And then to Aus!

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Ah, we arrive in Oz! The flight seemed pretty quick, partly due to Rox being asleep and me having movies on demand! It was luxury to be able to go to a taxi driver, say where your going - and they know where it is - and you don't have to argue over a price!!! Back to normal!!!

We made it to our hostel quite late, dumped our bags and went to the hostel club for some drinks! Our first few rounds were so expensive and we couldn't believe how people in there were buying jugs of beers one after the other - they must have massive budgets! It wasn't untill some pissed guy told Peter at the bar that if you flash your hostel key card you get cheaper drinks - thanks for telling us! Needless to say, one jug was ordered!

The following day we checked our emails briefly as the computers were rubbish and heard some really bad news, that an older friend we'd made from our India tour became really ill whilst out there and flew back but sadly passed away in Bharain! When we're back we'll be having a glass of Sula wine in his memory! We can only hope were half as fun and active when we're that age!

Our first place to explore is Brisbane! A lovely city, Australias third largest! Its so chilled and relaxed, 95% of people are smiling and happy, no one is rushing and there's lots of good places to eat! We tried a walking tour recomended in the LPG, but we basically made it to the outside shopping mall on Queen street and pretty much stayed there all day, not purchasing obviously but browsing! They really know how to do the "service with a smile" here, they're so friendly its unreal, and a bit unusual sometimes! The buildings are so funky!

Our second day in Brisbane was reserved for picking up our Jucy camper van! We we're so excited about getting it that we arrived to pick it up half hour early - such geeks! I blame Rox though! Off in or our van and we headed south down to the
Gold Coast to visit Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise! My god it was hot! The beaches, and local towns around them were lovely, but it was so hot - we were quite surprised how few people were on the beach, although there were the obligatory sun worshipers!

We lasted about two hours each time, once it reached 1 o'clock we headed for cover or the air con in our camper! Rox went brown within the first five minutes - bitch! I went maybe, if i'm lucky one shade browner, so that moves me from milky to not so milky! At Surfers Paradise I must have missed a small patch on my chest when applying sun cream and am now nursing some burst blisters!

Peter has been driving the camper most of the time and Rox is the sat nav, Rox attempted to drive, this lasted for all of 2minutes as when she began reversing out of the car parking space she managed to mount the curb and take a huge chunk of it with her. In my defence it is a big car and I am not used to an automatic, it's safe to say Peter will be driving for most of the trip (i am a better map reader anyway).

From the Gold Coast we headed north towards Brisbane and visited Springbrook National Park! This was really nice, so scenic and peaceful! We did a 4K walk to get the best view of the two massive waterfalls there, and a view overlooking the valley! There were huge great lizards that would make us jump as they ran past or up the banks. In the evening we visited a glow worm research farm and learnt about glow worms and glowing funghi and some creepy insects!

The guy showing us around was a nutter, his interests were glowing mushrooms and he goes down into the rain forest in the middle of the night in just a pair of small shorts and flip flops so he can feel the spiders and snakes crawling over him whilst he's on the floor searching for mushrooms! One time he was bitten by a funnel web spider and had to spend two days at the bottom of the valley, not moving until the venom had worn off!!

After this we drove to Redcliffe. We stayed in the most bizzare camp ground! We think most people actually lived there, and as the site was so full, we camped in the owners back yard! I got told off for walking into their house/ office to ask for some change for the washing machine, then we got brought a plate of BBQ'd Kangaroo by the lady that had just told me off - it was gorgeous! We made the mistake of leaving our rubbish outside the camper, so there were some weird noises going on outside our van, I think every animal in the park was sniffing around! It made it a bit of a military operation to work up the balls to go outside and walk to the toilets!

When we woke up our van was covered in shit - everywhere, bat and bird shit, as big as humans! Our first stop was a car wash!

We visited Australia's national zoo, aka the Steve Irwin zoo! This was so cool! The highlight by far was our extra little trip into the working animal hospital! Our tour guide was excellent, and we got to go into a koala enclosure - this was so cool, they're so cute! We also got to see a massive sea turtle that had a stomach operation and was like 50 years old and had moluscs growing all over its shell! We also got to feed all the kangaroo's and stroke the koala's!

From here we tried staying in some free rest area that allows overnight camping! We ended up being the only ones there, in the middle of nowhere - with no lights! I think we made it to about 7 before we decided this was a bad idea, packed up and left and headed for a campsite in Noosa, a town an hour away! Good idea I think!

Noosa is a beautiful river side location with a national park and lovley marinas. We decided to drive to the part where the river meets the sea, this was incredible so picturesque. We set up our chairs and picnic tables and ate lunch whilst watching the kite surfers, we then read for a while in the sun before eating ice creams that melted in about 30seconds due to the extreme heat. Peter is now sitting here glowing red!!!!

We are loving being able to cook and shop for ourselves it makes the sweat box camper more worth while, we are finding it hard to sleep at night as it is so hot and if you have the windows open you get eaten alive. Rox has 15bites just on her legs....not a good look.

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