OzExperience, Gold & Sunshine Coast

Surfers Paradise, quite a deceiving name. From what we understood from our OzEx driver, not the best spot to surf. This didn’t really bother to us as we already had our fare share of surfing. We were quite surprised to see the huge amount of high rise buildings in Surfers Paradise. There were a lot and they are still building. Apparently, the night life over there seems to be good. We didn’t check this out as we were looking forward to a good night sleep in a proper room. We only stayed there for one night as we weren’t into clubbing and also not so much into amusement parks. The first day we arrived it rained quite heavily. Luckily this ceased the next day, and we enjoyed a long walk along the beach. The beach was nice but I wouldn’t go surfing there with the little experience that I have. The waves were quite rough. What I liked a lot was that there were a lot life guards sitting there and putting flags where it was safe to swim. One other nice thing about Surfers was that they have the only Hard Rock Cafe left in Australia, so I could add another souvenir shot glass to my collectionJ . In the evening we got picked up by OzExperience and continued our journey to our next destination, BrisVegas – Brisbane.

Brisbane was less than 2 hours drive from Surfers which was good. We stayed at a hostel which was very conveniently located right in the middle of the city.  From here we went for a stroll in the city at night which was nice. The next day we had to fix our Chinese Visa, as Brisbane was the last place in Australia where we could fix this. Luckily, the consulate was just around the corner from our hostel and we got this sorted quite quickly. The only down side was that it was twice as expensive to get this the next day. The rest of the day we wandered around the city, walked along the river and eventually went to China town there. This was quite different than what we had expected; especially after experiencing China town in Sydney. We got there around 3pm and couldn’t find a restaurant open at that time to have lunch. Yes, I know that is late for lunch. At the end we found a Thai restaurant which was open and had some lunch there. After this we walked around and found a very fancy bar with an open roof. This was a really nice place to have a drink, so we had a Mojito there. The Mojito was good, but not as nice if I would have made myself J, but the atmosphere there was great. As the walk to China town was much longer than we had expected, we decided to take a metro back to our hostel. I must say I was very pleased with the public transport system in Brisbane; this was really good organised. Later that night we enjoyed a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. It was Friday so you could notice that the weekend had started as it was very busy on the streets. The next day we decided to go to Lone Pine Koala sanctuary and see some Koala’s. Despite Lone Pine being a Koala sanctuary, they had pretty much all native Australian animals there. We got really close to kangaroo’s, emus and also got to cuddle a koala, which was good fun. Lone Pine was a nice day out.

Back in the city besides getting dinner we didn’t do much as we had to get up real early the next day. Our bus was due to leave at 6:30 am. That is real early! We got up at 5:00 am in order to make sure we were in time standing in front of the bus. This wasn’t really necessary as the bus driver himself, only got to the bus around 6:35 am moaning that it’s hard to get up at 6:30 am. So if you do the math, he only got up 5 minutes before?! Anyways, it was time to say goodbye to Brisbane for now, as we would fly back later on to catch our flight out of Australia to Japan. Our next destination along the coast was Noosa, with an optional stop at the Australia Zoo. We weren’t feeling like going to a zoo again as we just had spent a nice day at Lone Pine, but since this was Steve Irwin’s place we decided to make the stop. This was well worth it though. This zoo does not only have a good variety of animals but also is a nice place to walk around. It was in a way double up, as we already had seen the majority of the animals at Lone Pine, but we still enjoyed it. Especially the crocodile show was great. Like Steve Irwin would say, it was ‘crikey’! From the zoo we took a complimentary bus to Noosa Beach.

Noosa was not a big place, but still had a nice atmosphere and nice beach. We stayed there for 2 nights and this is where we stayed for the very first time in a dorm room. This was because there were no doubles more available. Luckily, they checked us in a room with 4 beds, so we only had to share the room with 2 other people. Our roommates were two young Danish guys who were really nice. They had travelled as well to New Zealand prior to coming to Australia, so we had some experience in common. We didn’t do much in Noosa and just spend our time there enjoying the beach. After relaxing in Noosa, it was time to catch the Oz bus for our next destination which was Hervey Bay, from where we would catch a ferry to Fraser Island for 3 days.