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Day Sixteen - July 22nd, 2013
Noosa
Ok, so the air bed, not so amazing. We woke up with our legs and heads in the air but our bums firmly touching the ground in the middle of the night, and quickly let the air out. There's a leak in it somewhere, and it makes sleeping rather uncomfortable. Back to the floor we go.
We tried to get an early start this morning so that we could take the car into a garage Elly had found, but everything seems to take a long time when you're living in a tent. We transferred all of our belongings from the Landy into our spare tent and stated the 5km journey. Very quickly we knew we would struggle to make it. We even had to pull over after 2km, put our hazards on and wait until the engine cooled a little. We then crawled the rest of the journey praying we would make it. We did - just.
The lady at reception said the mechanics were currently working on a big engine job, but we could leave the car and they'd have a look at it in the next few days. This suits us as we're in no hurry to leave Noosa and we want to make sure everything is ship shape with the car before we do. We therefore booked it in for a full service. The receptionist (from Yorkshire by the sounds of it) said there must be worse places to be stranded. We agreed.
Not thinking ahead enough to bring our bikes, we walked back to the campsite and had some toast for breakfast. We seem to go trough Vegemite at a rate of knots. We thought a mornings fishing would be good as it was a bit cloudy and we still had some pilchards as bait left over.
Obviously, after 3 days, the once frozen pilchards were in a bit of a state and had a rather serious pong. We persevered, but the fish were wise to us and stayed away from our stinky bait. Elly decided to take a cycle to the local bike shop (endless pleasure for him) and I sat and read my book by the lake as the sun attempted to poke through the cloud. An guy to my left was having more luck with the fish; we got chatting and I sat by him and learnt a lot! He lives in the mountains but escapes the winter by coming to Noosa for 2 or 3 months a year. He caught a few bream and 2 'big toadies' - puffer fish. He showed me their teeth and told me not to touch their spines as it will result in several hours of agony. To remove the hook, he laid it on the sand, gently put his foot on it and manoeuvred it out of its mouth. As you can expect, the fish wasn't happy about this process and retaliated by blowing up and making a high pitched squeak. Funny creatures.
Once Elly was back we had some lunch (more chilli) and got chatting to a guy in the kitchen. We'd seen him around the campsite, and Elly had identified him as someone who worked in Surf Dive n Ski in Manly, and had chatted to Elliot when he was shopping there once or twice. When conversation got flowing, it was apparent he'd recognised us as well and we had a good chat about travelling and heading back to the UK (he - Ben and his girlfriend Megan are English too) for Christmas. He's been away for over two years now, and is having trouble with his campervan. We bonded over car issues and enjoyed the company of someone facing similar situations to ourselves.
We bought some fresh bait (back to some reliable prawns) and were much more successful! 2 for me and 3 for Elly - including a whiting which is apparently delicious. Our spot started o get crowded, so we packed up.
We went out for a run separately, but Elliot ran past me at some point, and headed back to the campsite to re-jig the tents and make the pop up more waterproof by adding a tarpaulin. I'm glad we did, it's CHUCKING it down! Our dinner was even more chilli (hopefully we'll finish it by tomorrow!) and some good company in the kitchen from Sophie, Dorian and the ducks. It was possibly a mistake, feeding them bread, as they won't leave me alone. Elliot and Dorian chatted endlessly about Le Tour and Sophie and I got excited about the Royal baby - Kate is in labour! Bets are on a boy named George or a girl named Georgina.
The bad thing about tents is that once the light fades, you sort of have no choice but to go to bed - especially with this rain hammering down. But we are enjoying the early night and early morning routine; definitely a lot better than the very late nights at the restaurant! Hopefully the rain stops soon so I can dash to the loos and brush my teeth!
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