Noosa & Brisbane

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Hello,

We arrived in Noosa and got picked up and taken to our hostel. First impressions weren't great and we were sharing a dorm with german girls who had their stuff all over the floor so we barely had any room to put anything! We dumped our stuff and headed back into the town to find Travelbugs - the company that we booked all of our tours through including Whitsundays, Fraser, Australia Zoo and various accommodation. They have shops all the way down the east coast and we got 25 hours of free internet with our deal too. We located the shop to find a notice on the door saying "closed until further notice". A bit confused we headed to another travel shop - Tribal Travel - to use their internet, annoyed that we would have to pay for it, to be told that Travelbugs had in fact, from that morning, gone bust!!! We were sent into panic mode wondering where we stood with regard to the few vouchers that we had left including the zoo and some accommodation but there was no way we could get in touch with them so we thought we'd just wait and see what happened.

We woke up the next morning to find Deaks had been eaten alive by bed bugs - eeuuuuwww! Obviously this made us hate the hostel even more and it was made worse by the fact that the German girls got up at the crack of dawn FOR NO REASON and just talked and generally made loads of noise and woke us up - grrrrr! Thankfully, the bed bugs obviously didn't like the look of me or Suz as they left us alone - phew!

We spent the rest of that day sorting out our itinerary for the rest of our time in Oz and walking around the town - it's a really nice place. We ended up on the beach chilling out.

The next day I excitedly got up for our trip to Steve Irwin's kingdom - Australia Zoo. The zoo puts on free shuttle buses from Noosa and Brisbane to the zoo which is good and they play Steve's old documentaries for the hour long journey too - the one we saw was really good and actually showed him catching some of the crocs that live in his zoo. We arrived at the zoo and were thankful that they accepted our Travelblogs vouchers without any problem otherwise we would have had to pay $52 each to get in - obviously word hadn't spread yet.

The whole day was amazing. We saw some huge tortoises on our way in and then headed straight to cuddle a Koala! The one I cuddled was called Ellen and she was 2 years old and gorgeous! I was trying to think of a way that I could steal her but decided against it as I don't have access to any eucalyptus trees!!! Next we headed to the Wildlife Warrior show which had snakes, birds and finally Graham the crocodile made an appearance. The staff there are all so passionate about the animals and each team have such great relationships with the animals that they train and look after. It was really nice to see and all the animals have so much space. The whole way around the park all you hear is Steve Irwin's voice and Terri features on all the TV screens telling you what she's been doing and what Bindi and Bob are up to. I kept an eye out all day to see if I could spot Bindi and Bob but I didn't :o(. The rest of the day we spent looking at kangaroos, tigers, elephants, snakes, crocs, tasmanian devils, dingoes, echidnas and camels. It was great.

That evening we went for a walk along the Noosa River which was beautiful at sunset and had fish and chips before heading back for an early night as we were leaving for Brisbane the next morning and very glad to be getting out of the evil hostel. Some scumbags even left their dirty underwear on the bathroom floor - gross! We managed to get away without paying for our 2 nights there too which was a result. You would usually have to pay for each night in advance but because our first night was free with a Travelbugs voucher (which was luckily still accepted) we never paid when we first arrived and when we checked out they just gave us back our key deposit and said cheerio! We darted out of the place pretty quick before they realised their mistake!

We arrived in Brisbane and managed to get a good deal with a hostel there on Southbank. When we were in Noosa we booked a trip that meant we had about 7-8 days to get through Brisbane, Surfers Paradise and Byron Bay so we decided to only stay in Brisbane for 2 nights. We were in an 8 bed dorm this time with french and german guys. This dorm was a lot better though and actually had 2 balconies - luxury!! We headed into town to have a look around the shops but it was Bank Holiday Monday and here they take it quite seriously and lots of things were shut early. As we were walking around Queen Street we turned a corner and came across a Krispy Kremes!! I found energy from somewhere and shot over there in need of some delicious doughnuts only to find that the queue went out onto the street and they even had their very own bouncer on the door!! What the hell!!!!! The aussies must really love their doughnuts!!!! We had decided to go to the cinema that night so sadly we didn't have time to queue for an hour! We saw the film "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". It was so funny I thought I was going to wet myself and the guy in front of us was laughing so much he kept making us laugh. Very good film and I definitely recommend it if!

We decided to try and make the most of our 1 full day in Brisbane and so we got up early to go shopping(!) - obviously not for pleasure purposes but due to the fact that from hereon downwards it's going to start getting very chilly and NZ will no doubt be freezing and we aren't properly attired for this bad weather after 2 months of sunshine!! In the afternoon we booked a City Tour. What a waste of money!! It cost $62. They picked us up 45 minutes late and drove us to a koala sanctuary - Lone Pine Sanctuary. It is the biggest koala sanctuary in the world with 135 koalas. It would have been great if we hadn't already been to Australia Zoo but after that nothing else really compares! It was good though - they taught you all about koalas and we got to stroke one again and we saw a mum with her little joey which was gorgeous. They have koala kindergartens, koala retirement homes and koala bachelor pads - hilarious!! We saw some albino dingoes too which were gorgeous. The next stop (and what turned out to be the last!) was the Mt Coot-tha lookout which was nice and had great views all over Brisbane. We actually arrived back 10 minutes early which is shocking considering how late we left!!! All the other things promised in the brochure didn't materialise - we were supposed to stop at other places on the way but it turned out that wasn't the case and that the driver just told us a little bit about them on the way to the koala sanctuary so we basically paid $62 dollars to get driven 10km out of the city and back!!! You live and learn I suppose!

We decided to have our big night out in Brisbane on our last night which unfortunately happened to be a Tuesday night but nevermind! We headed into town and first stopped at a bar called Tinbillys. On our Travelbugs internet vouchers it said we could get a free drink in this bar. Not convinced I would still get away with it I tried my luck and surprisingly they accepted it! We stayed in there for a bit and watched a very funny drinking competition which saw 3 guys and 2 girls having to down a pint of beer to see who could do it quickest - I couldn't quite believe it but the tiny chinese girl actually beat all the men - hilarious!!

Next we headed to Down Under bar which was recommended to us by some girls on Fraser Island. It was Ladies Night and wine was only $3 - bargain!! It was really good in there and they played some cheesy music. Lots of the guys were wearing girls clothes and had blown up condoms to put under their tops as boobs! I felt quite inadequate with all these massive boobs around! I got chatting to a guy who turned out to be from Loughton and ended up counselling him as he'd cheated on his girlfriend and he felt so bad and she was coming out to visit him soon! It always happens to me! The rest of the night was spent dancing away and laughing at the stripper which was an added bonus of Ladies Night! We got back to our dorm about 2.30am and hit the sack not looking forward to our early, hungover journey to Surfers Paradise in the morning.

xxx

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