22/01/09

Got up and walked to the kitchen to try and find some food in the free food fridge for breakfast. Jackpot! I found a whole loaf of wholemeal bread and some coles own brand butter, so I had 4 slices of toast and stole the rest of the bread. Went back to the room and packed all my stuff away then we checked out before going to PeterPans to get half an hour of free internet. The place wasn't open until 10am so Pat and I waited in the lobby studying a map of the world. The girls showed up just as the doors opened and showed us a Preying Mantis they had seen on the door, it was awesome. Sat around in the Bunk reception and the guy that was staying in the bed above me came down in the same clothes he had worn for the past 3 days AND nights, he may have even been wearing them longer, thats just what he was wearing when we arrived in Brisbane. Helen had to hold her nose becuase she was within the 2 metre radius of him. The guy finally came to give us a lift in the free shuttle bus to the bus terminal, after 5 minutes of driving I noticed we were driving towards Bunk again, the driver took us on some completely random route all the way around Brisbane. We were on the bus with two brothers called Dale and Adam, Adam was really hung over and could barely lift his head, Dale seemed like a really nice bloke. Turned out we had been traveling the exact same route at the same times since Sydney on the 18th Dec, they had even stayed in Maze and we hadn't bumped in to them until now.

Got to Noosa just in time to see the Koala courtessey bus leave the station. Waited around a little while for it to return, when it did the guy waited around the corner for about 15 minutes, then drove off without any passengers, so we phoned Koala backpackers and they told us that he would be back in a minute. 45 minutes later he showed up, Pat waved at him to let him know where we were as he hadn't seen us before and the guy had a right go at him telling him that it was rude to wave. When we checked in we were given a voucher for a free meal so we sat around in the dorm and waited until 6 when we could use it. The meal was really good, but there wasn't enough of it so we went for a wander around Noosa Junction to check out what was about. Everywhere was shut except for Subway and KFC, subway had a sign on the door that appologised because they had no bread left. So we all got a KFC Snack Box, Burns asked me to order his so he could get rid of his change, so I did and the woman must have miss-heard me and I ended up with a Snack Box and a chicken strip and ended up paying with Burns' change. He was a little bit miffed because he had to break another note to get his afterwards. Went back to the room and watched Heroes while Helen was giggling along to Karl Pilkington.

23/01/09

Woke up to Helen going outside at about 0800. Attempted reading but was still too tired so just layed in bed for a bit until Helen returned at about 0930 after chatting for ages on the phone. Got up and went to go in the pool, disaster, my most comfy shorts had dissapeared from the washing line and were nowhere to be seen. Put on my second most comfy shorts and went straight in the pool because it was pissing it down anyway. Burns was doing some epic Pearl Heenan dives, he had everyone in the pool laughing loads. Pat suggested doing a BackSlapper, and without thinking I just jumped in flat on my back, it stung so much. Got back and apparently Coops could hear the back slap and the grunts of agony from the room which is about 30 metres away. Got back and dried off then decided to go to the cinema to watch Yes Man as it was still hoshing it down. I really enjoyed it, the cinema was really nice as well. When we got out the sun was out, we were hungry so we had a kebab. We were contemplating going to the beach, however when we got back to the hostel it was overcast again so I went back in the pool and sure enough it started raining heavily again, then came the thunder. I stayed in and around the pool most of the rest of the day swimming as much as possible to try and work off the kebab from earlier. Later the girls and I wandered to Lukes Super IGA and got some food for the evening and lunch for tomorrow. We spent the evening in the Koala Bar playing cards with Dale and Adam. I went for another 50 lengths in the pool before going to bed, the lads stayed in the bar drinking all night.

24/01/09

Four different alarms from four different womens phones rang at the same time to tell everyone it was time to get up and go to the zoo...Crikey! Got in the queue to get the shuttle bus to the zoo coach, so many people were going that the girls got on the first one, Pat the second and Burns and I the thrid. We arrived at the zoo at about 1000 and stood outside the otter pen waiting for something interesting to happen, nothing happened within 5 minutes so we wandered to check out the Crocodile show, we were way too early. We were all pretty excited about the oppertunity of holding a Koala so we thought we'd get in line to do that. Loved holding the Koala, highlight of the day. It was really hot so we sat in the shade while waiting for the Croc show and had some sandwiches that the girls had made last night. Sat down and watched the show, to start with they brought a few snakes in to the audience, followed by loads of random birds that they just let fly around, some of them were pretty reluctant to go home at the end of the show. Then Steve's wife and kids came out and put on some act while some Steve wannabe let a croc out of its pen and into the arena. It was huge, the guy managed to get it to jump out of the water and snap at him a couple of times. Then they started feeding it from above, informing us that they often snap up ducks in flight above the water. Finally they fed it a pigs leg on a rope to try to get it show us a death roll, the croc was having none of it, it just bit down hard and seemed to know that the bloke would tire after a while. It was impressive stuff though, the croc ripped the joint clean in half from tearing it and the bloke was really risking it by jumping around in the water right in front of it.

We then checked out the giant Python which weighed in at 150 Kg and required 10 men to lift it. Then we bought some Kangaroo food and went to see some Kangaroos and Wallabies. It was brilliant, you could just walk up to them and they ate the food out of your hand. Some crazy kids started running at them and then touching their tails which scared them off pretty quickly. We managed to find some younger ones a little further on and got them to eat out of our hands. walked on a bit further and walked through the Koala walk then found some Red Kangaroos, their leap can be 3 metres high and 12 metres long. Walked through the snake area and found out where all the venomous snakes live in Aus, can't remember where though. Then we stumbled upon a Koala 'lecture', apparently the Eucalyptus leaves don't get them stoned they just have to eat so much and its so hard to digest that it uses up most of their energy. They have ceacum in their digestive tract and are the only animal that can eat the leaves without being poisoned. The funniest fact by far was their mating habits. The male calls out to the female who rushes over, he then beats her around a bit gives her some and b*****s off. You should have seen the girls faces when they found out, hillarious. Apparently their really fussy eaters, only eating 6 of the 700 different typres of leaf, and are also solitary requiring 1 square Km of space each, we were quite lucky to have seen so many in the wild. We then walked to see the Tiger then the Dingos, some weird thing like an Emu with a rock hard pointy head that can apparently disembowel a human and then finallly some more Koalas. Spent ages in the gift shop trying to cool down under the air-con and then took the bus back home.

Got back and checked out the beach, was a good looking beach, just a shame the weather wasn't up to scratch the other days. Spent a bit of time in PeterPans internet place then went to get an apple from Lukes Suer IGA but it was shut so I had to queue in the 7-11 for about 15 minutes to get one. The girls had gone to get a chicken burger and chips and the lads and I got ate jacket spud and beans. I did another 50 lengths in the pool before going to bed. One the way in to bed I spotted a spider with a yellow back running along the floor, it stopped on Pats wash bag and we had a dilema of how to catch it as it was not on flat ground. Eventually Coops went to catch it in a cup but missed slightly, it was now on flat ground so I went for it again with the cup but jammed its legs, pat finished it off with my flip flop, when he'd done it was just a ball of black slime with a few hairy legs sticking out.