From Rainbow Beach we got a bus to Noosa (which was all of about 2 and a half hours late... so unimpressed!) and a reasonable little hostel with a pathetic kitchen (that may be my least favourite part of travelling- when you have to fight off a hundred other travellers for the one pot to cook your pasta in, then find there is no can opener or even sharp knife to help complete your (boring and samey) meal. Anyway, we managed to find appropriate tools to make salad (quite an achievement here, seriously!) and had that with a $1 meal (rice and peas) from the bar, before starting on the goon with our roomies. Introducing them to ring of fire and goon all in one go seemed a very good plan at the time, but apparently we were not sneaky enough and were found out by the hostel staff and told to put it away. This was probably a good thing, though it only stopped the ring of fire game. My memory is patchy after this and my hangover was BAD.

In the morning (complete with said hangover and a few bruises from falling off my top bunk having woken up still not totally sober... eek) we left the 'comforts' of the practically kitchen-less hostel in favour of a canoe/ camp thing called 'Gagaju Bush Camp'. It did sound a little too good to be true and strangely cheap at just 1cent. Seriously, like 2/3 of a penny. All we had to pay was $50 on arrival for 'park fees' which included our accomodation for 3 nights and 2 full days of canoeing... suspicious. It soon became a little clearer, as we arrived to a pretty incredible camp site (if a little creepy) with a spotless, pretty well equipped kitchen, a TV room full of comfy sofas, a permanent camp fire area with hammocks and logs to sit on... and a gym. Yes, really- a gym.) and were greeted by a few people who lived there or worked there, totally hammered and slurring (it was lunchtime)- one lady, Lou, dropped her drink, smashing her glass and looked genuinely confused as it was 'only her second drink' (of the hour maybe?) We were to learn A LOT about her and the wife of the man who ran the camp as they accidentally told us (when drunk) stories about 'when they were acoholics'...hmmm... One such example (though apparently this happened the night before we arrived, so I guess after they seemed to think their alcoholic days were over) was Lou saying 'why did I wake up with someone else's pants on this morning?' Kelly: 'oh, you pissed yourself, remember?' Lou: 'oh no, I thought maybe I got lucky...' Kelly: 'oh don't worry, when you said you'd pissed yourself, I just thought, who hasn't?!' HAHAHA classy or what?! These and worse revelations continued throught the time we stayed at the camp and when I bumped into Kelly in the supermarket the day we'd left and said hi, she had no idea who I was and when I explained I'd stayed at the camp, she said she saw so many backpackers that she forgot them after a few weeks... I couldn't resist reminding her I'd only left that morning, to which she replied 'oh, well then it's because I've only been drunk for the last 3 days!' Oh the joys of living in the middle of nowhere...

Anyway, so the camp was entertaining! Our group was small- there was me, Aileen, 2 lovely Irish girls and 2 guys from Israel who liked to think they were God's gift, which was pretty funny. There were other groups there at the same time, so other people about in the evenings, but we went off in the day with our own groups so it was mostly just the 6 of us. The first night, we were shown to our dorm room (a 1 night only freebie to entice people into camping there) which had a bunch of home made bunk beds made from wooden frames with a sort of mesh plastic fabric stapled to them, a bit like a hammock- the owner proudly told us he'd made them and that people found them so comfy, they didnt want to get up in the morning. He was wrong, the reason they didnt get up in the morning was because their backs had frozen and seized up in pain from the DIScomfort of these strange beds. Anyway, we did manage to heave ourselves out of bed in fairly good spirits (if a little tired- pain is not something I find it easy to sleep with!) and pottered along to our canoe briefing. It was the sort of thing where everyone tunes out and presumes other people have listened and remembered where to go etc, but none of us really knew the details. I think we were all expecting to be given a map to take with us. We weren't. We were set up in our 2 canoes (with a man at the back of each to be 'our engine' as advised by the girls we met on Fraiser Island). It all started very well, with a bit of a sing song (row-row-row-your-boat/ various songs from the Lion King mainly) as we paddled up to the creek with the wind and tide against us. We managed this with only a few arm rest stops along the way and found a little stop to leave our canoes, swim and have lunch. We'd been told we could go to the creek or the beach, but being totally amazing, we decided we could do the lot, so we them set off back towards the lake with the intention of getting across to the other side and find the beach. This took a LONG time and when we realised the lake was very shallow, we took turns to get out and wade, pulling the canoes behind us instead, as our arms were slowly turning to jelly from the hours and hours of paddling. We enjoyed a couple of hours at the beach, having mud/ sand fights and learning Hebrew words. I think the only ones I remember now are the one for no worries/ hakunamatata type thing (sabana or something like that... although now it doesnt sound right...) and dirty (melughlagh) obviously my spellings may be a little off here- do not judge me! Anyway, I'm not sure I'd get too far in Isreal with just these 2 words but it's a start!

The way back to camp was a little less relaxed as our arms were having none of it and our lack of arm strength was showing just a little bit... (all in all though we canoed about 20km that day) also, I think it's fair to say that our 'engine' was not working particularly efficiently- or at all- everytime we looked round, he was having a nice leisurely time watching us paddle away furiously against the tide. Charming! That night we moved into our tents (tiny 2 person ones which weren't quite long enough for the super thin roll mats we were given). I was very thankful for my free pillow from the Uluru tour as it'd have been worse without that. I had thought I was a pretty seasoned camper, but I guess I've probably not actually slept on just a roll mat on top of tree roots on the ground before, at least not for a long time... let me tell you one thing about this- it hurts. You do not sleep, you do not get comfortable. All in all, it's just a bad idea. We both woke up with the intention of NOT doing that again and spent the day eyeing up the TV room sofas. On day 2, we went the other way up the lake on a much shorter trip to find a very elusive 'green beach' (it was not green at all... he was probably drunk) and the start of a 3km trek to the real beach (i.e. beach by the sea!) which was nice- we found some toilets on the way to the beach, which we were very excited about as it would have been a welcome change from stinky long drops and bushes- BUT it was in a strange cafe thing which was shut but open, if you get what I mean- we got in, but there was noone about, except a statue of a cowboy with rotten teeth (he would've fit right in at gagaju) and the toilets themselves were locked. Helpful. The beach was nice and we amused ourselves for the best part of the day by doing all the typical childish beach things like jumping over the waves, building rubbish sandcastles and playing bat and ball (apparently I'm really good, for a girl... thanks David!) as well as watching a group of kids aged about 15 or 16 having actual bodyboard lessons. Did you know they had lessons for this? It basically consisted of a man showing them how to hold the board, pointing at the waves and telling them to get on with it. I think I figured all this out without a lesson when I was about 5?! Funny to watch though!

Whilst we were on the beach, Daniel had a bit of a paddy about the cheese in his sandwhich being warm and sweaty and thre away his lunch... bad move as he seems to be similar to me or maybe even worse when hungry... He spent the rest of the day being in a FOUL mood and ate ALL our biscuits without a thank you or an attempt to cheer up. The canoe journey back was painful, with the girls and David racing off ahead (apparently because they were so fed up with him making out that he was too strong to need to paddle all the time and would only occasionally help them- they were detertmined to just get back and out of that boat!). Daniel still had a grump on from the lunch that HE CHOSE to bin (apparently the 4 hour sulk he had in a bush by the beach was not enough?) and despite Aileen and I doing as good a job as we could at cheering him up and trying to get some sort of rhythm going for paddling- we'd do 6 strokes on each side then switch, him the same but the opposite side (as he also insisted he was at least as strong as the 2 of us put together). We were not sure if it was because he couldn't count to 6 or because he didn't think it would work, or just maybe because he was pretty pants at the whole canoeing thing, but occasionally when he did bother to help paddle, he always did so with such force that the boat nearly capsized with every stroke and always headed directly for a bush at the edge of the river, despite our yelling to stop. It was the closest I've come to my Reception Teacher job since July. Enough said! It was not helped by the heat- I would put it at about 32 degrees plus. Not a heat that you want to hang around on a river in, shelterless for longer than necessary. My scalp burnt quite nicely through my hair, thats how hot it was. Nice! We did indeed sleep on the sofas that night and despite it being just a small cramped 2 seater, I was very happy with my choice as I actually managed to get a little sleep. All in all, it was a strange but enjoyable few days and actually was about half the price of what we'd have otherwise paid just for accommodation in a town, so definately worthwhile. Also very nice to have something different to do other than just go to beaches!

We headed back to Noosa and on to Brisbane, which I wasn't a big fan of- it was grey and actually cold enough for jeans and a cadigan the first evening we were there, which perhaps didn't help. Still, it was a city. There were high rise buildings everywhere, a small man-made beach/ lagoon thing by the river, lots of shops and really not much else. We attempted to go in search of some live music one evening, intending to get our free welcome coctail (something pink and syrup-like mixed with water as far as I could tell) and move on to somewhere else after- we met some locals in the hostel bar and had a drink with them before hunting for some live music... which we didn't find. We ended up going back to the bar and having a very fun (and very very late) night dancing with random locals and generally having a giggle.