Surfers, Brisbane and Noosa.

From Byron it was off to tackville, I mean Surfers Paradise! The beach really is fabulous but you can hardly see it for all the high rise buildings all over the place, definitely not our cup of tea!

We only spent one night here and we decided to go out on the town. We met a "lovely" guy in the hostel before we left. He actually seemed really nice. He asked could he have a walk around with us the next day before we left as he hadn't seen any of the city so we said no prob! Well, it turned out that he was a total WEIRDO!! He started off by telling us how he had been done for ABH (actual bodily harm), then about his licence had been revoked for drag racing, followed by how he had trashed a tattoo shop because the guy hadn't done his tattoo correctly!! Needless to say we were so glad that we were getting on a bus that afternoon!!

Onto Brisbane we went. For the first time since we had started travelling we hadn't booked accommodation in advance and we had awful trouble that morning trying to get somewhere. We actually thought we'd have to sleep in the transit centre! We didn't know that the tri-nations rugby match between Oz and NZ was on that night in Brisbane, so we definitely picked a good weekend to go there as it was hopping!! We went out to a pub to watch the match but didn't stay out too late as we were getting up early to visit Steve Irwin aka the Crocodile Hunter!

We had a great day at Australia Zoo and it is definitely worth a trip for anyone even remotely interested in wildlife. There is plenty of interaction with all the animals, there are plenty of shows, and the thing we thought was brilliant was that the bigger animals are not actually kept in the enclosures all the time. They are only brought here during the day for certain periods of time. The rest of the time they are kept in bigger paddocks. The Tigers for example have a whole island to themselves! The Irwins are pumping billions into this venture and in 5 years time the zoo will consist of approx 350 acres! Crikey!!!

From Brisbane we travelled to the picturesque seaside resort of Noosa. This is a place you could spend weeks in, just relaxing and eating in all the lovely restaurants. We stayed in the fabulous YHA here. It's a historic building and it really was gorgeous.
Unfortunately we only stayed here for one night, we would have loved more time. We did a fabulous walk through the Noosa national park. It's just a total chill place. Go There!!