…I was wrong. In Thailand you expect to veer off the road into a tree at any time but at least the seats are suited to overnight travel. The Greyhound buses in Oz are the worst for sleeping on. Their seats are just a little too small to curl up on so you can never get comfy. The aircon was on so it was cold too. And to top it off the onboard loo wasn’t functioning. So 15 mins later we had to make an adhoc loo stop. ...
Pretty much all of our 300th day was on Magnetic Island. Actually right up til the 21:30 ferry. Another fabulous sunshiny day, waking up to the sounds of birds and wildlife squawking and ferreting around outside the bungalow. Brekkie in amongst the rainforest (kind of), a couple hours of wifi to finally book our flights from Cairns – we’re skipping Melbourne and off to Sydney as want to spend more time in the sun whilst we can. Followed by an afternoon on the beach with chips and chocolate Billabongs. Fab (and getting fat). ...
Woke early to the sun shining through the perspex windows and birds chirping & chuckling. There is a wildlife sanctuary in the grounds of our accommodation which offer the opportunity to cuddle a koala. Matt wanted to get a photo of me doing this (and I wasn’t adverse to holding a koala either) so we joined in the tour. We both expected it to be cheesy and for kids. It was both but also now another favourite thing we’ve done on our trip. You get a real hands-on experience of Australian animals and it was interesting listening to the Steve Irwin character passionately talking about endangered crocodiles. We fed a large bird a pumpkin seed from our mouths which it peeled with its beak before eating, saw an echidna (small porcupine animal) eat dinner with a lizard, held lizards, a crocodile, a snake & a koala. And saw a joey on its mother’s back. It was the best $21 we’d spent in Oz. Fraser Island eat your heart out. ...
Greyhound were in our bad books. We dragged ourselves out of bed whilst it was still dark to get the 7am bus so that we could get out of Airlie Beach and to Magnetic Island as soon as possible. Instead we had to wait in a carpark, watching the sun rise, which admittedly was pretty, for an extra hour and ten minutes. There was no apology or explanation when it finally arrived. Matt had to ask the driver what had happened. Apparently the brake lights on the trailer it was pulling had failed in the middle of the night. Grrr. ...
Airlie Beach is the “jumping off point” (LP says this all the time and I hate it with a passion!) for Whitsunday sailings. We decided not to bother. They were really expensive and we want to go diving in the Great Barrier Reef from Cairns so we’ll only be staying here a day. The thing is there isn’t much else here. Well there is. It has a street of restaurants and bars and backpackers and travel agents selling sailing trips and a man-made lagoon because you can’t go in the water because of the crocodiles. But it doesn’t have any character. And all anyone talks about is the Whitsunday sailing. ...
Tuesday we had our second surf lesson. The water was calmer and the boards were slipperier and we just couldn’t stand up. We are obviously much better in rougher waves. We blame the boards. Still it was fun stuff and we went back on Wednesday for another lesson. This time there were too many people so we just hired our own boards and wetsuits and headed to the beach. We were still pretty terrible but we won’t give up! ...
Our bus wasn’t until 14:25 and the guy at the hostel couldn’t have been nicer. Maybe because we hadn’t been so impressed with his recommendation. We could use all the facilities until we left and he’d give us a lift to the bus station. So we borrowed the bikes again and yes today is another scorcher. It’s the hottest we’ve felt it in Oz. And off we cycled in the heat to the 826metre pier and walked to the end passing countless fisherpeople. There were people of all ages sat with their rods dangling into the water. ...
Unsure what to make of today. We were off the magical place of Fraser Island. A top destination for anyone visiting the East Coast of Australia, apparently. We’d been “sold” the bus trip by the guy at our hostel. We were going to do the 2-day 1-night camping but that was sold out so we were going to do the 1-day jeep but somehow he managed to persuade us the bus would be better. I think this is proof that we are out of our minds. How many times in NZ did we see hoards of people on bus trips being moved from place to place on a strict schedule and think or say how awful it looked and how we’d hate that kind of thing? Well we were right. ...
THE SUN IS SHINING! We have found the sun at last. Proper hot sun. The real skin-crisping kind. MIA since Sihanoukville. Although I guess you could say Siem Reap was hot & sunny but there could be no sunbathing there unless you wanted to look like a KFC family bucket. Hearing rumours of kangaroos grazing at the north tip of Hervey Bay we borrowed bikes and followed the bike track along the esplanade for 6 or 7km until we reached a sandy bay we couldn’t resist. The sun was blazing by now, the beach was almost deserted and the sea lapped at the shore looking like a giant infinity pool. ...
Noooo it can’t be 1st July already? That means only 4 weeks left. Better make the most of it then. Up nice & early with the idea of going for a 3 hour walk through Noosa National Park to spot wild koalas and kookaburras before catching the lunchtime bus to Hervey Bay. On checking out the girl says “have you seen the koala at the end of the driveway”? And there he was sat calm as anything back to the world clinging onto the high branches on a eucalyptus tree next to the busy roundabout by our hostel. He occasionally turned his head very slowly around and looked down at the interested crowd beneath with click clicking cameras seeming nonplussed by all the attention he was getting. ...