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Ugh! We have just realized that our camera is starting to go out on us. This camera has been with us for more than a few adventures, but we’re afraid that it’s tired and the photos will prove that. This group of photos will be marginal at best. We’ve already bought another camera and promise stunning pictures for the next blog.

We are not sure where all the flies have gone but we have not run into many on this part of the coast. It is so wonderful!!!

Anyway……we have previously mentioned in our blogs that once in a while we need to take a break from the trip. It sounds funny, but it’s true. All this fun and adventure tends to tire you out……and you need to rest for just a little while. To give you some idea, since September, we have stayed in over 60 different accommodations. That’s a fair amount of moving around. So with this in mind, we began a slow journey towards the city of Brisbane.

Driving south from Hervey Bay towards Brisbane, we pulled into the Noosa Head area and looked for a nice place. The information centers in these tourist areas have proven to be beneficial to us, as we can ask questions about local accommodations to the staff. They even call the places to ask more questions for us.

In Noosa Heads, we found a place in the next part of the area called Noosaville. It was a very nice apartment that had a pool and laundry facilities. The kitchen came with all the pots, pans, and utensils you need. So we settled in a for a couple of days…….and did very little. We read, went to the pool, cooked some meals, put out the last blog……and not much else.

This area of coast is referred to as the Sun Coast and many Australians speak very positively about this area. It is a great place to vacation, it has lots of beaches, hotels and condos but has kept its small town feel. They have not cluttered the area with highrises.

We found a place online for our next stop in Brisbane. After making sure that it was actually in Australia (remember the incident in Tasmania?) we booked a room at the Brunswick Apartment & Hotel, which was located in Fortitude Valley, just outside the central business district of Brisbane. It proved to be a good location and close to many restaurants and businesses.

We took in the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Museum of Modern History. It was a very well done exhibit. They had acquired on loan many of Warhol’s famous paintings from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. We enjoyed the many facets of his career.

It was good to be back in a big city. Brisbane has almost 1.5 million people, and it is a thriving city about 550 miles north of Sydney on the coast. A city with great food and music. Our time there was pleasant. We took in a couple of movies, wandered the central business district, and relaxed.

Then we resumed our journey southward. Unfortunately the day we drove down the world famous “Gold Coast” it was grey, foggy and raining. It didn’t look very pretty. We were disappointed that we didn’t get to see it the way it looks in all the photos. The Gold Coast has some similarities to the Miami area in that there are many high rise hotels and condos but on a much, much smaller scale.

Our next main stop was in Port Macquarie, a small seaside town named after a governor of long ago when a governor was appointed by the British crown to run the country. We stayed at a very nice place across the street from the ocean and were able to cook meals, read and take long walks on the beach and the sea wall. Quite a few people took to the water here to try their hand at surfing, which is extremely popular in this part of Australia.

After a few quiet days…..it was on to Brisbane to meet our good friends Bill and Sheila, who flew in from Seattle to join us for a few weeks.


Here are some more facts about this great island/nation/continent…….

Most of the rich farmland and good ports are in the east and particularly the southeast, except for the area around Perth in Western Australia. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane , and Adelaide are the leading industrial and commercial cities. There was considerable industrial development in the last two decades of the 20th cent. While the Australian economy fell into a severe recession in the late 1980s, it experienced an extended period of growth beginning in the 1990s. It then suffered somewhat from the Asian economic slump of the 1990s and from the "Big Dry" drought of the early 21st cent.

Government

The executive power of the commonwealth is vested in a governor-general (representing the British sovereign) and a cabinet, presided over by the prime minister, which represents the party or coalition holding a majority in the lower house of parliament. The parliament consists of two houses, the Senate, whose 76 members are elected to six- or three-year terms, depending on whether they represent a state or territory, and the House of Representatives, whose 150 members are elected to three-year terms. The distribution of federal and state powers is roughly like that in the United States. British intervention in Australian affairs was formally abolished in 1986. From its early years the federal government has been noted for its liberal legislation, such as woman suffrage (1902), old-age pensions (1909), and maternity allowances (1912). There are four main political parties: Liberal, Labor, National, and Democratic.

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