Cast my mind back to Byron Bay...

We had planned to spend our second day in Byron relaxing on the beach and were contemplating this over breakfast in our very random, slightly alternative hostel (The Arts Factory) when we noticed that you could actually make your own didgeridoo. So, we spent most of the day scraping away at a very hard branch of eucalyptus! The guy who was helping us make the 'didg' had lived with aboriginals in the bush for a few years; he actually makes ceremonial didgeridoos for the tribes themselves and even had ceremonial scars across his chest. It was good fun and cool that we got to make a souvenir with our own hands (even if we can't play it!)

The next day we headed North again - this time loaded down with even more baggage. We have got passes for the Greyhound buses travelling up the coast, so we just book seats in advance and jump on and off as much as we want. We headed to Brisbane, where we met up straight away with Manfred. We first met Manfred whilst travelling through South America and he is the coolest fifty-something year old you could wish to meet. He picked us up in his Landcruiser and took us back to his island. He lives on a small island off the coast of Brisbane - its called Coogiemudlo (I think) and you can walk around it in an hour. Manfred has got a car on the mainland and on the island and you just hop on a little barge over the water. It was so relaxing to spend a couple of days here because when you step onto the island you kind of just slump your shoulders, slow the pace down and have another beer. Whilst based on 'Coogie' we checked out Brisbane, which is a really nice, modern, clean city. We reckon it would be a nice place to live but doesn't have too many tourist attractions. We also had quite an ordeal trying to post home some excess baggage and our new didg - hopefully it will arrive in one piece.

Manfred suggested we check out Australia Zoo on the way North and so he drove us to catch a courtesy bus which took us out to the zoo (Cheers Manfred for letting us stay!). Australia Zoo is famous worldwide, mainly because of Steve Irwin (Crocodile hunter, recently died). It was slightly weird, seeing lots of promotional material and videos starring Steve Irwin and also the memorials and flowers that have been left. The zoo is great fun, but is very much a showground for visitors, rather than a safari park style place. We watched a show in the 'Crocoseum', fed kangaroos and stroked koala bears etc.

From Australia Zoo, we got the bus up to Noosa. Noosa is a really modern, seaside town which is nice but has nothing much to offer apart from the beach and some restaurants.... We quickly identified when we started up the East coast of Oz that there isn't actually much to do here apart from sun, sea & beach. Every backpacker does exactly the same thing as the next man and its almost like you can second guess someones itinerary before you talk to them. With this in mind, we wanted to break up the beachy stuff and so took a canoe on a three day trip into the Everglades. The first night was spent at a bush camp, which was quite an eye opener. The guys that were running the place were basically country hicks with quite a few common genes between them and I thought Sarah did quite well to chat to them and put up with the less than five star accomodation! Early the next morning, we got our canoe, loaded it up with all the supplies we had bought and set off paddling. We had to battle across a couple of lakes before we reached the Upper Noosa river which flows through one of only two freshwater Everglades in the world (the other one being in Florida). It was so beautiful and peaceful. The water has been stained by the tea tree oil and is black, which means that you get the best reflections ever - neither of us had seen anything like it before. First thing in the morning when the river was perfectly still, it was like a perfect mirror laid out in front of us. We camped for two nights out in the National park right by the river. On the second day, we paddled upriver for a couple of hours and then took a walking track out to a huge, windblown sandpatch. We made the mistake of not taking enough water on the walk and it got a little scary... 3 hours walking through the bush, in the most intense heat, when I thought my head was going to explode! On the way back, we had to rashen ourselves to a sip of water every 30 mins! Anyway, we survived and went for a refreshing swim in the river when we got back (we braved the bull sharks!). The trip was great and we enjoyed getting out of the rat race for even a short time.

Back in Noosa for just one night, we treated ourselves to a swanky restaurant meal - this was a very belated part of Sarahs birthday present so was outside of our normal backpackers budget! On the road again the next morning, we travelled to Rainbow Beach. Rainbow Beach is a very small town but is one place where you can hop over to Fraser Island from. Fraser Island is the worlds biggest sand island and is a favourite for camping/off road trips. We met up with nine other guys and got a briefing on the island and our newly acquired 4x4. We went shopping for all our supplies for a three day trip, took the ferry over to the island and were off. This was great fun, cruising up the beach at high speed. I really enjoyed driving the pretty treacherous road out to Lake Mckenzie - a 14km track through deep sand up and down hills. We camped in the heat and battled off the insects (huge) and the dingoes (go home dingo! go home!). We went swimming in the freshwater lakes and the Champagne pools and saw sharks and turtles from Indian head point. It was good fun, meeting some cool friends and playing 'bullsh!t' till late.

We are currently in 1770 (yes there is a town called 1770); got some more fun stuff lined up this afternoon and then a dreaded night bus tonight! See ya, RJW