Noosa Head

After our early departure from the farm we arrived to Noosa after an 8 hour coach journey. Even after the journey we still had to catch a local bus to our hostel. By the time we got there the night had already settled in well. We got to the hostel (Nomads) where we were first told that we would have to stay in separate rooms. Something was telling me that this guy was a bit of a drip and clearly didn't care whether we stayed in the same room or not. Unsatisfied we waited for a colleague of his whom as I suspected, managed to get us in a room together. She was a Brit so she had some understanding about customer service!!!

Noosa is a typical destination where backpackers come to before departing for a Fraser Island tour. A must see apparently! As is the Whitsunday Islands. Our budget is wearing a bit thin, and we didn't want to book the cheap packages because that's what the rowdy backpackers do, expecting to party 24hours a day. I wanted to do the Fraser Island tour, a bit of an adventure and exploring the island. Emily really wanted to do the Whitsundays, essentially sitting on a boat at sea, little bit of snorkelling and some island hopping. After some 'discussions' over which one we should do we decided that we were going to have to throw the budget out of the window, booking both Fraser and the Whitsundays, and not exactly the cheap packages either - in for a penny in for a pound, may as well do it properly if you've already fronted a large some of cash. Our travel agent from Peterpans was pretty awesome, Steve, an American guy whom while we were waiting treated me to a couple of beers and gave Emily a bottle of wine....there may be an underlining reason why we booked both tours! Our Fraser Island tour isn't until the 27th April and we are waiting for a parcel to be delivered to the local post office.

To kill some time we ventured to the national park which was of course spectacular. Nice trek, taking us about 5 hours to do! We really made an amateur mistake, not taking any food with us! But we saw a koala chilling high up in a gumtree and some turtles swimming in the ocean at Hells Gate.

While in Noosa we also made our first visit to the cinema since we started travelling. Absolutely amazing cinema, the seats were huge and so comfortable, I could barely even kick the seat in front of me. We watched The Fast and Furious 7 which to be perfectly honest was disappointing, although Emily did enjoy it so at least it wasn't a complete waste.

Still waiting around for our parcel we had the chance to visit one of Emily's relatives, her Nans cousin. She (Wendy) had very kindly offered for us to visit her in Coloundra and stay for the week.

Coloundra

Getting to Caloundra from Noosa was a doddle, 2 hour public bus which took us along the costal route. Some of the best towns we have seen in Australia were on this bus. We met Wendy at the bus station who greeted us with open arms. Without delay she took us to the surf club for lunch. She really did treat us very well and had so much energy about her, very uplifting and such a breath of fresh air. The view was great, but sadly brought down by the rain that had blown over. Wendy is also a stand alone property developer. Right now she has two houses and took us over to he unoccupied house. It was nice to see Australian homes from the inside for a change. She did a really nice job on this one, having bought the land and developed it from the ground up, very light, modern and spacious, if only we could call it our home.

Tour over we headed to Wendy's other house where we were excitedly greeted by her two dogs, Sammy and Bow. The next few days were fantastic to really chill out, because our life was difficult before....

To summarise we went shopping, took the dogs to the beach for walks and ate out at various surf clubs and restraunts. We also visited the Eumundi market, full of local arts and crafts, Emily and I are suckers for these kind of things. Unfortunately our baggage wouldn't allow for many purchases, although, I did buy a stubby strip. Kind of hard to explain but all you really need to know is it helps to keep a six pack of beer cold on a hot day and is probably the most awesome gift to myself. No bartering though, no way near as fun as Asian markets.

We also went to Coloundra for Anzac Day. Australians love Anzac Day! It's pretty much the only bit of history they have. I wasn't a fan of it, to be completely blunt. For those who have been to Australia probably know that Australians love absolutely everything about themselves, and thus the story of Anzac Day is screwed massively and misses out many key points and issues. Like how the British lost so much more during the golipoli assaults (for the COD fans out there our kill to death ratio was actually the best though, with the French doing far worse), or even more tragic how there was a mass genocide of all the Armenilians (over a million of men, women and children!). Even though I wasn't a fan, it was still an interesting insight to the Ozzy way of thinking.

One last note during our time here, we went for a run!! Not really knowing where we were going and how far things were we ran to the beach and back, taking 45minutes! Not exactly easing ourselves into it, my knee had it for a couple days and Emily's foot was not much use for a few.

Our time at Wendy's went very quick, and we cannot be more thankful to her for having us over for the week. She showed us some of Australia's best locations and we will miss her gorgeous little dogs.

C & E x