April 25th - 29th

So at some point over the total drunken weekend in Brisbane we'd decided that Matt and Oli were gonna travel with us as we were all heading up to Bowen anyway. So we left Brisbane about 11am on Sunday morning (Anzac Day) and headed off to Bribie Island where we planned to spend a few hours just chilling out on the beach and then heading off to our intended destination, Glasshouse Mountains! Bribie was quite nice, it was good weather and we chilled out for a few hours but then when we got back to the car it wouldn't bloody START! Well, the enging was revving but it wouldnt' actually start *properly* Arghh.. luckily Nic had joined RACQ while we were in Redcliffe so we gave them a call and they came out about 40 minutes later, but couldn't start up the car unfortunately. He ended up towing it to the nearest RACQ garage, but because it was Anzac Day weekend nothing was open til Tuesday leaving us two days to kill in a place we never planne to stay in in the first place.. pssht! Also, because the car was in a secure lockup we had to grab as much as we could out of the car and cope without the rest!


(Burying Oli at Bribie Island)

Ended up staying at Robs for two nights - he was a diamond. We used all our camping crap and crashed out on the floor, after getting very very drunk on the Sunday night. I had a horrificly BAD HANGOVER on the Monday morning. We ended up spending all day on the beach which worked out pretty well, I slept off my hangover and finally got a bit of a tan on my legs whilst the other guys went swimming and stuff. Monday night everyone else drunk whilst I stayed sober, still wasn't feeling 100%. We played some more cards and had a bit more of an early night. Tuesday morning dawned and the garage finally opened! We headed off to get breakfast and some shopping whilst they sorted the car out. A nice bloke who worked in the garage gave us a lift down to the shopping precinct bit, and then picked us up again when we'd walked half the way home and he drove past! Thank god, it was a pretty immense walk. Anyway when we got back the car was fixed, woohoo! We then headed off to our next stop, Glasshouse Mountains (where we'd originally planned to rock up to on Sunday night, eep!)


(Me at the top of Mt Ngungun)

Got to the Glasshouse Mountains pretty quickly and headed off to Glasshouse Mountains Holiday Village, one we'd found in our Queensland Caravan Park Directory. Was dead cheap, $70 for 4 people for 2 nights - $8.75 a night! We then headed off to the Glasshouse Mountains themselves - first to the scenic lookout point, and then to Mt Ngungun which we proceeded to climb. God damn this mountain climbing thing - for a lot of the way up the path was pretty easy, but then we got to a point where it was dead steep and literally involved scrambling up parts! Me and Nic got stuck at one point but found another way round, and eventually got to the top and it was worth it - the view was epic! But then I found it ridiculously hard to go down, a lot harder than going up - I'm always scared I'm going to fall! So anyway it took me a while to get down, all the while with Nic holding my SLR and documenting the funniness with about 50 million pictures (which we later realised had been on a dodgy setting and so were all PITCH BLACK).


(Australia Zoo!)

Headed back to the caravan park for another night of mooching about and playing of card games, what we'd do without that pack of cards I'll never know! Tuesday was also mine and Nics first night of actually sleeping in the car - Matt and Oli used the tent that Anna and Ryo had donated to us, and me and Nic folded down the back seats of the car and crashed in there. Its not the most comfortable thing ever but it'll do, for the moment its so much cheaper than getting a caravan or a room and I have practically *no* money so cheap = good! We did also have rigged up curtains on the windows that Nics aunt had sorted out for us, but they all ended up failing miserably so now we have no curtains lol but feck it, we'll live.


(Kangaroooo!)

Wednesday dawned and we went off to AUSTRALIA ZOO, I've been looking forward to it for so long and it didn't disappoint! Amazingness, we got there for pretty much park opening time (9am) and stayed for most of the day. Normally the entry fee is $57 but we got in for $49 each thanks to Nic's RACQ membership - whoop! Its damn expensive but totally worth it. Inside the drinks and food are also really expensive too, luckily we'd brought a lunch with us.


(Koala Bear!!)

We managed to see about 99% of the park, or so it seemed, and a few of the shows too. One show was in the 'Crocoseum', where Steve Irwin used to do his crocodile shows, and featured loads of different animals like elephants and a ridiculous amount of birds, as well as crocodiles, obviously! Good fun! Another show we saw was the tiger one, and that was awesome. There was three tigers and three trainers, and they were messing around with toys and stuff in a swimming pool. One of the tigers was really playful and kept doing these immense jumps into the pool chasing after the toys, I tried to get photos but sadly think I failed! Bah! I think the tiger show was definitely one of my highlights of the zoo, but the whole place in general was pretty amazing. Seeing all those different kinds of animals (and trust me there is LOADS) is awesome, and they're not kept in piddly little cages or anything like that, they all have these vast habitats and its just generally amazing. It didn't hurt that we went on a really nice day, the weather was lovely! We also headed over to the Wildlife Hospital, which we'd paid $2 to pop in and have a sneak peek. You don't get to see a lot for the $2 but it goes directly towards the hospital itself so I thought it was worth it - we saw a turtle that had been operated on that morning, and a bunch of koalas who were recovering. You can pay to have proper full tours of the hospital too if you want to have a proper look around, but we weren't feeling that flush!


(Awesome jumping tiger in tiger show)

We also ran into those pesky canadians and the one english guy again from Stanthorpe, (Neil, Steve and Matt) who we also ran into in Byron Bay and then NOW we've seen them in Noosa as well! Damn people are blatantly following me and Nic. Argh.


(Epic crocodile)

Anyway so back to Wednesday, we headed home from the zoo and chilled out for a while, and then down to the kitchen for another night of card games and merriment. Its pretty awesome travelling with Matt and Oli, they're such a laugh and so chilled out!



Thursday morning came and we left the Glasshouse Mountains to travel to sunny Noosa! We've actually ended up in Noosa Heads rather than the main bit of Noosa itself but its all good. We're staying in Noosa River Caravan Park which literally is right on the river and theres also a little bit of beach, basically about a 30 second walk from where our car is parked - epic! Currently my eyes are playing up a bit again so I'm avoiding the water but tomorrow I think a dip will be necessary. The view is lovely and the water looks so blue! Anyway after we rocked up here we went into the town bit for a while, picked up some shopping and explored a little, and now we're back chilling out.