Blogs from Maroochydore, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a book based in India, from the library. The story was about an Irish alcoholic who meets a budhist monk while he's travelling the East drinking himself silly. The monk turns out to be his saving grace and after a bucket load more beers and much deep spiritual soul searching, the drunk dries himself out and joins the monk in the monastery. Ten years later, he's doing well..., up early... chanting and praying, eating rice, living lean and completely off the booze. One afternoon when he's out and about on monk business he meets an Australian photographer who is in India for a Memorial celebration. The monk's deeply buried passions are aroused and they fall in love. Travels and experiences of the wonders of India follow and then..., ... read more

I have been on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, just north of Brisbane for the last couple of months. I went there from Cairns after the Cape York trip. I went to visit my friend Amy on my way to somewhere (can't even remember where I intended to go now!) but I lost my purse in Cairns just before I got on the bus and then one thing led to another and I ended up staying there til a couple of days ago! It was great, I got a bodyboard, tried surfing (stood up once and got very battered and bruised!), had 6 different jobs, taught myself to play the guitar, went to the beach every day! My first job was for a sports marketing company, we were selling tickets to raise money for Surf Lifesavers ... read more

Well it’s only been 6 months since my last blog…. Let’s see how much of the last half a year I can remember!! The last time I wrote I had just come back from travelling down the east coast with my family. When I returned I continued working as a kitchen hand in a local nursing home though I wasn’t getting nearly enough hours and needed to pick up some fruit picking work in order to extend my work visa. (By completing 12 weeks fruit picking in regional Australia my one year work visa can be extended to two years) luckily it was the right time of year to get some strawberry picking work in the local area and so a move north to the fruit picking capital of Bundaberg wasn’t necessary. I started working at ... read more

Hello everyone. We have a little more time today to update the diary more fully. Let's start with our last day in Airlie Beach. Despite having to vacate our apartment by 10am our hosts kindly let us park our luggage until our link bus arrived at 6pm. What to do for 8 hours? mmmm. Well we had made ourselves a picnic and decided to go for a long stroll along the boardwalks and seashore. We got so very, very hot we decided to stop at a nice beachside bar for a midday drink. SILLY. We only got embroiled with a group of people who had taken the afternoon off to celebrate one of their party's birthday. A great bunch of people who very nearly persuaded us to stay and go on to the 'official' party later ... read more