We left Brisbane in a hurry. You'd think that having to get on a bus at 6.30am would mean you wouldn't encounter problems getting in the bathroom in the morning. But we did. Ended up with about 15 minutes for us both to get ready and out. I was most annoyed when I saw that the girl who had been holding us up was leisurely boiling water on the stove!

We were driving to a little place called Rainbow Beach, but stopped off to look at the Glass House Mountains on the way. One of them looks like a gorilla, not in that everyone says it looks like a gorilla but can't actually see it way, it really does look like a gorilla! Unfortunately we could only get photos of the back from the lookout point so I can't prove it to you. Also drove past Australia Zoo, which is still advertised with massive images of Steve Irwin. I imagine he draws in as many visitors now as he did alive. We stopped for an hour or so in a lovely little town called Noosa. Clearly a slightly wealthier Australian holiday destination that your tpyical backpacker place.

I'm not exaggerating when I call Rainbow Beach a 'little' place: it has a population of 900. Imagine living in a place that small. Dreadful!!! We went on a guided bush walk that afternoon, to the Carlo Sandblow. Our guide told us there was a steep climb to come. I didn't really think anything of it, but wow, I should have done! We had to scramble up this ridiculously steep sand dune thing to get to the top. It was soooo much effort, and definitely had me regretting my decision to stop going to the gym! But worth it. We walked across the roof of sand towards views of the ocean and double island point (which isn't actually an island) and I lamely made a comparison with Shantaram (the greatest book in the world for those of you STILL haven't read it - you know who you are!). One of the attractions of coming up here was the chance to see the coloured sands. Not coloured like a rainbow, as the name suggests, but still more exciting than normal sand. The colours flow from white to yellow to gold to orange to red, and when you remembed that it's all just sand it's quite amazing. We were told the Aboriginal version of the story, in which a young girl falls in love with the rainbow, something else happens which I don't remember, then the rainbow and a baddie have a fight and the rainbow shatters into millions of pieces, thus the colourful sands. The realistic version is that the sands are covering an ancient forest and the minerals have made the sand that way.

We sat with the group on top of the sandblow to watch the sunset over the bush below. Truly beautiful and our first proper sunset in Australia! We're both looking forward to more in Asia. I got a bit carried away taking photos, so you'll see many very similar ones on facebook! The journey down to the ground was so much fun. I had been wondering how you manage to get down something so steep without falling fat on your arse, but it turns out it's very easy and a lot of fun - we just slid down through the sand, with our feet, ankles and half of our calves buried. It was great! And the sand was sooooo warm once you below the surface.

We had a break from Rainbow Beach for Fraser Island (which warrants a blog to itself), but had another 2 nights at the end. Finally we made it into a good dorm with a really fun group and spent a gooned up evening with them playing drinking games...ring of fire is never the same without you guys back home though! Our final day was pretty much dedicated to baking in the sun. The beach at Rainbow is so nice and chilled, far fewer people and just generally really relaxed. As we were packing up to go in search of ice cream we noticed our Candian friend from Brisbane - I love how you travelling allows you to meet people, lose them, meet them again.