Toowoomba, Queensland

After a long haul of traveling from the ranch back to Sydney's YHA Hostel at Central station, from Central Station to the Sydney Airport the next morning, from the Sydney Airport to the Brisbane Airport, from the Brisbane Airport to Toowoomba, Queensland we had an afternoon to waste while we waited for our final bus from Toowoomba to Roma where our employer, Brendan would pick us up and take us to our first work station at his ranch just outside of Roma.

Toowoomba is quite a cute city of about 100,000 people where the streets are filled with artsy storefronts, coffee shops and a variety of places to indulge in some tasty beverages. Parks and trees line the winding streets which makes the fairly decent sized city feel like a smaller quaint town where everyone knows everyone and a sense of comfort and safeness wraps around you.

After convincing the Greyhound people to place our luggage behind their desk so we wouldn't have to lug around our hefty bags with us, we started to explore this fun named city. We stumbled across an art gallery that took up about a whole 10 minutes before we quietly made our way to the exit after seeing a couple of mildly interesting works. Then we circled the streets as the breeze continuously kept us cool while we peered through the windows of mostly closed shops. One thing we have found in Australia is that shops and restaurants tend to have very different operating hours than Canada does. Stores are only open for a few hours on a Sunday and restaurants close mid afternoon and then re-open for dinner service around 5pm. Luckily for us, we stumbled upon the Hog's Breath Cafe which I recognized from an extremely cheesy commercial of a pack of cheerleaders in bright pink outfits pranced around as the restaurants logo graced the screen a couple times.

Owen, our server

We entered the restaurant at about 2PM where there was only one other group at a table finishing up their late meal. None the less, we were greeted by a very lovely gentlemen by the name of Owen, or Oweeeeeeeeeen! As they call him at the Hog's Breath Cafe. We were quickly picked out as foreigners by Owen and when we told him we were from Canada, surprisingly he mentioned that he was very fond of hockey, particularly Philly. So from the very start of our visit to HBC commonalities started to fill the room which led to a lot of conversation in between bites of our buffalo chicken sandwiches and curly hog tail fries. So much conversation that they held the restaurant open for us so Trev, Oweeeeeeeeeen! And myself could continue our chat on the Flyers, NHL 2011 and the cup while he traded his stories about Toowoomba and also about Roma, our next stop we were headed for.

It just so happens that the captain of the Queensland Rugby team was born and raised in Roma, so that's a little fact that's always good to have in your pocket when you're struggling to break the ice with the locals quite possibly.

After talking about the must dos in Canada for an exchange on the must dos in Australia, we thanked Owen after receiving a little personalized message on our receipt and headed back to the Greyhound station where we waited to board our next bus to Roma.

Thanks Owen for a great introduction to the city I will never get sick of saying, Toowoomba!