In England our Parkrun starts at 9am . In Brisbane it was 7am, we had to allow 30 minutes to get there so an early start. However not so early as Tammy and Dave Swann friends from Witney Road runners who have been travelling for 9 months and have now settled for a while near Brisbane, they got up at 4.30 to meet us for the parkrun!
It was lovely to see them again and here their news. The organisers of these runs always ask if there are any newcomers and where their usual Parkrun is, so there was us from Oxford and another lady from Portsmouth. The run was hot and about 400 runners but we did OK Graham 1st in his age category and I was 3rd,
We got back to the hotel packed up collected hire car and set off north. It seemed to take ages to leave Brisbane and our immediate impressions was that Australia roads are similar to the USA.
It was good to get away from cities and we diverted on a scenic route past Glass House Mountains, which are volcanic outcrops and named by Captain Cook as he sailed by. We stopped at the coastal town of Moolooaba with such a cool name it had to be a cool pace with boats, surf and of course shops and bars . We carried on further north to Noosa where we planned to stay, however being Saturday and good weather everyone had come to Noosa for the weekend . Eventually we found a nice holiday apartment and decided Noosa was so lovely we needed to stay 2 nights. Noosa has surfing beaches , lovely lagoons, fantastic houses with their own pontoons, a national park and also loads of roundabouts which all look the same so we kept getting lost.
The evening entertainment was on the beach watching the local Pelican chasing the seagulls, and the children chasing the Pelican.