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After our epic Fraser Island expedition we left Rainbow Beach for Noosa. In Noosa we were going to partake in a 3 day canoe safari through the everglades and camp in the national park. However due to the torrential rains, the park was flooded and wouldn't re-open until 2 days after we were supposed to do our trip. We were a little peeved about this but manage to sell our tickets to a posh lad in Sydney further down the coast! It also meant we could do some sleeping and chill out after our adventures.
While we were in Noosa we got a bus to Australia Zoo which was a splendid day out. We saw a crocodile show, lots of iguanas, stroked koalas and took photos of the 6 foot, native bird called the cassowary! Australia Zoo was made famous by the legendary Steve Irwin (RIP!) and so everyone there uses his mannerisms which is kind of weird. We found out about the cyclone while in Noosa, that was currently out in the Pacific and heading towards Australia after messing up Fiji a bit. Luckily we were heading down the coast (away from the cyclone) and it ended up as a bit of an anticlimax, with minimal damage anyway!
After we had recharged in Noosa we headed to our first proper city in Australia: Brisbane. We stayed at a really cool hostel in Brisbane called Bunk and on our first night played bingo, which is addictive and brilliant, but also frustrating! We have to mention the kitchen at Bunk as although it seems trivial, one of the most annoying things about hostels is the inability for any kitchen knife to cut an onion without it doing that thing where it squeezes all the layers out instead of cutting through them!! The knives at Bunk didn't do this, and so made us very happy!! We had a really good time in Brisbane, doing some very grown up things like, strolling through the botanical gardens and a trip to the cultural centre on the south bank. Whilst in the museum we walked in to the marine animal section and after observing some loggerhead turtles that had been claimed by the taxidermist Kez queried with a pensive look on her face "so when turtles are born, do they have to go and find their shells?".......(sorry Kez but that's a Facebook quote if I've ever seen one!).
From Brisbane, it was only a few hours to Byron Bay: a beautiful little hippy town that is a great place to surf some monsters (or try and stand up on some nippers!). We met some really cool people in our hostel and one lad helped us understand the basics of surfing. Both Kez and Tom managed to stand up after about 2 1/2 hours of struggling.....staying up was a different matter, but not too bad for a first attempt! At night the streets were surprisingly vibrant and we saw a cool, hippy granny dancing her elderly pegs off to the music of a busking folk band on a street corner. Regrettably we had forgotten to bring the camera and so cannot provide video evidence, but honestly it was gold!
The trip to Sydney would be our last on the Greyhound bus in Australia...it would also prove to be the longest and most arduous journey known to man/woman! We decided to get the night bus which left at 9 'o' clock at night and arrived at 11.30 the next morning. An ingenious plan we hear you utter...wrong, instead of saving a nights accommodation money and simply sleeping on the bus, we ended up sleeping the whole of the next day as the bus was very full, and the roads very bumpy!!
However once we had recovered from our bus journey we saw some cool stuff, including the Sydney Opera House which is pretty amazing, and the gardens, which have thousands of flying fox bats in their trees!! We also went to the Olympic Park on Tom's 22nd Birthday which was stunning, and got tickets for the Aussie Rules match at the ANZ stadium for the next evening! Aussie rules is brutal and once we had learnt the rules we got very involved! The Sydney Swans ended up losing to Saint Kilda of Melbourne, but our allegiances hadn't exactly been cemented so we weren't too distraught!!
We finished our time in Australia ready to leave and looking forward to New Zealand (among other reasons, Tom needed some cooler weather!!)
Ciao for now, Tom and Kez.
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