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Published: January 7th 2008
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Japanese Bridge
Coffs Harbour Botanical Gardens Coffs Harbour was a brief stop, but we had time to visit the quite beautifully maintained botanical gardens, and the harbour itself. The harbour was nice enough, and we fortunately saw dolphins from the harbour wall, we also soaked up the fresh sea air from Mutton Bird Island.
The drive from Coffs Harbour to Byron Bay is quite nice as it actually follows the coast for some time. I was immediately smitten with Byron Bay, the town was full of surfers and old hippies, and the type of establishments here seemed to cater for a diverse clientele. The next day we checked out the beach, watching a volleyball game, cooking our lunch right there in the van. The vibe of this place was so relaxed, I wanted to stay longer, to work and live here for a while. The job market was redundant, high season was not for some months yet, so we stopped our search. That day though we were offered 2 weeks work in a call centre in Brisbane, so, needing the money, we left Byron prematurely and continues north.
Crossing into Queensland was exciting for us, but our intended next destination was not so. Surfers Paradise
on the Gold Coast, sucked. High rise apartment blocks, and five star hotels, lined this place to be seen, and we drove straight through.
Brisbane would be our home for the rest of June, and we had a mixed time there. Arriving on the Saturday, we paid for a weeks rent at our average campsite, and began working on the Monday morning. Our job role was simple, call up thousands of people who were customers of Golden Glow Natural Health Vitamins (our employer), and inform them of the governments ‘Do Not Call Register’ (a list that people in Oz can put themselves onto, which means they should stop receiving nuisance calls from companies), then ask if ‘we’ could continue to call them. The irony being that Golden Glow, never even call these customers, and here they/we were calling people about a ‘Do Not Call Register’, yes confusion for everyone involved. The customers were often nice old dears, but often we would feel the wrath of a foul tempered old man! It was boring, but it was different and certainly an experience. The weather in Brisbane had just turned slightly mild, possibly jumper weather (outside, at night!) but for the
locals the weather was freezing, and the topic dominated office chat throughout our time there. Even after a few days, we were involved in the office politics, thankfully, after a week, all the customers had been called and our services were no longer required. This did however leave us hunting for work once again. Sending out countless e-mails and leaving messages for jobs we sat around for a whole week waiting for the phone to ring, it never did. Already paid up for a second week, we were stuck in Brisbane, plus I had arranged to meet a good friend the following weekend, so wanted to hang around for that. Towards the end of the week, we accepted our fate and really went out to see the sights of Brisbane. The South Bank is remarkably similar to London’s and equally culturally valuable, plus it even has an outdoor lido! We enjoyed the art galleries and museums plus free internet access in the library. We’ve also visited Mt Coo-tha National Park which borders Brisbane, and has great parks, walks and views over Brisbane.
The following morning we were abruptly woken by somebody hammering the side of our van, shouting, “ARE
YOU IN THERE, YOU SLAMMED YOUR DOOR LAST NIGHT WAKING EVERYBODY UP!!!”. It was 5:30am, and we had just woken up confused as to what was happening, so just lay there shocked. Indeed we had used the bathroom around 12:30am and we have to slam our door, it’s a freaking campsite not a residential home, this guy had no right to do this. What should we have done? What would you have done? Thankfully we took the sensible option and reported the incident to the park manager, unfortunately we assumed it was a nice old man as he was the only person around that early. Park management thought they knew who it was, but we never conclusively found out. Bas*ard! The incident left me fuming for days, but I think we took the correct action.
The weekend was worth the wait and we had a lovely day with Liz and Liz whom I had done my TEFL course with back in Thailand. Liz from England, I had travelled with and she was living in Melbourne and Liz from Australia is from Brisbane and her hospitality was unquestionable (hi to you both!). Eventually we left Brisbane.
Our journey continued
as we made our way to the Glass House Mountains then onto Noosa. We took Bob across a waterway on an old school pulley car ferry, then found a wonderfully natural campsite where we parked right by the sea, and took a nice walk along the beach. Continuing onwards we made our way to Hervey Bay, via the historic town of Maryborough, where we took the tourist drive through the town. Hervey Bay was like a retirement village, the Grey Nomads had taken over the camp kitchen! My old love for fishing was rekindled in Hervey Bay, fishing off an impressive 850m long pier, into sublime waters. On this occasion I caught nothing but had a lot of fun trying, however that evening we returned at high tide and caught 2 bream for dinner.
Wanting to get to Fraser Island, we decided the best deal was to go from Rainbow Beach some 120kms back from where we came from. Driving back we booked our spot and stayed that night in a remarkably natural campsite. Fraser Island next.
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