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Published: January 20th 2009
Sad to have left the luxury of the Lees fabulous house we set off on a 7 hour bus ride to Noosa. The bus ride was actually fine but we were confused that we had driven past Noosa on our way to the Australia Zoo a week before and the total journey had only taken 3 hours so it just goes to show how much longer the bus rides are than a straight run in a car.
Noosa is a lovely but a touristy beach resort which is dripping with money. There are fabulous beaches here but by far the most spectacular things are the multi million dollar houses that line the riverbeds along the town. These houses are just jaw dropping and the sort of place we could really see ourselves aiming for if we do return to live here! (in our dreams!)
Getting back to hostel life was a bit of a shock to the system, especially as we'd booked dorms to keep costs down then when we arrived they had lost our booking and not only did we have to stay in dorms.. but separate dorm rooms for the first night.. not a good start! The
weather was also not on our side as we stepped off the bus in horrible drizzle rain that soaks you to the skin in 5 seconds flat so we retreated to the internet cafe for the afternoon and downed a few of the cheap jugs of beer from the hostel bar.
Thankfully for us the weather decided to pick up for the following few days and we spent them soaking up the sun on a few of Noosa's many beautiful beaches. The main beach is just like a European holiday resort with every inch of sand packed from end to end with Aussie holidaymakers so we found the best ones are along the coastline in Noosa National Park territory and only accessible by foot hence the small number of people. There are some lovely walks in this park, many along the coastline where 100's of surfers congregate and you can spend ages watching them catching the huge waves. Dale also managed to tick off another one of his things to do before you die and sunbathed naked on Alexandra Bay nudist beach! It is quite an experience running into the sea completely starkers but he also found it quite
scary when we saw lots of jellyfish floating around and make a quick exit for fear of stings in unmentionable places!
Having topped up our (all over!) tans sufficiently and in our final week in Australia we made our way back to Sydney to see Hunmi again and say our goodbyes. Sydney was in the middle of a heatwave when we arrived so we made our way straight to Manly to drop off our bags and headed straight down to beautiful Manly beach to soak up the sun again.. such a hard life!! Whilst we were on the beach we spotted a couple of helicopters flying low down over the sea, despite Hunmi telling us that there were no sharks in these waters we later found out on the news that a hammerhead shark had been spotted just metres from where we were swimming (well it was about 1km but that's still metres isn't it!!!!) Scary stuff!
As on our previous visit we had a great time enjoying Manly life with Hunmi. Manly is such a beautiful town and she has the perfect location set right behind a small beach with excellent snorkelling and just 5 minutes from
Jellyfish
We could have watched these all daythe great harbour front bars serving yummy cocktails! Thank you so much for having us again Hunmi we will hope to be back real soon...
So, after sweltering in the Sydney sights again we headed off for our final destination in Australia, a mere 12 hours away and the city of Melbourne... Here we enjoyed an afternoon in the Melbourne Aquarium thanks to our christmas present from Debbie & Rich. This aquarium is fantastic with the highlight being their new attraction.. the Antartica experience where they have King and Gentoo penguins on show. They are so cute and real characters as they come right up to the glass to say hello and sometimes it felt as if we were the ones on show with them peering back at us! We also got to watch the stingray feeding show in the huge tanks, Sophie was not quite so keen on this and felt a bit creeped out when the 8ft rays came right up to the window so made a quick exit in case that 20cm perspex decided to give way!
The highlight of our time in Melbourne has to be something that Sophie never ever thought she'd
say that she did though.. going to the cricket!!! Dale had seen that there were tickets still available for the 1 day test match between Australia and South Africa. This match was in the world famous MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) a 100,000 seater stadium just a few minutes walk from the city centre. On the way we also got to see the courts for the Australia Open which sadly starts the day after we leave so 2 famous sporting arenas in one day isn't so bad! The match started at 2.15pm but Sophie didn't think she could really sit though a whole day so we ventured down at 5.30pm and arrived just as the tea break started! We got to watch the whole of South Africas batting as they fought to reach the target of 272 runs. By the 30th over everyone thought they didn't have a chance and we even saw some people leaving commenting that the Aussie's had it sown up.. wrong!! It was a very exciting match to watch as it came down to the final over, South Africa scored 10 runs in 2 balls and managed to win the game! Even Sophie had to agree that
it was quite interesting and having never ever watched cricket before that day can now understand and explain the whole point of the game for anyone keen to learn! What we found most amusing was that for such a gentlemans game there were countless fights breaking out here there and everywhere but we guess that if people have been drinking in the sunshine all day then these things are bound to happen!
And so our time in Australia had come to an end, we were both a little sad to be leaving but agreed that as much as we love the country and the time we spent there we were looking forward to the challenge of travelling that we will undoubtedly get for our time in SE Asia.. first stop Singapore!
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Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil
Plane to Singers...
Did you get the yummy hot chocolate with marshmellows and a tim tam biccie on your plane to Singapore? Qantas is great for little things like that...well you'd better forget about any of that niceness once you start travelling on the budget airlines in Asia, you're lucky if you get to put your bag in the overhead compartment! Great pics of Oz, looks like you had fun. xx