Brisbane

Our first, big, long awaited day at Expo, and Brendan was very excited. We caught the train from Sandgate station, and were dropped at the entrance to the Expo site. It wasn't as crowded as we expected -- not like the Royal Show, or the MCG tests, but the queues were longer than we hoped. It was obvious a great deal of your time was going to be spent waiting.

We started by doing a circuit of the site to get our bearings. Halfway round we enjoyed the lunchtime parade of 'edibles'. Almost at the end of the lap, we had lunch at the boardwalk, and joined a remarkably small queue at a side gate to the Aquacade -- a musical water presentation with high diving and synchronised swimming which was very good. Then a circuit on the monorail, and two hours of queueing and seeing the Christian ‘Pavilion of Promise’.

By then it was starting to get dark and the queues were getting smaller. We adopted the strategy of seeing any pavilion with a very small or non-existent queue, and we knocked off in 19 including Channel 10, France, Europe, the EEC, Korea, Cyprus, Hungary, Techno Plaza, Japan, USA, Alaska, Greece, Queensland Newspapers and so on. Saw the spectacle of the evening light parade before Brendan fell asleep, then saw the river show fireworks and laser show before catching a 10:45 train home, just getting into bed before turning into a pumpkin.