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Published: February 4th 2010
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We left Hervey Bay about 10 the next day on the Greyhound bus to Noosa with Alex, Steph, Big Kev and Cath in tow, we arrived in Noosa to a tropical downpour, once again Queensland, which is labeled ‘The Sunshine State’(at least on car number plates it is,) was toying with us. Our primary motivation for heading here was we had heard this is one of the best places in which to see Koalas, which was the one quintessential Australian animal we hadn’t seen (or run over) yet in the wild. We thought we must be onto something when we checked into Koalas Backpackers and spent the rest of the day peering out the window waiting for the rain to ease off, it didn’t.
So as we were virtual prisoners in our hostel we thought we might as well go for a quite drink in the bar, and it was happy hour. Alex and Steph joined us and quickly the quite drink descended into some drinking games, after all we might as well drink as much as we can while it’s still happy hour, that’s being responsible with money we thought!
After a while a Dutch couple who we
were in the other group on the Fraser Island trip joined us, it turns out they were doing an excellent job of saving money. Like us in New Zealand they had a camper van in Australia, but each night rather than book into a campsite they simply parked up the van in the car park of hostels and just strolled in to use the kitchen and bathrooms. They told us how much money they had saved by having a camper van rather than using buses and paying for hostels, when we thought about the NZ$30 we dutifully paid each night in New Zealand for the privilege on parking on a patch of grass we felt slightly queasy, still you live and learn!
Anyway once I had worked out in my head how much we could have saved, cursed under my breath, we moved on and they introduced us to a Dutch drinking game involving dice. There isn’t much more I can say on this night, I had passed out in bed by about 9:30, I don’t know what everyone else got up, apart from breaking into my room and filming me sleeping/snoring.
We awoke early the next day
feeling surprisingly ok, also the rain had stopped. So after breakfast we decided to go for a walk with Alex and Steph in search of the elusive Koalas. The Dutch couple had already been up to the national park and seen a Koala; after we had taken their directions as to its location we set of. Once there we quickly found the Koala, mercifully only about 50metres down the trail, after standing waiting for it do something (it didn’t even move)we headed down a different trail (the shortest one.)
The second trail was very enclosed and this brought back our fear that everything in Australia is out to eat, or at least bite, you. When we heard a rustling noise a little way away in the bush we stared to panic about what it could be, a death adder, a rattlesnake, a funnel web spider, then out of nowhere out jumps............. a turkey, running away from us. Feeling a touch stupid we carried on fearlessly starting to believe that all this talk about big spiders and such in Australia was all rubbish. This brief illusion was shattered about 5 minutes later when Steph screamed and pointed to a spider web
with a spider about 25cm big with yellow stripes on its legs sitting in the middle. Luckily we were only about 20metres from the end of the trail so we half walked; half ran, out into the open. After our near death experience we made we to see the lady at the information desk to ask her what kind of spider it was. We showed her the pictures Alex took she said she was unsure and we jokingly said ‘well we can take you to see it if you want,’ turns out she did want. The spider was a Golden Orb Weaver spider and is not dangerous, we were a little disappointed.
That evening we returned to the hostel and decided to watch a film on Alex and Stephs notebook that they had brought in Singapore. They told us how cheap they are in Singapore compared with England and how much free WiFi there is in Asia. This means that by buying the notebook you don’t have to pay to use the internet and that by the time they get home the savings they make on not paying for internet will mean that the net book will have paid
for itself. Rachel and I were sold and it turns out we were off to Singapore in a couple of days, suffice to say we brought one and named it Alfie. So if anyone’s been wondering why we have suddenly started catching up with the blog now you know!
The next day Alex and Steph headed off to Brisbane and about an hour later little Kev turned up having spent a couple of days more in Hervey Bay, unsure as to what to do we went back to the national park and found three more Koalas, one was even moving!
Later, once the rain had returned, we decided to head to the cinema to watch Avatar in 3D, Rachel thought it was amazing, I thought it was the most predictable pap I have ever seen, still we are agreed that the 3D was pretty impressive. Having arrived back early from the cinema we were once again unsure what to and once again ended up in the bar, having learnt my lesson from a few nights previously I took it easy this time, Rachel however didn’t. The night ended at about 2:30AM with Rachel and a bunch of Irish
girls, her new best friends, jumping into the pool, getting told to get out by the staff, waiting for him to go away and then jumping back in again.
The next morning we headed off to Brisbane for the night before flying to Singapore, last time we were in Brisbane we had met up with Rachel’s neighbor Craig and his girlfriend Hayley and had been invited by their friend Lucy to stay with her when we came back. So it was to Lucy and her cousin Chloe’s (hope your keeping up) house that we headed. Once there Craig and Hayley had to head off to work leaving us with Chloe, Rachel still feeling very ill after the 2 ‘o’ clock swimming had surprisingly developed a nasty cold, so headed off for a sleep. This left me with Chloe who thought it would be a good idea if we started playing drink games at about 1pm with goon (cheap Aussie wine,)I honestly did try to say no but she was having none of it and in my defense I was a guest in her house.
Anyway we ended up meeting Alex and Steph again at their hostel, this time
it was Chloe who decided a midnight dip in the pool was a good idea and after lots of hugs and emotional goodbyes we left and awoke the next morning feeling like death and not at all ready for our 7 hour flight to Singapore. It was at Brisbane airport that Rachel left her dads penknife in her hand luggage, obviously thinking that our last couple of flights had gone far too smoothly and we were in need of some excitement and trying to take an offensive weapon aboard would’ pep up’ everyone’s day. The security man however was lovely and let Rachel check her hand luggage, meaning the penknife was not disposed of.
To sum up, Australia it is a beautiful country, abet with far less man eating spider round every corner than expected. It is however very diverse, with huge modern cities, vast amounts of nothingness, beautiful beaches, spectacular mountains and extremely friendly people who seem very fond of a drink! I feel a bit sad we have only seen such a tiny amount of it and we have decided we would very much like to come back to for a longer period and perhaps find some
work and make our way around more of it.
Please excuse the rubbish Koala pictures.
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Gill Carr
non-member comment
Australia
Sounds like Aussieland was very enjoyable - very glad that you're getting up to date with your blogs, its very exciting to read the next instalment - we are all very envious!! Lots of love Mum x