It's still sunny, for now
Trip Start
Nov 05, 2002
1
33
69
Trip End
Aug 13, 2003
Brisbane,
Australia
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Well, the trip is ticking along just nicely, thank you very much. Geographically we're half way through our trip of Oz as we're presently in Brisbane. Really not much to report from here! It's a nice city, like most things in Australia, or should I say Queensland as that's all we've seen so far? We've just travelled through the are of Queensland called the Sunshine Coast, a big holiday area with (tacky) theme parks and attractions galore. We spent the Easter weekend (just gone) in a place called Noosa. Easter weekend equates to a massive holiday weekend in Oz and in this part of the land it is manically busy. Thus accommodation was impossible to find, even for us who were only looking for a van spot in a van park. So with no choice we had to park Syd up in a surf club car park and we spent two nights, cooking, when needed, beside Syd in the car park! Not sure if it was allowed (I doubt it) but we kept things nice and discrete and probably went unnoticed?! Ha. I even had to resort to sneaking into a near by van park to use the shower facilities, something B, bless her, hadn't the nerve to do! Anyway, that traumatic experience behind us, we continued down the Sunshine coast (although by now it was pissing rain!) and stopped off in Aussie World, a tacky Oz based theme park, The Big Pineapple, a similar sort of attraction based around, yep you guessed it, pineapples and finally yesterday Australia Zoo, the home of Steve 'Take a look at this little beauty' Irwin; a.k.a 'The Crocodile hunter'. Steve himself was there the day before yesterday (Monday) but he wasn't around yesterday. He was off making some film on crocs or something like that. Pity. I would have loved to meet him but hey, wasn't to be. Although the Zoo is presently small (but still very commercialised) Steve has big ambitions for it and is aiming for it to rival San Diego Zoo in the future. We spent the night in a nice park in Beerwah, Steve's home town, before making our way here earlier today. The only downer on Brisbane is that because it's a big city there are no van parks near the centre so we have to commute into the city from the outskirts. I believe that will be the way in any big city so we expect the same in Sydney and Melbourne in the coming weeks. But to be honest it's a small price to pay for the freedom Syd provides. If having Syd means being slightly inconvenienced in the larger cities then so be it! We wouldn't change it for the world. Having Syd is the standout highlight of our Oz adventure so far, and there are some mightily fine highlights as competition. Recent highlights to date have been Townsville, our sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands and, most recently, the 4x4 safari on Fraser Island.
So that's about it from Brisbane. The coming weeks involve getting to Sydney and Melbourne while seeing all there is to see in between. We've spent 4 and a half weeks here so far and have the same amount of time left. We fly to New Zealand on the 24th of May for 6 weeks before 2 weeks in Fiji, 2 in Hawaii and 3 in the states. Then is home. Yep, we're over half way and so we're on the home-ward leg of the trip. Not to worry.
Should be in touch soon. Say a pray for us that the constant sun we had north of here returns as it seems to be raining a lot more now! Aggghhh.
Take care
Dave and B
