View from our window: Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Australia. 9:45 am, 16 January 2014. View from our window: Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Australia. 9:45 am, 16 January 2014.
We drove up to Brisbane via the back roads rather than the motorway. A good portion of the road was actually built privately by the local Lion’s Club, and is now maintained at least partially through donations. It was really beautiful countryside, with rain forests and farmland interspersed. The road was almost incidental, and indeed there are no fences keeping the cattle off the road. The sounds were also incredible…we’re not sure what the birds were, but they had such a loud, piercing, mesmerizing call.
View from our window: Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia. 8:30 am, 15 January 2014.
We went down to Byron Bay, which is a quaint beachside town, although the water is noticeably chillier than it has been at points further north. We tried our hands at some surfing again (still incompetent), and otherwise just enjoyed being by the seaside.
Driving down the beach at 80km/hour.
For reasons related to our lack of planning, in addition to not sailing the Whitsundays, we also didn’t get to Fraser Island. What we did do was visit Great Sandy National Park and drove the beach highway to the headland. It was absolutely spectacular. How crazy is it that this country is so spoilt for beaches that it can turn some of them into highways and still have beach to spare?
View from our window: Noosaville, Queensland, Australia. 9:05 am, 12 January 2014.
Noosa! Basically just a nice beach resort north of Brisbane, but crucially, far enough south that they are not having a rainy season and there are no stinging nasties in the water. The weather was glorious, the waves were fun, and the sand was so fine it squeaks when you walk on it. We capped the day off with a delicious riverfront sushi meal and deemed it an all-round success.
So, we stopped at the Capricorn Caves on our long drive from Mackay to Noosa. This was a mistake. The caves are decent enough (you know, solidly cavey), but you can only see them as part of a guided tour, on which they managed to spend 80 minutes telling us things that could have easily been covered off in about 20 minutes. Painfully drawn out under any circumstances, but all the more so when you have ten hours of driving to do.
The rainy season certainly lived up to its name in Eungella - it rained and it rained and it rained some more. The good news is that duck-billed platypuses are more likely to come out on grey days, so we did see one of the elusive creatures in the wild, along with some rather less elusive bush turkeys. And then we got back in the car, drove back to Mackay, and went to the cinema (Philomena — pretty good, 4 stars).