So... here we are in Noosa having just spent 3 days canoeing up the Noosa River and back - lots of fun! We arrived in Noosa after dark ( which is ridiculously early round here) in time to jump to the supermarket then be taken to Gagaju bush camp - our free night's accommodation before we headed out on the water. The bush camp is by the river and consists of a few huts, bush toilets ( no flush) a tv room, a kitchen, a campfire and a few interesting long termers with how shall I put this, varying idiosyncracies.... bizarre beards, bizarre life stories etc... and a few friendly backpackers to put into the mix.

We soon met Filippe who is Brazilian and travelling with Marie,Rebecca and Diane who are French, and would be also canoeing the next day. After a brief about litter, lack of toilets etc.. in the national park, we went to bed to get some sleep before an early start.

Our trip started with a long haul across a beautiful lake which got a bit choppy towards the end.(sounds a bit wussy but the kayak was loaded with all our stuff and food for 3 days, a tent, pans, 20 litres of water and us so was sitting fairly low in the water as we went out.... once we ate teh food we came back with a lot less luggage!) ?The girls made an inauspicious start by almost giving up, but in spite of a slight detour we got to our lunch stop at about 9.30am. hmmm here we met a lot of people off on a rival tour company's tour - they had been river taxi-ed to this point - the cheats!!! From here on in the canoeing was blissful, really relaxed, through varying landscapes, it's an everglades(one of only two in the world!)?environment round here and we saw lots of birds but no sharks although apparently they live here.(4 metre long Bull sharks if you believe teh literature...i don't!).. and rebecca was convinced that she would get eaten by one if she went swimming.

?After a leisurely paddle we arrived at Harry's Hut campsite around 2pm to set up our tents and learn french dice games until it seemed like a reasonable time to start cooking tea.....

We had tea and a bit of a chill and went to bed about 9. it gets dark from 5 onwards so it's worth going to bed early tosee some of the morning the net day.

we set off for another 6k paddle at about 9 the next morning (much later than all the sensible people but it did mean that the river was very peaceful once again) we found our way to the appropriate walk way that was to take us to a sand patch in the hill which is basically a desert in the bush just sitting on a hillside. ) anyway we parked up and waited for the French who had stopped off for a river swim despite the threat of JAWS.

it was just as well we waited around in the end as this is the point of our trip where we made the papers! That's right! the papers!

2 Australian couples moored up whilst we were organising our stuff and one of the ladies in the party feinted to the floor. Her husband got understandably flustered and also went white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. fortunately Philippe had his mobile and a signal in the middle of nowhere so we called the emergency services and dowsed the ladies burning brow with damp sarongs. she was soon feeling better but a helicopter still had to fly in and remove her to hospital. when we reutrned to base camp the next day we saw the newspaper mentioning the air rescue and it said "a call was made to the emergency services" that was us! fame i tells ya.

anyway when the excitement was over we walked for 90 minutes to the sand bank and ran around on it like a big sand pit , just us there , really odd place but really beautiful. ( You could check it out on google earth if you like, type in upper noosa river, and sand patch and you might see it!)

stopped for a corned beef sandwich ( corny beef as the french call it - havingnever experienced it before - lucky them - although actually they really liked it - weirdos) and then headed back in order to get the paddle out the way again before it got dark again.

we manged the row back pretty quick and had time for a sunset dip which was nice being as it was a few days since we had seen a shower. we even managed to put some vege curry on before it went too dark. We were lucky that we had hidden our rubbish in the morning as rogue iguana's and these crazy wild turkeys had raided the camp site during the day and snaffled any unguarded food or scraps. we saw a big lizard 3 or more feet long , he was nice. we saw some great birds as well and some flying fish loads of nature, all good.

early to bed again as we were supposed to be back at the meeting point at 9 the next morning which meant doing all the paddling we had done day one by nine o clock. we got up just after 5 and packed up the tent grabbed a snack and set off, paddl;ing like demons. we arrived at the meeting point at 9:04 record time! the rest of our party showed up about 10:15 whcih gave us time for a sit down before returning to camp. The FRench girls though were very enthusiastic and deicded to row down the river back to camp. as we watched them organise themselves into a two person kayak jennifer said do you think they will be alright, just as diane took ahead first dive over the side into knee deep water causing much hilarity. Fortunately they were fine and returned to camp a few hours after us.

we were lucky that night in that Alan (one of the guys in charge of the camp) cooked a camp meal of potato veggies and lamb chops (he used to be a pro chef) and the food was great, saved us cooking. then we watched a film with the gang and wearily went to bed, knowing the next day would bring an overnight bus journey, and probably little sleep...