Last leg in Oz

A bit out of sync, but thought we should have a quick tidy up of Australia. We had a good last few days - took in the 'Sunshine Coast', stopping in Noosa (lovely, but a bit posh!), Dicky's Beach (not so posh - not surprisingly, and rained quite a lot) and then a few nights in Brisbane, which we enjoyed. Damo clearly should have blogged about the weather earlier, because it spelled a change in fortune. The last two days were boiling. Almost too hot (although it doesn't take much to be too hot for us). We were very lucky to get a spot in our favoured campsite - we'd managed to coincide with the Queensland Caravan and Camping Show which everyone else on the site was VERY excited about. Turns out (from a conversation Damo had with the bloke next door) that you can spend a small fortune on caravans. Think he was a bit put out to hear how little we'd rented Krusty for. Mind you, I bet his oversized caravan didn't have ridges in the bed and smell like two vagrants had been living in it.

We stayed away from the caravan show and had a good look around the South Bank of the City, doing very cultural things: Brisbane Museum, where we played on the children's button pressing exhibits and looked at stuffed spiders (can you stuff a spider? might need to google that...); and Brisbane Modern Art Museum, where there was an interesting exhibition on China and links with Australia (and some notices meant for kids, but which made MUCH more sense than any notices I've read about modern art anywhere else in the world... but maybe I'm just a pleb).

We also had a trip along the river, walked through a very strange urban beach that smelt rather unfortunately of bird poo, (imagine Trafalgar Square with an artificial beach and pond, a bit unfair but the image is amusing non the less). The following day we dropped off Krusty and checked into a great hotel (a last minute dot com steal), then had a flying visit to North Stedbroke Island, were we packed an hour and a half with beach walking, cliff walking, and dolphin spotting, before getting the bus, ferry then train back to town. That evening we went out for a great meal in a Nepalese restaurant - complete with floor cushions. Mmmmm curry. Much as we enjoyed the campervan, it was luxury to stay in a hotel room - nice big bed, our own bathroom and a massive spa bath that we used to clean our walking boots for NZ immigration!

So that was Australia. Actually, that was only a very small part of it. Krusty had done 4,500 km in less than four weeks, and still when you look at a map, there is a lot more to see. We'll have to come back and check out the West Coast. There's a place called Katherine up north as well - hope it's not as wet as anywhere called 'Wilson' seemed to be. On the morning we flew out, there was not a cloud in the sky. Weather'll be on the up now then!