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Published: February 9th 2011
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We left Noosa shortly after, and followed, caravan style, Gary and Jenny and Courtney and Ben to Bundaberg, a short (3 hour) trip away. We stopped on the way at Sexie Coffee, a saucy little cafe that serves great, if expensive cappuccinos with their name spelled across the milk foam in chocolate sprinkles. They had "StripTeas" which was so brilliant I nearly bought the store but regained my senses quickly when I saw how much the tea cost. Great names though. Our place in Bundaberg was not actually in Bundaberg but rather, in Bargara, a sub-set of Bundaberg, and right on the beach. We stayed at the Don Poncho hotel, once a great resort and now, a fabulously located (directly on the beach) outdated resort. Still nice enough, just... old. There was a great tiny seaside village with an ice cream shop and a fish and chips place that we visited too many times. We went out to Gary and Jenny's for several fabulous dinners; my sister and her new husband were also staying there so it was nice to have the family all together for a week at least. Being spread out between Denmark, Canada and Australia is hard on
each party and to spend nights, eating fantastic grilled food on the veranda of Gary and Jenny's amazing australian residence was great.
Their house is built in an older Australian style, up on stilts (for cooling and to avoid snakes, rodents, and crawly things) and has a wrap around veranda with a backyard full of fresh-for-the-picking herbs, plants and, chickens. The house itself is beautiful, like visiting a historic house where you walk a bit carefully because it is so pretty it must be breakable (though I'm quite sure it's not). We spent our days having a beautiful breakfast on our balcony overlooking the ocean and then headed to the beach and seaside village; snorking, sunbathing, and eating at the fish and chips shop. Our evenings were filled with steak and prawns whether cooked by us or at Gary and Jenny's place, sipping (gulping) the great Australian wines and swapping stories. If I could only record those nights, the photos I have, but the stories, I should have recorded every word, they are priceless. My dad and Gary talking could barely stop to take a sip of beer to wet their throats they had so much to say to
one another. A friend recently described to me how people talk, she said it was women mainly who have this model of talking, but I think it is also men: conversations follow a Christmas-tree pattern, there is a main point (the star up top) but to get there, you go down a branch of the tree and discuss points (pine needles and branches) all along the way, finally you realize you had a point and you return to the main trunk of the tree again and keep working your way up. That was the nature of these stories. My dad, my mom, Gary, Jenny, Dzl. I don't know if Courtney, Ben or I had so many stories, but we were captivated (or at least I was!) by the others. Some I've heard many times before, and some were new, but all were fantastic - please, write these stories down! I want to keep a record of these long after all of us are gone; these experiences are what life is made of.
We visited Fraser Island and had a great walk on the beach, guided by a park-ranger who introduced us to crab-puke and other such lovely things. Apparently
when crabs eat, they shuffle through the sand, searching for tasty tidbits and thus, leave behind little balls of sand, perfectly formed spheres that are everywhere on the beach and are quite fantastic to examine until you realize that some crab has just spit these up and you're walking on them. Well, well. It was an intriguing walk and a beautiful island; I got to lick a mangrove tree leaf so that was the highlight for me. These trees are incredible. They live in salt water mainly, and have their roots all over the place. They have to filter the salt water to maintain a balance so they employ osmosis, letting enough salt in to balance the salt outside so they don't OD on salt. They have their roots pointing in every which direction and sticking out of the sand so they can continue to breathe even when the tide comes in. Finally, since the salt is throughout their bodies, if you take a leaf and lick it, you can taste the salt content since it's excreted in the leaves. Very salty, I can recommend a lick.
Our last days in "Bundy" were spent visiting Gary and Jenny's summer
house, where my dad, Dzl and Gary went fishing and caught a range of fish, including a very deadly sting ray which they quickly put back. We also got a grand tour by Gary of Bundaberg, which has a surprisingly large range of tourist attractions including a turtle hatchery (unfortunately not in season), endless sugarcane factories (the stuff grows like grass!), a glass blowing factory where I got the most amazing pair of kangaroo earrings made of glass. This required repeated hints to Dzl who eventually got the clue and bought me the beautiful kangaroos. My mom got me a funky toy which was a glass blown figurine that would dance in a bottle of water, unfortunately he died in my purse and was never used. We were also able to visit the Bundaberg rum factory where we took photos with the giant bottle of rum and my dad got a personalized bottle of rum with his name on it. In the meantime, Dzl was fascinated by the smaller-than-average train tracks that the sugarcane trains ran on and the factory, huge, and overbearing in a land full of sugarcane stalks and ocean.
With much pleading from Gary, we booked
a hotel room half way between Bundaberg and Cairns. We thought we could drive it but he insisted that due to animals trying to kill themselves, and the impact a kangaroo can have on your car, that we should stop and not drive in the dark. We realized how true this was when we stopped for coffee two hours into our drive and read the paper headline "Highway of Death!!!" seriously - that's what it said. Then it was story after story of pain, suffering, death with death on top and dead kangaroos. Really, really unpleasant. We had already experienced some of the unpleasantness both in the form of extensive spans of roadkill and also from watching the behaviour of drivers on the highway. Vehicles passing others as they are going up a hill, as they are going around a corner, when a huge massive truck with trailers is barrelling right at them. It was utter madness. On top of all that, there were truck drivers who just refused to slow down, so even if they could not under any circumstances pass (ie: there was heavy oncoming traffic) then they would ride the bumper of the poor person in front
of them who was most likely a tourist doing only 130km/h on the 130km/h speed limit road. Even worse was tourists trailing caravan trailers, which might only go 110km/h, these ones were really in trouble as it looked like the truck actually wanted to eat them, chomp, chomp, out the way. So my dad and I took turns driving, fully alert, for stretches of about 3 hours each or until our adrenaline ran out and we needed to switch. We reached our hotel with plenty of daylight to spare, and it turned out to be quite posh for a motorway hotel, about a five minute drive off the motorway and with a view of the ocean, a nice swimming pool and a balcony. We may have done it a bit of injustice by ordering pizza for dinner but honestly we were all way too wiped to do much else; we did manage to do wine and cheese on the balcony as appetizers so that was something at least.
Uneventful 8 hour drive inserted here. Seriously - there was just empty plains the whole way, I managed to see a Koala in the trees but it was while I was
driving so I got my bonus points taken away for being distracted from the dreary road.
By the way: check out ALL the photos here:
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