Swiftly down the Gold Coast

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Day 266 (18/12/07)

Today was a special day for Nora - she would be carrying her first passengers! We had met Lizzie, Natalie and Anna on our Frazer Island trip and they needed a lift to their next stop in Noosa, also on our whistlestop itinerary for the day. One of the reasons we chose Nora is because she has the capacity to carry 8 passengers and we thought it would be good to have company and have others to share petrol costs from time to time.

We left early as we wanted to get all the way to Brisbane today where we'd meet up with most of the member of Fanny's Crew. On the way to Noosa is a little town called Maryborough which just so happens to be the birthplace of Mary Poppins creator PL Travers - always a favourite with us! (Marney - we felt it only right that as Mary and Harry we should visit this place) We made a short but very sweet stop in town where we saw the Mary Poppins statue outside the house where Travers was born.

We arrived in Noosa and dropped the girls off at their hostel before making our way into town for a picnic by the marina and a potter down the mainstreet and beach. If we hadn't been in such a rush on this section of our trip we would have enjoyed spending a good couple of days chilling out in this lovely trendy little town. As it was we made do with a quick wander and a delicious christmas pudding flavoured ice cream - trying to get into the Christmas spirit is a good excuse for doing things like this!

Back on the road on our own again we had an uneventful journey until we reached the busy city streets of Brisbane the first really busy city we have visited in Australia (Perth and Darwin being very laid back). When we'd booked our Whitsundays/Frazer trip we'd been given two free hostel nights and we decided to use these in Brisbane to put us in the city centre as opposed to sleeping in the van way out of town. Although we'd been told there was free parking this was not the case when we turned up and our free nights ended up not being quite that way as we had to pay 16 dollars per night to park the van. By the time we'd sorted this out and got all our stuff to the hostel we'd lost a lot of the limited time we'd had to explore the city.

Mark decided to chill out with the lads from Frazer while Chrissie and Kayleigh went out for a quick dash around to try and get a little view of Brisbane's sights before it got dark.

That evening we met up with the majority of Fanny's crew (just missing Lil and Fanny herself) and Steph and Fiona from another Frazer Group (who quickly became new members of FC) for a meal in the hostel and a big night out at a bar holding a backpackers Christmas Party. It was a hilarious night in which we consumed far too much snakebite and black - classic!

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