Queensland - Cairns to Brisbane - Rain and Cool Bags

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Dear All. Hello, and welcome from Australia, the worlds most expensive country to do anything.

Australia is a land where foreign people stumble around trying to figure out literally the cheapest way there is to survive whilst having fun. Basically, every traveller here carries with them a blue cool bag (always blue...we have two) full of bread, nutella and pasta, and a 2l box of wine they call 'goon'. This is all that anyone foreign eats and drinks here it seems. Its pretty tragic. On average it costs about $25-30 to stay in dorm rooms with loads of other people, where we have to fight in dirty kitchens over dirty pots and pans so that we can cook pasta for the tenth time in a week. If I'm being honest, I don't really think this represents value for money. I feel more like a student than I did when I was a student. But that's the fun of it I suppose. Walking around Coles (ozzy ASDA) looking for all the knock down food. Living the dream.

So this was all a bit of a culture shock to us, after the luxury of our camper van in NZ, when we arrived in Cairns to a sea of blue bags and overflowing fridges. It was even more of a surprise to me when it started raining almost immediately after we arrived. I mean, I suppose we did come in the rainy season...but the first few times we went out it literally started raining as if it had been waiting for us. And when I say raining I mean absolutely chucking it down! I didn't think it would be that bad.

The reason we went to Cairns was to check out the Barrier Reef so we booked a day trip for $180 or so which included snorkelling and a 15 minute dive. Fortunately, off the coast at the reef the weather tends to be pretty good, and overall we had a pretty good day. I have to confess though, that I am not a natural snorkeler. Unless its natural to float about for the first 20 minutes feeling like you are going to drown, or worse, suffocate on all the snot that is blocking your breathing thing from which you seem to be taking in more sea water than actual air. Ridiculous activity really. But the dive was easier and actually quite fun, until the photographer guy started to try to get me to pose with giant clams and stuff so that he could try and sell me the photo later for about $100. What a dick!

Cairns is okay. Best thing about Cairns is the 1000s of flying foxes that fly over town every night screeching. It was incredible... but other than that, not much to report.

From Cairns we went down the coast to Airlie Beach which is the place to go if you want to sail the Whitsunday Bay. But when we got there it really started to rain. And it got worse when we went into our hostel room and were welcomed by the deep stench of pure dampness, then went to inspect the toilet and found a gigantic (but thankfully dead) spider curled upside down in the corner. I am not exaggerating by the way, it is the biggest actual spider I have ever seen in my life. It looked like a tarantula sort of thing, and turned out to be a huntsman. Google it. Horrible. Anyway, the lady at reception ensured me that someone would come to get it before 10pm. They didn't, of course, so we spent the night sleeping feet away from a giant spider corpse! But anyway, a more pressing issue for us was the cockroach that was flying around our room, very much alive and kicking. The place was just a hovel really.

And let me tell you another thing, whilst I'm in the mood for a rant. My fellow travellers seem to have forgotten what it is to live as human beings. No, it is not okay to leave your scrambled egg encrusted pan on the side for someone else to clean up. No, it is not acceptable to store your food in the bowls that other people are supposed to be able to use to eat out of. No, it is not acceptable to leave every single item of kitchenware in the drying rack, and if you do decide to dry something it is absolutely not acceptable to leave the tea towel screwed up in a wet ball!

Anyway, we weren't sure what to do in Airlie because the weather was so bad, and all the sailing tours are so expensive! But we decided to take a risk with a day tour....That didn't pay off - it rained all day and we got absolutely drenched. And the tour wasn't even that good anyway. $160 or so we paid, and the included lunch was a roll and some ham.

At this point we weren't really getting many good vibes from Queensland, mainly rain and over priced tours. But we were sure it would get better as we moved on to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island.....

Nah. It rained as soon as we got there, and every time we stepped outside it rained. There is nothing to do in Hervey Bay, unless you go to Fraser Island...and we just thought, no way are we spending $300+ to spend 2 days in the rain again. So we moved on and this time to Noosa...and when we got there.........well.........it rained. Kindly it waited until we got off the bus and then rained all over us. And later on when we went to get some food...well, it rained then as well.

But we are English, and we weren't exactly going to let all this rain get us down now were we, so we decided that the next day we would go to the Zoo! Australia Zoo, the home of the late, great Steve Irwin. And crikey mate! It was almost as if the legend was looking down that day feeling sorry for us. By crikey, look at that...a couple of poor little wild English possums all washed up with nowhere to go! The sun came out (mostly) and the zoo was a really good day out. We got to stroke Kangaroos and Koalas, saw a Croc show in the Croc-o-seum ("There's crocs, and you get to see 'em!!!"), fed the elephants....etc etc. And it was like our prayers had been answered....but no, the next day it rained again. Pure torrential rain.

I have absolutely no idea what Noosa is like. More or less every second we spent there was torrential rain, so I can't comment really, but I think its a really nice beach town in the sun - we had planned to stay longer. We had planned actually to still be in Hervey Bay I think, so when we arrived in Brisbane after Noosa, we were about a week ahead of schedule....and of course, it rained when we got there!!!!! But it was only a brief shower this time, and fortunately, the sun came out for the next couple of days we were there. We had a few nice strolls around the town and up the South Bank, went to the cinema one evening, and over to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery where we had a few tasters one day. Brisbane was a nice, laid back city. There's not an awful lot to do, but it was sunny....so we loved it basically!

But we still genuinely felt cursed. It felt like the rain was going to follow us wherever we went, cause everyone kept telling us "oh, you should have been here yesterday, it was a beautiful day...you must have brought the rain with you....." (grrrr). We checked the weather down south and it forecast more rain, so we decided that we would miss out the Gold Coast area which is basically just beaches and decided to go onto Byron Bay, where we thought there was a bit more to do if it did decide to rain. And because we had so much spare time, we decided to stay there for 5 days!!

So, Queensland....a bit of a wash out really. Obviously it would have been better if it hadn't rained literally everywhere, so its hard to judge. And just before we left Brisbane, I had a cracking idea to get away from the rain....lets go to the middle of the outback! Surely it won't rain there!

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Comments

[Jacky]

JTs James Bond Pose? x

[Jacky]

Alex the naturalist! Lovely Pic x

[Dancing Dave]

Great one day...magnificent the next
So you brought the rain with you...think of the poor locals...how do you think they feel? Queensland is great one day...magnificent the next. If you are coming to Sydney let me know...maybe could organize a decent feed for you...but don't bring the rain with you.