The Camper Van Adventures..

Chapter 5.. 'As if we can surf...'

Who needs scuba diving when you can surf. Scuba diving is for wimps, anyone can sink to the bottom of the sea and swim about looking at fish. Surfing is much more skillful- practically the equivalent of walking on water. And we did it. We actually did it. Obviously we fell off a lot, got battered by waves, copped a few board bashes in the face and ended up having various embarrassing bikini malfunction incidents but we caught a wave, stood up and rode it.. more than once.. And all on our own. As my mother quite rightly pointed out when I told her this, I have trouble standing up without falling over on dry land, making it even more remarkable.

From Brisbane we headed further north up the Bruce Highway (yes, it's actually called that!) To Noosa. We arrived feeling the effects of having had too much fun in Brisbane (we are clearly too old to party with 18-year-olds these days). But Noosa is lovely- a really upmarket and stylish seaside town. Everything is really beautiful, the main street full of cute little boutiques, shops, restaurants and classy bars (we'll have to behave ourselves here!)
Everything is clean and new looking, palm trees line the streets and beautiful houses back onto the waters edge.

Obviously, as always seems to happen with us, the first person we bumped into on arriving in Noosa was the village idiot- a man walking round Woolworths wearing joke glasses and a big fake plastic nose. We were practically sitting on the floor wetting ourselves when we spotted him and then, noticing this, he started to pretend to pick his fake nose, which made us laugh even more. We have discovered that we tend to find everything doubly funny when hungover!
As if all that hilarity wasn't strange enough, on the way home we saw two people driving along the road on a scooter dressed in full on panda suits..how normal! Perhaps lack of sleep had gone to our head!

It was a quiet night for us that night ready for our surf lesson on the Saturday. Our two hour lesson was a Merrick surf school. We'd been told Noosa was one of the safest and easiest places to learn to surf because of some sort of complicated and technical sea current/swell/beach orientation malarky..and most importantly for us because it had shark nets! We were in a group with four other girls and taught by an English guy called Tim (who unfortunately wasn't the sexy surf god we were hoping for) but at least he had a sense of humour (unlike a certain scuba instructor) and thankfully this course didn't involve text books or homework. We had a brilliant time and loved every minute.

The next day, seeing we were now practically pro surfers, the plan was to head back to the beach, hire a board and practice our new found hobby. We woke up to glorious sunshine but by the time we'd had breakfast the heavens had opened and it poured with rain all day. So we had a little browse in the shops, a lazy afternoon with Dolly and treated ourselves. To a meal out- the first dinner we haven't home cooked since we've had the van!

We left Noosa on Monday morning bound for Hervey Bay, where our Fraser Island adventure would begin that evening.. And what an adventure it was...