Next Noosa

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Hi all, taking over from Ali on the blogging. We arrived in Noosa Sat late morning (22nd Sept) to blazing hot sun, and its only springtime here cool! well hot actually! We decided to catch up on some sleep due to missing it out on the overnight flight. Little did we know how tired we really were as we were awoken by thunderstorms and heavy downpours of rain to find it was evening time. Not good, although we made this up instead waking up early Sun morning to find it overcast. There went the beach plans so we headed into the town centre to book a Fraser Island trip from one of the tour centres and have a look around.

This worked out well as we came across a classic car festival going on, Austin Martins, Ferraris, Lamborginis, Hot Rods, Cadillicas & many others. (Once we get round to uploading the photos you'll get to see some of the cars we saw). There was also a jazz band playing, that we spent some time just chilling out by the nearby river listening to them.

On Monday the sun came back out, hooray and pretty much stayed out for the week except Thurs morning. We had a surf lesson, as one of our aims whilst away is to get really good at surfing so we can keep up with uni Ben and Matt when we go surfing with them in Devon. The lesson didn't start off well as the instructor showed us the 2 standing up methods, 3 step or jump up. So somehow we were trying to combine the two and so we were failing miserably to catch the waves or stand. Once he pointed out the errors of our ways we were soon catching the waves and standing up, cool!! Also we were learning to turn right and left, not too bad on the rights turns but need more work on the left ones.

We tried going out by ourselves on Tuesday but it didn't really happen for us as the waves weren't too good that day. On Wednesday we had a day off and headed to Fraser Island on a one day coach tour. This is one superb place and you could easily spend a few days or even a week if you had a few good books to just completely chill out and escape the world. It's definitely one of the best places I've seen so far and hope to come back to one day. It was just a contrast of surroundings from driving along the beach, dodging the sea along the way, going thru normal woodland, to then rainforest to then a beach with clear water that can be only just be descriped as paradise, and this is barely touching the place. Also the land is all sand, no soil so even more amazing considering what was growing there. You need a good 2/3 days to see it all, so it'll definitely be a good excuse to come back another year. You'll hopefully see why once we have uploaded the photos.

On Thursday we had another surf lesson, where this time we were able to catch the waves and jump straight up. Watch out Ben and Matt we're slowly getting there. Although it was amazing how knackered you get and the affect it has on your surfing as after about a hour of the 2 hr lesson we were struggling again. But hey we felt good afterwards. Also still need more work on the left turns, I think I managed one ok one to then crash into another fellow beginner surfer who had just fallen off, doh!! That will be the end of our surfing now till we reach Torquay, near Melbourne in a few weeks time hopefully we won't have forgotton it all.

Thursday lunchtime we went out for lunch with some of the people who were also learning a couple of them were staying at the same hostel. Sorry I can't remember your names now but it was cool to meet them. Although this reminded us how old we are as we look the same age as them, but they were talking about leaving uni or further studies and we were talking about the jobs we left.

In the afternoon we left them & went for a walk thru the national park as one of them recommended seeing it. Although we took one of the shorter walks thru the park it was hard work as it was boiling hot by then, I was still feeling knackered from surfing and we had too much stuff on us with it being cold in the morning, doh! I was hoping to see Koalas but they were all hidden away. We did see loads of birds to Ali's delight, in particular Kookaburras.

The walk took us back to near where we were staying at Sunshine beach, then what was a short walk turned into a nightmare one. As somehow we walked straight past the exit point and ended up walking miles till we asked someone. We found we had gone way too far, we think we ended up in Castaway beach, (sounded appropiate for us then as it was getting late and we were getting concerned whether we'll ever get back), 2 beaches down, doh! Thats twice now I've managed to get lost on a beach don't ask me how! So we had to walk back for at least 30 mins and from the angle we were coming back from it was really obvious the exit point we wanted, it was just hidden a bit from when we first walked past it. By then we were truely knackered and even Ali was hating walking by then. Somehow we didn't ache the next day as were expecting the worse.

That about sums up our time at Noosa as on Friday we left for Brisbane by coach.

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