We visited Brisbane on Easter Sunday so were unsure whether we'd find a ghost town or a city in full festivity. What we found was something somewhere between. We parked in an extortionate car park then we were directed to the South Beach area by tourist info. We bypassed the art galleries and museums in this area having done both art gallery and museum in every city so far.

The South Beach is an area of parks with a manmade beach and riverside promenade. We stumbled across a Buddhist temple of some sort which was very busy with Asian tourists taking photos. This led to a rainforest boardwalk and on to the beach area which was packed full of families enjoying the pool in spite of the cool, overcast weather. We carried on through the Japanese gardens where we saw lots of bearded dragons trying desperately to warm themselves in the weak sunlight. There were many groups of friends and families making good use of the communal barbecues. We crossed the river and wandered through the botanic gardens which had massive banyan fig trees with hundreds of trunk roots, they were spectacular but had been sadly graffitied around the trunks. Heading back into the CBD we failed in our search for chocolate bilbies (the Aussie version of Easter bunnies) and decided that with most other things being shut that we'd push on south again.

We'd not heard amazing things about Surfers Paradise so we decided to drive through it before deciding whether to stay or not. To its credit the beach did look stunning but the hordes of people and tall tower block apartments along the shoreline didn't really win us over so we made for Byron Bay.

Feeling the need for some sort of Easter celebration (as there hadn't really been any) we stopped at the cheesecake factory to pick up some desert. For folks in the UK who've not heard of cheesecake factory let me say it is a haven for the sweet-toothed and a welcome saviour for the cake craver. It is to cheesecake what Krispy Kreme is to donuts and it provided celebratory Easter pudding with true Aussie flair. We parked our van at a rest stop near Brunswick Heads and ate halloumi salad then cheesecake in the van (it was chucking it down) before bedding down for the night.