We left Noosa to go to Steve Irwins Australia Zoo, this was really good, we got to feed kangaroos, and we watched a crocodile and snake show in the crocoseum, and saw the biggest croc that we have seen while in Australia, there were a lot of tributes to Steve Irwin obviously, and was quite sad as the zoo was overtaken by all that and his memorial was only last week. We went with four other people so had a good day at the zoo!

We then drove straight into Brisbane, Brisbane isn't a particularly big city and as always, a city is a city, but as we arrived on the sunday there were some good markets on and they had a nice lagoon, park and botanical garden that we walked around, on the sunday evening there was a big rugby league final between the Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm, so seeing we were in Brisbane we made our way to a local pub and watched the rugby, luckily Brisbane won and there was a really good atmosphere! We then went to the hostel where our friends were and had a night out to celebrate.

We left Brisbane a couple of days later to got to the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise. Surfers is like Blackpool but with a lot more money! It wasn't the nicest day and really windy so the waves were massive, but we'd just bought a body board and Owen was determined to make use of it so he got completely battered by the waves, but he seemed to enjoy himself! Owen has family in the Gold Coast, Marilyn his Mums cousin and her husband Graham, we rang them to arrange to have a cup of tea and meet them, but they invited us to stay with them, which was really nice, we were there for 3 nights and were cooked the best meals we'd had for the entire time we've been away! They took us round the coast showing us the nice beaches, we stopped for lunch at one called Currumbin and ate at the Surf and Life Saving Club, felt like a local! We had an amazing view of the sea, which was made even better when a whale came in and breached right in front of us and then we saw dolphins catching the surf.  A bottle of wine later and great food, was the nicest afternoon we'd had for along time. It was nice to be in a house for a few days and sleep in a proper bed! But we had to move on.

We had decided as soon as we did the farm stay that we wanted to go to a proper Australian Rodeo, and had found out that  there was one last saturday at a place called Boonah, inland from the gold coast, we arranged to meet another couple that we've been travelling with there. The rodeo itself was absolutely brilliant, the only thing we felt we were missing was a cowboy hat, everyone had them! We saw bucking broncos, bull riding, bull catching, barrel racing and loads of other stuff, the cowboys are crazy mad to get on those animals doing that, but it was great to watch and how they didn't get hurt we don't know, they even had junior bull riding where little kids of 7 came out on these little bulls bucking around the ring.

 On the way inland to the Rodeo we stopped at Lamington National Park and did a tree top rainforest walk, where you walked across swing bridges and there was even a ladder you could climb up a tree to a platform 30 metres above the ground, owen went up, I didn't! the whole ladder, was rocking from the wind and height. On the way back from the rodeo we stopped at Springbrook National Park and saw purling brook falls, this massive waterfall and it was really nice at it had a rainbow going through the middle of it, we also went to a lookout that was so high the photo looks like it was taken from a plane.

 We are now in Byron Bay, would be nice but it's cloudy, windy and drizzly, infact it's reminding us of home, we walked up to the lighthouse and the most easterly point of australias mainland, Owen taught me to body board at Watego beach was fun, but we got rained on and was pretty cold, more out the water than in.  We went to the cinema (not the old piggery jenny, they weren't showing anything good, we wanted to go there, but didn't seem worth it) as in a beach town it's hard to amuse yourselves when the weathers miserable and we went to the Arts Factory where we had friends staying and spent the evening there. Think we are going to leave today as weather still hasn't got any better, have no idea where we are going next though!

 Hope everyone's ok.

Love Sarah and Owen xx