I got to the hostel shortly before midday and was able to check in.

I had a couple of days in Brisbane before the next attempt at cricket started. I have been to Brisbane once before, in January 2016, and saw fit to write barely a paragraph about it here. I honestly don’t remember much beyond the koalas and a few photos I have revisited to attempt to jog my memory. We must have stayed fairly centrally based on the photos I have from then but I’ve no idea where, and honestly from walking around Brisbane this time, I don’t remember any of it really.

That said, it has changed quite a bit over the last 10 years…

I spent most of my first day on the South Bank wandering through the various museums and art galleries in this area – all free. I was also quite glad of the air conditioning, despite it being less humid than in the north, it was still approaching 30C.

The South Bank itself is a lovely area of rainforest, beach, open space, restaurants, cafes and bars and I actually spent some part of most days wandering and eating here.

After getting some tips from a guy in the hostel, I went up the Sky Deck at the Star, which is one of the very tall buildings that wasn’t there in 2016! This viewing platform is around 23 storeys high and is, unbelievably, free to visit. There are a couple of cafes and restaurants ready to take your money though.

Brisbane is a really good city to wander around, and I found myself doing a lot of walking. The test match was a day/night match which didn’t start til 2pm. And the Gabba is a good 40 or so minutes walk from the CBD where I was staying.

The Gabba is not a particularly easy ground to get to. It’s across the river from the CBD and is surrounded by increasingly gridlocked roads in the lead up to the match. Once I was there though, getting in the ground was very efficient, as were all the bars and food outlets (more so than the Optus in Perth which struggled with some bottlenecks at various points which did make me feel slightly anxious).

The atmosphere at the Gabba is incredible. It’s a proper cauldron, literally and metaphorically, and the intensity of the sound, especially when Australia were on top, was unlike anything I’ve heard before in a sporting arena. On the first day I was sat on the first level but essentially at the back, and some of the sound didn’t travel too well (took me an hour or so to locate the Barmy Army and I’m certain they were making a lot of noise), but on the following days when I was slightly further forward, the acoustics were a lot better.

I guess there were 2 positives about this test – it lasted 4 days (and a lot longer on day 4 than I might have imagined); and secondly, Joe Root scored a hundred in Australia and might finally be able to shut up all the naysayers

On my final (bonus) day in Brisbane, and in order to cheer myself up a bit after feeling fairly deflated over the cricket, I went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I mentioned earlier that I’d been here on my previous visit, when you were still able to cuddle a koala. Probably for the best that this practice has now ended. But you can still enjoy looking at the koalas, and the other animals there, including walking in amongst kangaroos and wallabies

After my week or so in Brisbane, it was time to hop onto a Greyhound coach and head to Surfers Paradise for some beach time…