Days 51-53

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Australia Zoo was really good; they have a really good crocodile and snake collection (obviously!) and elephants and tigers too. They also put on a show with birds and crocs and stuff - that was pretty cool. We also got to feed and pet some kangaroos and koala bears which were super soft! Andy had to go back to the car for the camera and on the way he saw Steve Irwin’s wife and daughter Terry and Bindi! It was quite sad walking around the park and seeing all the Steve Irwin stuff; as you walk in the door there is a massive bronze statue of him and all his family. There is a whole section of the zoo dedicated to him; it is full of messages from people all over the world, and paintings and banners that people have created in his memory. They also have a wall with loads of paper cut-outs and magazine interviews and things that Steve was featured in. The craziest part of the zoo was a snake on the loose! We were just walking along and this snake just slithered from a hedge on the left, straight across the pathway and back into a hedge on the right! People were taking pictures and everything and then we heard a zookeeper say a snake had escaped! Mental! From the zoo we drove into Brisbane and just walked around the city for an hour. It was really weird getting stuck in traffic - that hasn’t happened to us in over two months! For me, seeing Brisbane was pretty cool as it is the first place I have been to with skyscrapers. That evening we went to Andy’s cousin’s house just on the outskirts of Brisbane. Phil and her family were so lovely to us and had a lovely barbeque ready when we arrived. It was so nice actually sitting at a table, using plates that weren’t plastic, and having that family feeling back. We spent the evening eating, drinking and filling Phil in on news from England and then we hit the sack - in a real bed! The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast out on the veranda and then headed into Brisbane. We took the bus into the city and then caught a ferry that goes from one end of the river to the other and that was really cool. Apparently is started as a way to get traffic off the roads (it stops loads as you go along, dropping people all over the city) but then it became more like a tourist attraction. It was really nice just going along and taking in the sights while having a boat journey at the same time. Brisbane is a really nice city and we both said we could live there; it is clean and busy and has everything you could need. We decided that evening that we were going to leave Brisbane the next morning because once you have been round the city there isn’t a whole lot to do on a low budget - it is mainly all about shopping. Again we were cooked a lovely meal and we just spent the evening watching a bit of telly in a nice warm house. It has started to get really really cold at night now. In Darwin we were sleeping with the door of the camper open but that is no way possible anymore - we have started wearing jumpers and long trousers in bed; even with a sleeping bag it is really cold. We set off early this afternoon and drove through Surfers Paradise just to check it out; it was too cold to be going swimming or sunbathing so we just kept driving and we are now at Byron Bay. It is alright here, it is very small but very touristy but we ventured out a little and there are some nice spots here. We have some vouchers for one of the restaurants around here so we are going to head there tonight. As the weather is so bad (it is even raining a bit now) we don’t think we are going to stick around here - the whole place is based around the beach so not being able to go there kind of ruins things a bit. We are hoping there might be ok weather tomorrow as we would like to get a surf board and see if we can at least stand up! I guess we will have to see what tomorrow brings.

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