Driving and shopping in Brisbane

We still haven’t adjusted to the timezone yet. But we need to get a few more items. “Where could we buy an esky and some basic outdoor gear?”. The receptionist of The Point hotel in Brisbane pointed to the map. “Probably at Big W, which is here, or BCF, which is in the opposite direction. At Big W in the inner city, there is also a Woolworth, where you can do some grocery shopping, too.” Great! Into the car and into Brisbane we went.

Arriving at the shopping mall, we felt hungry all of a sudden like we had no lunch and it’s late afternoon. “What time is it?”,  I asked Ylfa. “Almost 10am.” “Great, let’s get some lunch then, there is a Vietnamese food counter in the food court, let’s have some hot chicken with veggies.”. Perfect brunch at what feels like 8pm for me right now – still mega jet-lagged from our flight. Our food came in black plastic bowls with a clip-on plastic cover. We decided to keep them for travel. Best decision ever made.  They are extremely light and we used them for our breakfast cereals and to prepare fruits or veggies when we drive long distances.

One of the items, which every Australian – or everyone doing serious travel in Australia – must have, according to a colleague of mine, who has lived several years here, is an “esky”. For all of us north of the equator line, that’s an icebox. What we where looking for is an esky, which is self-cooling and can be connected either to the car’s plug as well as regular power outlets.

This is something quite common in Germany. You can even get these at Aldi, a German retail chain, from time to time. In Australia, we learned quickly, there are two types of eskys: The ones which you can poor in at least a ton of ice cubes to keep things cold – or the ones, which you can directly attach to a nuclear power plant to not only keep things cold, but shock-freeze a whole roo instantly.

So we needed to check out BCF. Perhaps they have a more European style of esky available. Back into the car, GPS on, set direction to the opposite side of the city, drive off, miss one turn and end up in this spaghetti soup of roads here:

Don’t ask me, how we got to BCF and our esky. We certainly passed the airport, which is in the opposite direction, at least once. Did I mention jet lag? And driving on the wrong side? Time to go to sleep. – Let’s push off the Europcar issue for one more day.