After our overnight journey on the Greyhound we were feeling pretty good we both managed to sleep and the journey seemed to to quite quickly. We stopped for half hour break around 8am so I grabbed us a bacon and egg sarnie and an orange juice to share which went down a treat! We arrived in sunny Byron Bay around 11am, we got our bags from the coach and headed to a group of mini buses and looked for one with Cape Byron Lodge on which took us to our hostel. The hostel is okay not as nice as YHA's to be honest but its perfect for the night, we are in an 8 share and bathrooms are just outside so can't complain. We dropped our bags, changed, made some phone calls to confirm bookings for next few days the hostels and trips etc.. and then headed out for the afternoon. We did 3 hour walk around the coastal headlands to the most Easterly point in Oz and also up to the Cape Byron Lighthouse which was cool. It was pretty hot day but we really enjoyed our little exploring work, followed by a swim in the sea and walk along the beach to cool off. There are huge beaches here in Byron, big stretches on white sand and very good swell seas. We went for walk through the small town plenty of cafes, eating places and bars and some really cool shops. Byron is a very young hippy type of town which is cool I grabbed a burger and Gary got a Dominos for tea and we sat and chilled on the grass overlooking the sea really nice town. We then hopped on free hostel shuttle bus which runs throughout the day and enjoyed some chill time in our room to sort photos and things. Ahhh nice relaxing night and early to bed.

Next morning up and out of room for 7am got minibus from hostel back to bus stop and caught the Greyhound from Byron Bay to Noosa 7.45am arriving in Noosa 1pm. On the journey we stopped at Brisbane for 15 minute break Gary got us a Macca's for breakie and dinner while I popped to Greyhound desk to see if my hat was found and left at the station after our bus journey the day before but no luck :( There was a mini bus for us at Noosa stop so we jumped on and were taken to Nomads Noosa but unfortunately we couldn't check in until 2pm so chilled in the bar area and uploaded some photos and did some jobs. Then at 2pm we joined the queue to check in, it took us over an hour to do so, it was 3.15pm when we finally got into our rooms and it was such a hot hot day we were melting and by that time couldn't really be bothered to do much so we chilled in room. The hostel is really nice, way better than Byron Bay Lodge, room is a 8 share but very spacey and we have our own bathroom and shower. There is a bar and nightclub, pool, beach volleyball, kitchen and common area and a good location, close to Main Beach and Hastings Street to our left and Noosa Junction on our right. During our chill Gary surprised me with an early birthday present a day trip on Noosa River and canoeing down the Noosa Everglades it was a trip I had read about ages ago when booking our East Coast trip and we discussed doing the tour but thought best wait until the time to see how money was but he had booked it for us, how awesome!! Best boyfriend award :) super excited for tomorrow!!! That evening we strolled down to Main Beach and walked along main street Hastings Street, very posh type shops but lovely area. We had a funky ice cream made fresh and used liquid nitrogen to chill the cream. It was fresh, smooth and like magic to watch it happen yum yum. Then we had a meal out at popular chain over here in Oz, Hog's Breath Cafe, before waiting home and having an early night.

Tuesday 12th February was our Noosa River day trip we were up and organised and on mini bus to Main Beach by 8.15am. Walked 5-10 mins to Sheraton jetty and from there we boarded the boat onto the river at 8.30am. We cruised down on the boat for a good hour or so passing through 3 lakes one being the biggest tidal lake in Queensland. We stopped at a small picnic stop and had tea, coffee, biccy's and cakes yum yum before heading off out onto our 3 man canoes up 5km on the Noosa Everglades. It was so much fun, so peaceful, calm and quite tranquil. The water was lovely and smooth you could see your reflection in the water, I felt a bit like Pocahontas haha. It took us about an hour to do the 5km up stream after a fair amount of side to side paddle until we got on our way and once we had reached our stop it was lunch time. Good few runs and jumps into the water while we waited for food on BBQ to finish it was really refreshing and good fun, the water was orangey with tannin in and there was some pretty big catfish swimming around too. Our lunch was very gourmet, we had steak, sausages, salad, potatoes, bread, beer, wine, squash and even seconds if you wanted was really really nice. We had a wild brush turkey and a Goanna trying their luck with our food too joining in our picnic! After lunch some of us headed back on the canoes down to our first stop 5km away and then enjoyed the boat ride back to the jetty. We were out for around 6 hours it was so much fun and we had a good group of people mainly young English travellers like us so we got on great. We walked up to Noosa junction afterwards in search for a camera shop, our little blue digi camera has broken and so relying on our big Canon DLSR camera for all our photos which is great but we are not to comfortable carrying it on canoes, on beaches and its pretty big to fit in handbag so its nice to have both. We were able to get a camera exactly the same as what we had and it was on sale so happy days a successful mission :) Headed back to room, showered and changed and went to bar for our Fraser Island pre- tour briefing, filling in forms, paying a deposit and watching a very over dramatic video about sand driving on the island but it was good got us feeling very excited for our next 2 day tour and was nice to met people we are going to be spending next few days with, again mostly English. In the evening we headed back down to Noosa Junction only 5 mins away from our hostel had some dinner and bought some snacks for our trip and headed in room to get bags sorted ready for in the morning.

Fraser Island here we come.........