Catching Up!
My, my are we behind on these!!! Elee’s blogged all about Fraser Island (which was awesome), so I guess I’ll bring you up to speed from there!
From Hervey Bay we packed up our stuff and drove down the Steve Irwin’s Zoo just out side of Brisbane. The zoo was fantastic, full of all sorts of random animals I’ve never seen before. There we keepers in the tiger enclosure playing with the tigers - who seemed more active, happy and engaged than any other creatures I’ve ever seen in captivity.
There was Koala patting and a really good informative talk along with elephant feeding sessions (though we are already elephant pros after our experience from Thailand). There was also a magnificant show featuring birds, crocs, reptiles and more which was just incredible, plenty of videos to go up about that. It was a brillian day, with loads of great pictures and vids.
Then we pressed on down through Brisbane, stopping at the maritime museum which was a little dull, but we didn’t have much time. We got to explore an old warship which was quite interesting, before we set off south for the fabled Surfer’s Paradise! The first thing we did here was run into the sea and get battered by some pretty fierce waves for an hour or so! Following that we explored the town, found the Hard Rock Cafe and planned our trip to V-Fest the next sday (Saturday 29th March).
Wow! V-Fest was just amazing. The rain held off for most of the day and we saw a few smaller acts, then Duffy, Razorligt, Snow Patrol, Madness, the Kaiser Chiefs and The Killers. Right as the Killer’s came to the anthem that is Mr Brightside, the heavens open and we’re all drenched in warm rain for 3 minutes of awesomeness.
After trudging back to Surfers, soaking wet, we kipped overnight and found a campsite to sort our clothes out. We then bought a 2D pass to Australia’s largest theme park with an adjoining water park. 2 The theme park was pretty good, with notable rides includingh the Tower of Terror (where you are launched at 156km/hour up a vertical tower) and the Big Drop (where you are released from the same tour at the top and freefall for 3.4 seconds!) Vids to come!! The water park was great fun too even if the weather wasn’t too accommodating.
We then pressed south to Byron Bay, beached a little before getting bored and pushing south to camp in Mosquito City. I got fed up at 5 AM, drove out to a beach and we spent the last few hourssleeping there. We then pushed further south to Coff’s Harbour, where we holed up in a campsite away from the rain again. We were actually 2 days behind a serious flood as we made our way south, with roads just reopening, buildings being completely gutted and loads of the attractions having been closed. We did however manage to go taboganning at the Big Banana!
From Coff’s we moved south again (noticing a pattern) into Port MacQuire which was a beautiful town with a fantastic Irish bar. We watched rugby union, league, soccer and some AFL before driving to an industrial park and kipping up! Next stop was Newcastle, an incredible industrial city, which is the largest exporter of coal in the world. Trains about 2-3km long just FULL of coal were pouring into the docks and loading up rows of container ships. We went round a small ww2 fort (the only one to fire at the Japenese in WW2 (th missed)). The next day was a morning stroll along the pier in Newcastle before heading to the Big Cheese : Sydney!
We arrived there on Sunday evening, finding a gorgeous tourist park which is just a 30 min tube ride out of town. Yesterday we headed in and did the classics, bridge and opera house, walking across the bridge and climbing to the top of one of the supporting pylons. This cost us $10 (£5), doing the “bridge climb” and going about 15m higher would have cost us $179. Crikey.
And here I sit on the morn of the next day, ready for our second day of “the greatest city in the southern hemisphere”. I’ll get some more media up tonight, hopefully some pics and even a few videos!!
PS - Wordpress has gone haywire and I can’t see what I’m typing very well, so apologies for any typos!
