Yet More Roadtrippin'...The Sunshine Coast & The Gold Coast

Noosa Everglades

Time for another part of our package tour. Three days and two nights - although realistically two days and two nights - canoeing in the Noosa Everglades, with the usual sleeping in smelly tents in cold weather and rain, although the weather in the day was great. This trip just didn't have the same feel to it - we were tired of camping, the rain fell heavily and turned our campsite into a bog, all our stuff was left out and got drenched...cue a slight depression all round and thoughts of elsewhere other than Australia. Not even the goon could get us through it. The canoeing itself was nice and tranquil, good weather and as always we had our iPod speakers in the boat with us to liven things up a bit.

A few of the people from Fraser were at Noosa too. Brooke and Vicky started the day before but Johnny and Laura were doing the trip at the same time as us. I also recognised a few other people from various places in Oz - I particularly remembered a couple of hotties from a hostel in Sydney and a barmaid from Scruffy Murphy's, which happens a surprising amount when you're travelling around. Anyway, we chatted to a few people but left most of the group to themselves as we were tired and in all honestly really couldn't be bothered to socialise too much, and were really quite glad to be out of there and be back in 'free mode' - no dates and places to follow, just a map and an idea of where we'd like to go.

Coming soon will be Brisbane, Australia Zoo, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and Nimbin, as well as a few other things including an Aboriginal workshop where you paint your own boomerang for 10 bucks and get an hour's didgeridoo lesson. You can also buy a didge for 89 bucks and paint it yourself which I think I'm going to do - Dave actually bought one in Noosa for 139 bucks and took it with him on the trip. It was fun for a while but as none of us can play it that well it became a bit annoying after a while. It's only when you try and play one that you appreciate how difficult they are to play and listening to someone good gives a whole new viewpoint. We're hoping our lesson will get us going nicely.

Oh, and how about this for karma. We found an Olympus camera outside our tent on the final morning of the canoe trip and when noone claimed it as theirs at the site I claimed it as my own as a replacement for the stolen camera. It's 7.1 megapixels, sandproof and waterproof for 3 metres, and even fits my old camera battery charger perfectly. Get in there. I feel for whoever lost it but there's no way of giving it back so I'll happily look after it for the rest of the trip.

Next stop is real civilisation in the form of Brisbane - cue phone calls, emails and blog updates.

Brisbane

Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, sits close to the bottom of the state and is situated between two popular holiday destinations - the Sunshine Coast to the north and the Gold Coast to the south. It's the third biggest city in Australia with a population of just under two million people and enjoys good weather for most of the year; temperatures rarely drop below 20 degrees in the winter (although it's chilly at night) and often hits the 40s in the summer. It's only half an hours drive from Australia Zoo and doesn't have the ridiculous hustle and bustle of Sydney; from the brief time I spent there I'd have to say I quite like the look of it, it has everything you need and is pretty chilled out for a large city.

When we arrived in Brisbane we parked the car and strolled around the Botanical Gardens, and then wandered around the city centre for a while before heading off to try and find a campsite. This turned out to be a bad move; we'd left it too late and couldn't find any spaces in the few campsites that were still open. At about 9pm we pulled into a motel in a suburb called Oxley and decided to book ourselves in for the night - it was a lot pricier than a campsite would have been but it was all we could find and at least we'd be sleeping in warmth for once. After recharging everything, using 6 hours of internet time and getting a good nights sleep (as well as a Dominos takeaway) we set off at lunchtime to find a campsite and were a lot more successful this time; after doing all our washing we went back into the city again for more exploring and a few drinks. On Monday we tried to book ourselves in for the Aboriginal Workshop, part of our package deal, but the guy was sick and so we decided to take our free boomerangs and paint them ourselves back at the campsite. See below - they're pretty rubbish! Oh, I forgot to mention that I also bought myself a rather nice didgeridoo in the city centre. It's unpainted and light as a feather for its size, not to mention that it's very easy to play. So, I now have a didgeridoo and a boomerang.

On Tuesday we went to Australia Zoo and then stayed with someone that Jamie's dad knows through work in Brisbane. A very nice house, accompanied by a very nice barbeque and very nice booze, and then it was off the next day to the Gold Coast - in particular Surfers Paradise.

Australia Zoo

Not much to say really - a great day out, loads to see and pretty good value. For those that have been since he died - the staff no longer wear giant Steve Irwin heads.

Just a selection of pictures that are a bit different from the previous wildlife ones.

The Gold Coast

Blue skies. Beautiful people. Expensive shops and over-priced accomodation. High-rise tower blocks everywhere you look. Theme parks by the dozen. Welcome to the Gold Coast, Australia's answer to Florida. It even has a place called Miami; our own destination was Surfers Paradise, slated by most but loved by party animals. We had no idea what to expect really, but decided to give it a go and do things the true tourist way by going to Wet 'n' Wild water park followed by a night out in Surfers.

Wet 'n' Wild was great, a real blast and when the lifeguards weren't acting like Hitler I got to test out my new underwater camera on some of the rides. It cost just over £20 each but it was practically empty and we had the run of the park to ourselves. Fortunately we were astute enough to take our own lunch in rather than pay the inflated prices inside, and at about 3pm we set off for Surfers to try and get into a campsite within walking distance; alas, yet again to no avail - the two campsites that had what we were looking for were asking for over £30 just to give us a tiny bit of land to pitch our tents on in the freezing cold. We were never going to pay that so instead we found ourselves a cheapish motel again, quite a way from Surfers, and watched Team America on the laptop with a fair amount of wine before crashing out. Not the experience we were looking for but sometimes when you're travelling around like this things go that way. The next day we went into Surfers and I got some tips from a South American guy on how to treat and paint my didgeridoo, and also got some free bees wax from him in case I need to redo the mouthpiece. More freebies - see what happens when you genuinely show interest in something? Good things, that's what. After messing about in the Condom Kingdom shop we set off for Byron Bay, but not before a little detour to a rather infamous place called Nimbin.