Noosa Beach to Surfers Paradise

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Surfers Paradise

We travelled for another 230 km down the coast to Noosa passing through a fantastic little bay called Tin Can Bay. It was stunning with a lovely little harbour. It was extremely quiet when we arrived but we managed to find a lovely little coffee shop overlooking the bay. Kerry decided, yet again, that we were going to move here instead and her and her mum would run a little coffee shop just like this whilst Stu went out and caught some fish for her Sushi restaurant, which she also wants. Nothing like having sky high ambitions eh?

We arrived in Noosa around lunch time and went for a drive around to get a feel for where we wanted to park up. We only found one campsite anyway but it was really nice and very very busy. An air hostess on the flight from Perth to Cairns initially told us to visit Noosa as it is beautiful and somewhere all the Aussies like to go on there holiday - she wasn’t wrong. Yet another place to add to our list of possible future homes. Noosa has a really quirky little shopping street full of restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques and swim wear shops. We spent much of that day browsing around the shops and soaking up some rays on a fantastic beach called Main Beach. Noosa is definitely a place for the wealthy with condo’s high up on the hill overlooking the bay. Apparently Richard Branson is a regular here and it is one of his favourite holiday spots. Noosa is also one of the world’s best surfing spots, allegedly. The following day we certainly found that this could most definitely be true. Our evening was a little disruptive as we had an ant invasion. Kerry pulled a towel from the shelf and the underneath was thick with ants. Stu was not sure which was scarier - Kerry’s screaming or the Ants! Kerry really is having a hard time with the bugs in Oz (bless!).We decided that we had to clean the van thoroughly before going to bed which you can imagine was a big annoyance. Another hot and steamy night in the van meant very little sleep especially when the birds start singing (or more like shouting) in your ear holes at 5am so you pretty much have to get up when they do. We therefore have to try to go to sleep when they do around 7-8pm, that obviously never happens.

The following day we caught the local bus to Sunshine Beach. This is where we experienced some pretty scary surf. The life guards there had caution signs put up but this didn’t stop people trying to jump the waves. This as we found out was almost impossible. An old man entered the water when we did and got knocked backwards under the water. He was initially only up to his knees, another wave immediately came crashing on top of him and he was slowly drowning. We both looked for the life guard but he didn’t seem to notice. We helped the old man up and he sat a little bit closer to the shore. He seemed a little shaken. With the surf being as it was it wasn’t quite so enjoyable as you couldn’t even go for a paddle without being knocked over. The beach was however beautiful and much quieter. It clouded over a bit in the afternoon so we headed back to the van and off to the cinema to watch the Pursuit of Happyness (yes it is spelt like that) - which is fantastic by the way. We also stopped off for a drink at the pub where Stu tried to explain to Kerry the rules of cricket. Needless to say Kerry’s interest lasted approximately 1 minutes before she started to read the food menu. We had planned to spend one more full day and night in Noosa but as it turned out we spent the morning and lunch time at Main Beach before we saw a massive black cloud looming in the distance so we grabbed our van and decided to make a start for Brisbane. Some how though we decided to bypass Brisbane and head straight to Surfers Paradise. We figured it would have been difficult to find a camp site in the city and our book mentioned the closest ones were about 12km out of the centre. The next day would also be Australia Day and so we wanted to be somewhere that had a party atmosphere and we could not think of anywhere better than the Gold Coast. Unfortunately it wasn’t all plain sailing. As soon as we hit the toll bridge in Brisbane we hit solid traffic. Obviously being Australia’s national holiday the next day everyone was trying to get somewhere early. Plus we encountered the worst storm so far in Oz which slowed everything down even more. We eventually arrived at Surfers Paradise at about 6pm and we had a growing feeling that it would be mission impossible to find anywhere to stay as it was heaving with holidaymakers. There was only one caravan park in the city and that was full! We drove around for about 45 minutes asking in hostels but they were also chocca. It was almost dark and we had nowhere to stay and so figured we had no other option but to look for a hotel. We tried a couple that had vacancies but they were so expensive we were starting to panic. Then we came across Surfers City Motel, it was perfect and in a great location. We booked three nights here so we could enjoy Australia Day and have time to recover the next day without having to leave early. It was amazing having a room for a change, it gets very claustrophobic living in a van and so having three nights here (with a tv) was sooooo nice.

AUSTRALIA DAY - 26th January 2007.

We woke to a lovely sunny day and made our first venture down to Surfers Paradise beach. It was fantastic, if a little crowded but it certainly cooled you down. We almost felt like we were taking this all for granted and have to keep reminding ourselves where we are. We had a couple of hours chilling and then went for a little look around the town and tried to find somewhere decent to go that night. We also stopped for a very tasty steak as we thought we would need something to line our stomachs for later. We went back to our Motel to get ready for the evening and were out for 7pm. Town was rammed full of Aussies dressed up with flags wrapped around their necks and faces all painted up. There were several street entertainers about entertaining the holiday makers. Having had a drink at our first bar, Avenue, we headed to the Surfers Paradise Tavern. Unfortunately we got turned away as Stu was wearing some open toe sandals. We were a little shocked that you couldn’t get in with sandals on but you can wear trainers. We found a couple more Irish bars which didn’t seem to care what you wore then went to a Japanese restaurant that we had spotted earlier. We thought it was a little naughty having two meals in one day but we thought stuff it. We were so glad we did as we experienced our first taste of Sweet Chilli Crocodile and Teppanyaki Kangaroo - both were very tasty although Kangaroo pipped the Croc to the post in the taste stakes. Kangaroo tastes much like beef/steak whereas the croc tasted similar to pork. At least we can say we tried it. It is a good job we cant move here as we think Kangaroos may become endangered species. We very nearly decided to go back to the motel and go out the next night instead. But we got back, Stu put on his trainers and we headed out again. We went back to Surfers paradise tavern which by the way was sooo scummy we wondered why it had any dress code policy at all. It was also full of teeny boppers which made us feel even older. We left there and headed to O’Malleys where there was a one man band on stage. He was fantastic and carried off some legendary rock songs whilst playing the electric guitar fantastically to an instrumental backing track. We spent most of the night in there before heading off to find some corn on the cob (Kerry was craving some). KFC had shut and so we ended up in McDonalds (how unhealthy are we). Our evening was slightly marred when it started to absolutely pee it down so we headed back - it was 2.30am after all. We woke the following day, no hangovers, but that may have been due to all the red bull and food we ate. We headed back to the beach for a couple of hours, went back to the Motel, had a shower, watched a bit of beach cricket on the tv and headed out again. We only stayed out for about an hour as Stu was shattered - it all catches up with the old boy nowadays. At least we had an early night with a tv before we had to go back in out heap of crap the next day!!!!!

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