Our final few nights in the hostel (where we'd now transferred to a dorm) were pretty hellish, the first couple of nights we were woken up constantly by a couple of Irish guys fighting one of them asking the other "Where's the gas?" (perhaps he really wanted a midnight snack?). We found out the next day he was looking for the grass. They were evicted and a new guy moved in who seemed a bit quieter, until that night when he slept with a member of staff behind a sheet draped over his bunk, luckily neither of us were above him, but it made us pretty uncomfortable. This was the final push we needed to book the camper van to get out of there! We then had an argument with the member of staff that night when they intended to do the same thing again that night resulting in them moving to a private room.
We picked up our camper van from Wicked campers, a rather snazzy affair with cartoons spraypainted down the sides and the slogan "If you woke up with a sore arse and $100 in your pocket, would you tell anyone?" painted on the back. We headed down to the local supermarket to stock up on supplies and hit the road.First stop was Caloundra for lunch, a quiet town on the beach, then we headed north through Mooloolaba to Maroochydore then spent the first night in a rest stop nearby. We had heard the rest stops could be anything from a scrub of land up to a beautiful setting with all facilities. This place, however, belonged in the first category, basically a car park with no toilets or anything! We cooked some dinner then tried to get some sleep, but the engine was still giving off loads of heat and we were pretty uncomfortable. After a couple of hours sleep, some breakfast and a cup of tea we set off in search of showers back in Mooloolaba. Once we felt half human again after a shower we continued driving up to Noosa Heads where we spent the day. It was a really nice area, a national park with great views and some awesome beaches. We picked a quieter beach and played about int he waves for a while. That night we drove a bit further north to a great rest stop just outside the town of Gympie with toilets on site and some showers nearby.
The next day we dove back to the coast to Rainbow beach and spent a couple of days in the national park there camping at Inskip point. It was loads of fun playing about in the water, and no traffic around, waking up to the sounds of crashing waves. After a brief stop in Tin Can Bay we kept driving north to Bundaberg and visited the rum distillery there then spent the night at the nearby beach of Mon Repos. Mon Repos is a turtle sanctuary where loggerhead turtles (as well as green turtles and flatback turtles) come to lay their eggs. We had tickets for that evening and it was awesome. After hanging about in the visitor centre for a bit we were ushered down to the beach where we saw some hatchlings making the mad dash down to the sea, Nikki even got to help them make their journey. She had to stand with her legs apart holding a torch while the hatchlings ran down towards the light, she was last in line, so when the waves came in to take them out to sea they were all washed around her feet. We were then taken back to the visitor center and after a cup of tea we were suddenly being taken down to the beach where we were lucky enough to see a turtle laying a batch of eggs. In the process she dug up another nest which meant another load of hatchlings running down to the ocean.
The next day we set off inland, on the way we stopped at a place advertising the 'Mystery Craters' for lunch. It was basically some holes in the ground that had some other type of rock in that isn't found elsewhere in the area. The woman behind the counter told us that she reckons the aliens did it and we weren't sure whether she was joking. We carried on and passed through Gin Gin, a very small town with one street and not a lot to do. We drove straight through and spent the night outside the town of Miriam Vale. We continued on to the coast in the morning arriving in Agnes Water and The Town of 1770 where we were greeted with some pretty windy weather. We were hoping to do some scuba diving on the great barrier reef out of here, but the bad weather meant no boats were going out for at least 3 days so we set off back down the coast the following day.
To change things a bit we decided to take an inland route back down to Brisbane, but changed our mind once we'd driven through repeating scenery of empty fields and sugar cane plantations. It took us two days of driving to get back to Brisbane and we drove on to a place called Jacobs Well right at the northern end of the gold coast. It was a nice place to spend a night, very calm and relaxed with loads of huge pelicans about and possums running around at night. The next day we spent in the Wet 'n' Wild water park, a great way to spend the day, especially with the climbing temperatures (it was around this time that bushfires were breaking out around Melbourne). As we were leaving the park I realised I was missing my debit card, so we had a quick dash back to Jacobs Well to see if it was there (it wasn't) then drove down to the Gold Coast proper arriving late at night to stay in an over priced resort. The next day we had a walk around the city, which is much like any other city except that it has a big beach, it wasn't really for us so we went inland where we spent a couple of days in the gorgeous Springbrook national park. The drive up was pretty taxing, with hairpin bends, huge unprotected drops off the side of the road, and wooden plank bridges. It was definately worth it though. The scenery here was stunning, like something out of Jurassic park, the only problem was the lack of showers. I fashioned something out of an old 10litre water bottle that didn't really work, so we ended up chucking freezing cold water on each other in the disabled toilets.
We took a couple of hours to do a walk down through the rainforest to the Purlingbrook waterfalls. Huge great big waterfalls that soaked us as we walked underneath. We walked all the way down to the bottom of the valley where we had lunch before walking back up. As well as the spectacular views we saw loads of wildlife including lizards, snakes, spiders, a bee hive and lots of different birds and plants. Once back at the top we drove up to 'The Best of All Lookout' (yes thats its real name). After a pretty chilly walk through some ancient rainforest we got to the lookout to find out it was completely fogged out and we could barely see each other! We purchased some vegetables at an honesty box vegetable stand on the way back to our campsite and made roast veg for dinner on the public BBQ. Yummy!
The following day we drove back to the gold coast and after a spot of body boarding drove onwards to Byron Bay. This place used to be an old hippy town, but now its pretty much overrun with backpackers, so we were keen to get away, plus we realised we still had a long way to drive and time was running out. We spent a night here, and wandered round the town the following morning, stopping long enough to watch some surfers in the bay before moving on. We stopped in Coffs harbour at the big banana, a banana plantation that has erected an enormous concrete statue of their favourite fruit outside. We carried on to the Hat Head national park which was stunning. We continued on down the coast the next day stopping in Forster for lunch, where we would have loved to of stayed for longer if it wasn't for our impending Sydney deadline. We kept on driving down the coast and stayed at a very pretty town called the Entrance. We parked up next to a huge lake and spent the evening doing some well earned hardcore realxing after a long day of driving. The van was due back in Sydney the following day, so we completed the drive the following day, but the scenery still amazed us as the road cut through the sandstone cliffs just north Sydney. We had had an amazing couple of weeks without any trouble at all, that is until we arrived in Sydney where we were issued with a parking ticket whilst unloading the van outside our hostel by a very unhelpful parking attendant. We later disputed the ticket as we thought we were parked in a loading zone, but were unsuccessful. You may also have noticed the lack of mention of kangaroos, koalas or wallabies. Despite all the warning we were given about kangaroos we saw not a one, unbelievable! We still had an awesome time and have been recommending it to everyone we've seen since.
We had a day to kill in Sydney which we spent mostly getting some sleep and using all those things we'd done without for a couple of weeks (internet, running water, ovens etc.) And then it was time to meet Annette and Clive (Nikki's parents) at the aiport, but thats for another time...
