Beyond Brisbane

Whilst a camper van offers you the freedom of the open road, your own space and a place to store your kit, it doesn't always offer a good night's sleep. By the time we'd got north of Brisbane we'd been in the van for over 2 weeks and were feeling the effects of several disturbed nights. We spent most of the day like zombies and decided to head to the beach at Caloundra to zone out for the afternoon. Caloundra was a pleasant enough little place, it has several beaches but we picked the one that's behind a sandbar so it wasn't quite the white sand and sparkly blue sea we'd hoped for but it did provide opportunity for a nap and some people-watching.

Feeling the need for a proper bed and having a desire not to cook on a camping stove, we booked a private room in a little hostel for the night. After some confusion, we found that Queensland is on a different time zone to NSW so it got dark an hour earlier and we were hungry at 5pm. We headed to the seafront in search of dinner where we got a Thai takeaway and ate it on a bench overlooking the sea, which was nice and relaxing but we got drenched walking back to the hostel (see, it's not always hot and sunny in Oz). We headed for an early night as we planned to visit the zoo the following day.