No Turkey on Christmas Day? Nightmare! Surf and turf will have to do.

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We have never felt less Christmassy than we did this year! It really isn't the same without cold weather, German Beer Markets, turkey, friends and family and Xmas songs. Australia had none of these. Even in Thailand where its not celebrated, every shop had a tree in it and all the festive songs playing in the background, but not here in Oz, oh no. We were heading for a place called Agnes Water for Xmas Eve and Xmas day, a place near to the beach with hammocks outside every room. It took an overnight bus ride to get there from Airlie Beach and 9 hours later we arrived in.

It is one small town with a choice of 3 hostels it is by far the smallest place that we had been to so far but was ideal for Xmas. Everyone we met in the hostel were normal/down to earth kind of people and a lot of them either German or Belgian celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve!!!! What's going on there!! So trying to get a hob in the kitchen was a nightmare! Anyway, the place we stayed didn't believe in putting locks on the doors which is quite unique and nice in one sense but then ridiculously stupid in the other, anybody could easily walk in and take your bag and leave and no one would know! So we left nothing more than clothes there when we went out.

It really was a small town, there was nothing to do other than go to the beach or pay $70 to ride a 50cc motorbike for a few hours wearing a leather jacket, it didn't get our custom! We didn't do much on Xmas eve other than food shopping for the next day and a little bit of late Xmas shopping and next news the sky had gone dark! We had the option of paying $25 each for Xmas dinner the next day, consisting of a cold buffet!! or spend the same amount of money on something much better and make it ourselves! For the same price we ate King Prawn pasta and Christmas cake on Xmas eve and then Smoked Salmon omelettes the next morning and T-bone steak and prawns for our dinner and managed to have alcohol as well! I'm sure that our food was much superior to hostel food.

There was a strange sort of atmosphere kicking abut he whole time we were there, maybe it was because people were genuinely homesick at this time and missing family and friends which consequently meant the hostels' broadband was having a meltdown due to Skype overload. We didn't soothe the meltdown either only adding to it. We spent both evenings playing Christmas games though with loads of the guys we had met, it did add a bit of spirit to the occasion and it was amazing to see how good none native English speaking people's charade skills were, better than 50% of the UK's probably. All in all it was as good of an Xmas Eve as it could have been!

After we had finished our fancy breakfast the next morning we went and walked straight to the beach, about 3km away and anchored ourselves there for a few hours. We had been lucky too on the walk there, spotting a few kangaroos on the way all grouped together in the shade of a tree. It was a good sign for the rest of the day. These were the first we had seen in our time in Australia! The beach was almost empty (for an English beach!), and we had loads of room to ourselves but after 10 minutes or so the beach boredom kicked in and I decided to make a massive sand snowman to make us feel a bit more festive! An hour or so later, the 3 tiered giant was assembled and we even got a lifeguard to take our picture with it! He did give us the compliment of the best sandman he had seen that day, quite an achievement with only 2 other sandman around.

Once we had walked back it was late afternoon, time for a dip in the pool and then onto the Xmas dinner making! Our plans were delayed because of Skype calls home but they were definitely worth it, it was good to see what everyone was up to at home and have a chat, albeit the wifi wasn't good enough to let me string a sentence together, it was more of a one way conversation! But are that we dined well, tucking into some fine steak and we even managed a bottle of wine too! We had quite a bit to drink that night by the end, not to the state of the staff but enough to give us a little headache the morning after. It was a pretty quiet Christmas on the whole but a good one to say there is no Christmas spirit in Australia. And that was Christmas 2012 over! The morning after we had a bus ride down to Hervey Bay for Boxing Day, which promised to be no livelier than Agnes Water!

We'd gotten into Hervey Bay fairly quickly and had a whole day in front of us! The first day we had there, nothing was planned except to go and watch the hobbit, on the day it was released there! We expected the queues to be massive and thought we'd struggle for a ticket! Seeing as we turned up 2 hours early, no queue in sight and plenty of tickets left we even managed to go and squeeze in a meal before hand. Although when we returned the queue had formed and was piling back out of the doorway, it had sold out, so we got there at the right time! The best bit of the whole cinema trip though was the advertisements prior to the film starting, it consisted of local coffee shop advertisements and churches trying to lure you back in. Not what you usually see!

The second day was much more filled. We rented out some bikes giving us a bigger field of play. We ventured all the way down the beach front to a pier reaching out 500m minimum and giving views across the whole bay. The sea there was packed out with jellyfish, big blue ones, not a clue what they where, but it stopped us going in the sea there for a while. After that we split up, Laura went off to the shops and I went on a ride. I hadn't done much in a while so went for a 20km burn which is easy going considering its all flat. Hervey Bay was dull and wouldn't go back in a hurry! The best thing was the kitchen in the hostel, equipped with a walk in fridge and more pans than you need for a drum kit. Theres not much else to say about Hervey Bay.

Our last stop before Fraser Island was at Rainbow beach, named this because of a multicoloured cliff face beside the beach. We had intended to go straight to Noosa and get into the Glasshouse mountains but that didn't happen so we ended up here instead. Probably one of the best places we had stayed in a while. We were right besides a huge beach, BBQs on the sea front and a really good atmosphere. The hostel was nothing special but we didn't plan to spend any time there. Our first full day there was Laura's birthday, so we made up some pancakes for breakfast and then beached it out for a large part of the day. The beach had huge sand dunes to the side of it, made up of literally thousands of different shades of orange, hence the name Rainbow Beach. But these made for a massive play area, climbing to the top of them was tough but the jumping back down was more than worth it. Some of them were over 50m high so coming back down in anyway shape or form was awesome. I went on a run later that evening too and thought it a good idea to do hill sprints on the dunes, never felt as sick in my life!

We BBQ'ed on the beach the night before, with chicken taking over 1 hour to cook and decided to give that a miss on our second night, plus it was Laura's birthday so we went out instead. We treated ourselves to a couple of pizzas and a bottle of wine, even managing a pudding with a candle and happy birthday serenade from the staff and myself. But after food, wine, sea air and exercise we were out for the count by 10.30! 23 ay? Getting on a bit!

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