Onwards and Upwards

We continued our journey up the East Coast with Niels, Cian, Anna and Julia, our next stop was Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. We had been warned that it was very commercialed and built up but didn't really know what to expect. What we found was a major tourist centre, everything there was designed to help you spend as much money as possible. We stayed on a campsite across the road from Main Beach and it was the most bizzare campsite we had ever seen as it was surrounded by high-rise tower blocks! We stayed for a few nights and spent the days shopping in the town which wasn't actually too bad, and relaxing on the beach. The sea was really rough and powerful so I stayed away but the others had fun getting thrown around by the waves. While we were there we bumped into Barry and Laura (Craig's uni friends), which was quite random. The last night of out stay wasn't the best; everyone went out apart from me as I had mild food poisoning and Craig decided to leave a club early and walk home by himself and ended up getting mugged and beaten up by some idiots looking for an Irish guy. Luckily he was ok but it did leave us with a bad impression of the place (apparently it happens quite regularly).

After a couple of weeks camping we were delighted when Anna invited us all to stay at her Dad's house (a gorgeous Queenslander home) in Ipswich, 40km west of Brisbane. We had an enormous BBQ, Craig ate about 3 steaks, chicken, fish and heaps of sausages, then got an early night as we had to be up early to visit Australia Zoo (the Irwin's zoo). It was more of a performance zoo than just wondering round looking at the animals and it made a good change as we'd visited a lot of wildlife places! We saw loads of native Australian animals as well as otehrs from around the world such as wombats, koalas, dingoes, crocodiles, elephants and tigers. We saw a tiger presentation where the keepers demonstrated how they cared for the tigers and had a bit of a play with them and I got to fed an elephant. We also saw the crocodile (and other animals) show that Steve Irwin was famous for which was amazing. Birds were flying around us, elephants wandered round and crocodiles lunged and jumped for food. They also showed clips of Steve Irwin doing his animal stuff and outakes where things went wrong which was hilarious. All the presenters and keepers talked about him all day, it was obvious they all loved him. The only downside was that we didn't get to see Bindi...shame!

We said our farewells to the girls, who were flying down to Sydney the next day, and continued on to Brisbane. We thought Brisbane was like a smaller version of Melbourne and enjoyed out stay there. We did hte toursity thing for one day and looked round the National Library, Queensland Museum and a few other places. We also found time to watch a couple of rugby games in an English bar and take a swim in the public pool on the Southbank right next to the river. We also visited the snobbiest club ever during a night out, we were refused entry because the guys didn't have designer t-shirts and I had flip-flops on! Apart from that we enjoyed Brisbane, but a couple of days was definately long enough.

Cian and Niels had a Fraser Island tour booked so we made our way to Rainbow Beach, where the tour start from, stopping off in Noosa for a couple fo hours. It was pretty but very similar to all the other beach resorts we'd visited. Rainbow Beach was a tiny village with a couple of shops and a gorgeous beach beacked by colourful rocks which give the village its name. On the day the guys left for Fraser Island it started raining, which began a week of nearly non-stop rain. We got a left to the top of the Carlo Sand Blow in the pouring by a Canadian guy who obviously thought we were crazy and ended up getting drenched. It's basically a massive sand dune which has spread across the land and gives excellent views, or it would have it hadn't had been raining so much. The next day we walked down the beach and up the sand dune which was much more fun that getting a lift to the top.

Next stop was Agnes Water/Town of 1770 minus the guys, yes we were back to trusty Greyhound buses again! We stayed at a great hostel in Agnes Water run by a lovely guy called Paul (1770 Backpackers) and chilled out for a couple of days. In truth we didn't have much say in that as it continued to rain most of the time but it stopped lonog enough for us to take a FREE (!!) tour of the towns (they're 6km apart but so tiny they sort of join together to be one) and also to walk the 8km down the beach and over the headland to 1770. It was a pretty tiring walk as most of it was on sand but the views were great and we rewarded ourselves with chocloate milkshakes in 1770 then hitched a lift back to Agnes with a couple of surfers.

Our first over-night bus in months took us to Airlie Beach home to the Whitsunday Islands. We've found Airlie Beach to be similar to Byron Bay but more commercial but it has amazing views to make up for it, of some of the Whitsunday islands and lush rainforest, as well as a warm lagoon to relax in. The last surfing beach and safe sea to swim in was at Agnes Water as there as many many deadly creatures in the sea in north Queensland, so we were happy to have the safe lagoon to swim in (when it stopped raining). We both really wanted to do a day trip to the islands as they looked incredible but as we'd had no luck finding a job we decided we couldn't afford it. We'd been looking for weeks for a job but there had been too much rain and storms along the coast so fruit picking had been suspended. Also the national harvest line had been telling us there were no jobs around so we'd been getting a bit worried about money. In the end we decided to just phone the working hostels ourselves as the harvest people weren't very helpful and got a job straight away! We then realised we could afford to do a trip so booked onto a boat trip with snorkelling and rainforest walks and got really excited. Unfortunatley when we woke up it was pouring with rain and the trip was cancelled!

Bananas!

We were pretty disappointed about the cancelled trip as it looked amazing but at least we have a job!! We're travelling up to Innisfail tomorrow to start work on Tuesday. The only problem is, the job is BANANA picking!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's supposed to be hard work and I absolutely hate bananas, I hope they don't make me eat any!