North Stradbroke-Day 25

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Today we woke up at 8 which is fairly early because of our plans. We grabbed a bit and headed out. Our plan was to go to North Stradbrock Island for the Day. The island is one of a few which block the mouth of the Brisbane River. We took a train from the train station to Cleveland a suburb which is closest to the island. In Cleveland we found a place called 1st Choice Liquor Superstore. It was massive...the size of oakridges cafeteria. It had everything you could think of, but only two canadian beers. The best thing was finding a 25 litre bottle of wine which costed 2000 dollars australian. From Cleveland we took a ferry to the island and then a bus 20 km to a part called Point Lookout which is the main part of the Island. Point Lookout is the north east part of the island. The rest of this island is lagoon and is not inhabited. After arriving we could hear the beach so we followed a path towards the noise. It led us to a cliff which overlooked a beach called 17 mile beach. You could not see the end of the beach. After that we took a path which branched off it and led to a gorge. The gorge was awesome with huge waves crashing into it. The walls were 20 metres high with the water being 3 or 4 metres high. The gorge was also about a hundred feet deep. We went to the end of the gorge and then climbed down the easiest part of the gorge to the base where there was a very small beach. We were able to walk along the edge of the water on rocks about halfway to the mouth where there were very good views. From there we could not continue forward so we headed back to where we climbed down got out and went to the other side of the gorges mouth. On this side of the mouth there was a large flat part ontop which you could walk out onto and see more beaches. The path we were on ended up going around another 10 kilometres along all the other beaches. The first one we got to we went swimming at as Brisbane is inland and has no beaches. It was nice to get into the ocean again. I also colleced a sandwich bag full of seashells. From there we took the path abot another five kilometres seeing another 3-5 beaches. After that it was around 4:30 so we headed back to Point Lookout so that we could get the bus to the ferry. After the ferry reached the main land we went to a seafood restraunt we had seen before going to the island which had 6 dollar fish and chips. The portion was actually fairly large. Generally good deals here are ripoffs because the portions are so small. After finishing we took the train back to the hostel and went to sleep preparing for another early morning of work.

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