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Published: December 9th 2008
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I woke up feeling like I was melting. The sun was beaming down right through the curtains even though it was only 7am. Pleased that we had an air conned cabin I got up and turned it to full. When I went outside I saw the sun was already high up in the sky and the heat felt more like midday than early morning. I guess that’s the trade off for it getting dark early.
We’d been planning on having a quick stop at Surfers Paradise, but changed our minds when we saw that the traffic was manic and there were queues for every parking spot. The high rise buildings and LA feel of the place didn’t do anything for us, although we were impressed by how spotlessly clean and tidy the streets were. We decided to carry on, relieved to be leaving the place behind.
When we came into Brisbane a few minutes later, we still didn’t feel in the mood for a day out in a big city. The weather was so hot that we didn’t want to sightsee and there was no point going around shops when you have no money to spend. In the end
we figured we had two options - spend the night and see the museums and galleries etc or drive on and find somewhere more peaceful. It didn’t take us long to decide on the latter. It’s a shame as it would have been good to see Brisbane, but we just weren’t in a city frame of mind and we knew we had to push on if we were going to fit all of the island trips in further up the coast.
Outside Brisbane we stopped at one of the surrounding beaches for a break. It had lovely golden sand, great surf and you could see the the high rise buildings of Brisbane to the south. I don’t know why but it just didn’t have the same vibe as the beaches in the north of New South Wales so, after a quick walk, we moved on.
The next few hours were spent driving along the highway. We were starving as it was well past lunchtime, so I promised Matt we’d stop somewhere to eat. He kept pointing out the fast food chains along the way but I was determined to find a nice little café to stop at instead.
Eventually we arrived at Noosa Heads, a lovely cosmopolitan little town, with a long golden stretch of beach that was met by a wide sandy shored creek. It was hot and was tempting to just jump in, but we were too hungry to wait any long for food so set out to pick somewhere for lunch. It was Matt’s choice and he selected a little Italian where we had a freshly made pizza and glass of wine for a bargain £6 each.
Afterwards we drove to a nearby motorpark with a massive stack of leaflets about Fraser Island tours, but before concentrating on the various packages on offer we jumped into the outdoor pool to cool off.
I’d completely forgotten that I hadn’t changed the time on my watch since arriving in Queensland so we’d been working on the wrong time all day - it meant that we gained an hour al over again!
Our evening was spent sitting outside reading through lots of brochures, trying to work out which was the best value tour for our money. What made it far more complicated was that there were also packages available which included a Whitsunday Island cruise.
If you know Matt and I well you’ll know that we aren’t the type of people to just pick any old trip - instead we had to research every inch of the trips on offer until we’d finally made a decision. It took us until dark but we got there in the end!
Just as we’d made our decisions, the night sky started lighting up. At first I thought it was the campsite lights but then realised it was lightening without the thunder. We rushed to pack up our table and chairs before the storm reached us. Even when it was close by we heard very little thunder, but the lightening seemed to light the bush up around us. The rain poured down and we were again pleased to be in a van which didn’t leak anywhere near as much as our NZ van.
During a break in the rain, we kept hearing a noise. I thought initially it was the fridge, but then we realised it was actually the cicada beetles outside. The noise was pulsing in waves and they were so loud you could hear them with our windows and doors closed! Matt got the video
recorder out to see if it would pick up the noise but when we played it back we couldn’t tell if it had captured the sound because they were still being so loud outside.
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