Noosa is situated in the Sunshine Coast area of Queensland, a beautiful and very classy area where a lot of Australian families come for their holidays, and where you can do lots of surfing and watersports, and shopping. Jeff had been in touch with family members who emigrated to Australia many years ago, so we decided to look them up whilst we were in their neck of the woods and meet up with them for the first time. We called in on Jim and Helyn, and had a nice chat with them about their family and their life in Australia and they put us up in one of their gorgeous holiday apartments that they own (their business is holiday lets) which was very generous of them. We highly recommend the Metzo in Noosa! They suggested we have a wander down Hastings Street (the main shopping/eating street in Noosa), and a drink at the surf club, which is by the beach and has a lovely veranda where you can eat, drink and watch the world go by. After that we came home and they cooked us a lovely steak on the BBQ - it was so nice to have a home cooked meal, in someone's home!

The following day we did a coastal walk along Noosa Heads through the National Park, which was hot, but we had lovely views of the area, and got to see lots of little coves and beaches. We followed it up with an ice cream and a swim on Noosa beach to cool down. It was gorgeous. The water was warm, and there were lots of people in the water swimming, surfing and body boarding. We returned to the town centre again in the evening, getting the ferry from the apartment to the centre. The ferry takes you past lots of nice houses on the waters edge, many of them worth millions of dollars. As Noosa is a very upmarket town, there are lots of celebrities who have houses around here, and Helyn told us that it is quite common to be walking down the street and see a celebrity. Richard Branson has a little island in the area, and owns a fruit juice shop on the high street, and can apparently sometimes be seen working behind the counter!

We decided to explore the area a bit more the next day, so we visited Eumundi, a small town which is renowned for its markets. The markets are huge and take up literally the entire town, and you can spend hours wandering around the stalls and browsing. We then went on to Montville, a pretty little town with quaint tea shops, craft shops and lots of tourists. It was a hot day again, so on the way back to Noosa we stopped off at Coolum beach for a swim. The beach was very nice.

After another night at the apartment it was the end of our Noosa stay, and after saying our goodbyes to Jim and Helyn we travelled south to Australia Zoo in Beerwah, where the late Steve Irwin worked. The zoo was very big and had a good variety of animals there, and was quite interactive. We arrived just in time for feeding the elephants, so we fed two of them, and then went to the 'Crocoseum' to watch the wildlife show. They brought out birds and snakes first, before bringing out a crocodile, demonstrating how powerful they are by feeding them from a raised platform and also from the edge of the water. The sound of their jaw snapping shut around a piece of meat gave us goose-bumps! We also got to see tigers at the zoo, as well as cassowaries, kangaroos and koalas. We had a good day at Australia Zoo - you can easily spend an entire day there.

We are now back in Brisbane again, and we pick up our campervan tomorrow to start our drive down the coast to Sydney!