Back in the northern hemisphere - just!

The time has come to leave Australia. Our flight wasn't leaving until 8pm though, and we didn't have to check out from our apartment until midday, so we had a fairly leisurely breakfast and re-packed all our bags.

The drive down to Brisbane at the usual snail's pace seemed as long as ever. Because we had all day, we had decided to go shopping in the city centre (well, to be more accurate, Sally had). We left the car at the airport and took the train to Brisbane Central from where we found the Queen's Street shopping Centre.

Shopping in Brisbane is the same miserable experience as shopping anywhere else just before Xmas - except it's warm and everybody's wearing summer clothes. Sally did manage to find lots more fragile and bulky things to buy and I did manage to get a cold beer (so it wasn't all bad).

We returned to the airport, repacked Sally's bags in a vain attempt to accommodate her new acquisitions, and checked in (hoping they wouldn't spot the huge extra bag we were taking on as hand baggage).

The Emirates Lounge had all the same fantastic food and drink as at Heathrow, so I consumed as much as I physically could before we again bypassed all the queues and took up our amazing hi-tech seats on the plane (the only problem being that there's so much entertainment I don't want to sleep). It was a 7 1/2 hour flight to Singapore, we arrived at 1:30am local time (temperature 26C) and were greeted by our driver who took us directly to the Traders Hotel at a refreshingly sensible speed.

It's now 9:30am and we're about to go and explore.