Right, I now have to try and remember what we've been up to for the last week or so since I last updated the blog.

After revisiting Cairns we spent a night in Bowen and Rockhampton, two places that not many tourists visit (probably as there's not a lot there) as we were trying to break up a 28hour journey to Brisbane.

Bowen is a very small town which was just about to come into peak season when we arrived as "fruit picking season" was about to begin, which attracts all the backpackers and apparently it attracts quite a few retirees from Victoria in May as they want to escape the wintery weather in the south. Bowen has some stunning beaches which we visited on our first day there, though we weren't too keen on venturing into the water as we noticed the council provided a large bottle of vinegar to neutralise jelly fish stings. Nice.

On our second day in Bowen we made the slightly silly decision of walking over 6km along Bruce Highway to see The Big Mango of Bowen. Bowen is apparently famous for its mango growing and murals (I'll get to the murals later) and in celebration of the mango they made a big mango statue and put it by the tourist information centre just outside Bowen. Why you would put your tourist information or a mango statue just outside the town and not in it is beyond me. Maybe to challenge travellers like us. Anyway, after an hour of walking we realised we'd possibly not made the best decision, but didn't want to give up so we trekked all the way there being honked at by truck drivers. At some point maybe I'll put up the photos of us and the mango. The mango is a big controversy in Bowen, as some argue it has been put up upside down. Now, as far as I can tell it's a bit like arguing over which way is the right way up to display a potato - is there an upside down? The people of Bowen argue there is with mangoes, apparently.

Now onto the murals. As it was Saturday in Bowen everything was obviously shut by midday, and we weren't back from our mango trip till after midday! So we had hours to kill until our coach that evening. The only thing open seemed to be old men pubs and the supermarket, so we decided to entertain ourselves with The Mural Challenge. Bowen has 24 murals chronicling its history on walls around the town (although only 20 are official commissions). We went around town finding the murals in order and photographing them, though we only got to 20 as the last 4 were at the other end of town and we needed to go and pick up our bags from the hostel. Once we had our backpacks we were a bit limited, so went to the pub, then out for pizza for dinner, and then tried to go back to the pub, but it was shut...At 9:30pm on a saturday night. Buzzing town.

Rockhampton was bigger, but that did not mean better. Arriving on a Sunday was a big mistake as everything was shut. We had to walk in the baking heat to get to a supermarket on the outskirts of town (we couldn't get a bus because public transport doesn't run on Sunday!) We did a lot of walking in Rockhampton as our hostel was on the other side of the river to everything. As everything was shut we went to the pub for a "pot" of beer. While we were sunning ourselves a couple of journalists from the local paper (The Bulletin) approached us. They were doing a survey of what season people prefer - summer or winter. They took our photos and the next day we were in the paper, photos and all with our stunning quotes. James and I both chose winter (why are we visiting Australia!?), James commenting on how much he loves snow (which they get a lot of here) and I mumbled something about being cosey and wrapping up warm. Very eloquent! Our second day in Rockhampton saw us visit the Botanic Gardens, which seemed to have a lot of spiderwebs in it which we kept walking through and getting in our faces, and the Rockhampton Zoo, which is tiny. Loads of birds live in the gardens/zoo and there's loads of bird poo on the floor and it smells horrible and you worry that birds are going to poo on your head. It's not a good place if you have a fear of birds. At the zoo we saw our first koalas and heard the noise they make, which is a bit like a pig oinking and someone snoring. It's weird and not pretty. We also visitied the line of Capricorn, which was exciting as it was a bit like Greenwich, in terms of the line thing. There wasn't an observatory or anything.

Next stop was Buderim, where James' Stepdad's cousin, Rachel, took us in. It was really nice to be in a proper home again and Rachel and her family were absolutely lovely and really welcoming to us. Over 4 days in Buderim we visited Underwater World, where we saw stingrays bigger than James and otters who waved, we went for a walk in the rainforest of Buderim and went to Noosa National Park, where we tried really hard to see koalas but didn't and I hurt my neck from looking up in the trees all the time. We also saw our first Australian Football League Match on TV. It is ridiculously complicated to understand and the pitch is huuuuuuuge, it's a cricket field.

We continued south to Brisbane where we spent 3 days. Highlight of Brisbane was Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary beacuse I held a koala (see the photo at http://www.koala.net/photo/2004000891en.htm). He was very cute and fluffy, but heavy. We spent the entire day at Lone Pine watching koalas, feeding kangaroos and wallabies and watching the birds of prey show. We also saw 2 koalas having sex. James was very disappointed that the tasmanian devil and echidna weren't there when we visited. We learnt that baby koalas eat their mum's poo to get the bacteria they need to digest poisonous eucalyptus leaves. Other things that happened while we were in Brisbane were that our bread was eaten by mice. They kindly left enough however, for us to have toast and make sandwiches for lunch. We visited GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) on the very pretty south bank. We saw a really interesting exhibtion by Pierre Bismuth, who had something to do with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He had one media piece where he had taken Disney's Jungle Book and used all the different dubbed versions to create 1 version where all the characters spoke different languages. He chose the language that he felt particularly epitomised the character. We spent a bit of time in Brisbane's Museum, but it wasn't very interactive and we'd used up all our "grown up attention" on GoMA, so after testing whether we can jump as far as a kangaroo (we can't) we left and went to see Brisbane's city Botanic Gardens (it's pretty much just a big park).

From Brisbane we travelled to Byron Bay, where we are now (thank God, I'm nearly finished writing this and you've nearly reached the end!) We ended up staying about 15miles outside of Byron as accommodation here is pretty expensive. We stayed in Lennox Head and our hostel provided us with a free shuttle bus to Byron twice a day, which worked out really well. We booked onto a 3 day surfing course, which means 3 half days really. Spent our mornings out in the surf, battling against massive currents and rips just to catch a wave and get flipped off our boards! And then spent the afternoons wandering around Byron, seeing the lighthouse and walking to Australia's most Eastern point. We'll put up photos of us surfing at some point (hopefully). Tonight we're getting an overnight coach to Newcastle (James' request), where we hope to visit a vineyard and maybe continue surfing. We are both shattered from todays surfing. The current was ridiculously strong. I'd get half way out to where I wanted to catch waves from, get hit by a big wave, lose my footing and then just get dragged back to the shore by the current. James seemed a bit more adept at getting out to the waves than me, but we both managed to stand, speed up and turn and progress onto smaller boards! Gnarly!