Noosa on the Sunshine coast

Getting into Noosa on ye olde Greyhound (all of which have a number plate which says 'XXX DOG'!), Basil, Eric, Ollie and I made ourselves at home. Ollie and I got a nice 4 share dorm, which is always good.

Attending a meet and greet sort of affair, I started talking to a late-middle aged Texan guy who became some one to avoid over the proceeding days. I can't remember his name, it may have been Ted, it's almost irrelevant, but he turned out to be running away from the US because they were trying to draft him and his 'superior jet engine engineering skills'. Unfortunately he was the sort of guy who would keep talking, however many times you drop hints to end the conversation. After a sub-par introductory meet and making a new acquaintance in the common room, we set about seeing the town in dark.

It was a nice place, and evidently quite a prestigious area for the richer Ozzies - the high street was filled with haute cuisineries, expensive wine shops and boutiques of many shapes and sizes. We fitted in between Hugo Boss and a champagne shop at an Ice cream shop. Buy One Get One Free on some really nice 'screams helped us get into the feel of the place, for sure.

Back at the hostel, which was a beautiful listed early 1900s wooden building, we met some of E and B's dorm room mates that we ended up hanging out with a lot, who had some of the 14 beds in the 'Conference Centre' room, a separate out house supported over some awesome looking Jungle Book-like scenery. I saw a bush turkey trying to rest on a branch, which was quite funny, in the middle of this mini forest. They're big old animals which don't really have the gift of delicacy or agility, more suited to chicken (and turkey...) like behaviour.

We started making some food, when I was trapped by Texas; he was standing at the entrance to the hostel; I needed to go in past him to get to my room! Cornered on the ramp leading to the reception, we/he started talking about how we should all be microwaving clothes because chips are being put in our clothes to monitor us and our movements. And how we should always argue against what we're being asked to pay - 'why should we pay what they want?' We should be being charged $7 a night here, not $27. Its because of the taxes and all of the hostels ganging up on us, of course. He proceeded to tell me that the reason I wasn't totally buying his theories was that I was naive! And stupid!! I would someday realise what he was saying. I found that a little bit insulting, naturally, but he was still talking!! Ollie walked by me, smiling. And didn't rescue me from this fat American.

Eventually I managed to walk away, still saying 'yeah, sure' and 'oh, right' to everything he said, until I was out of sight. Score! Freedom! My pasta was mushy, though.

I was looking forward to a 3 day 2 night kayaking trip in the Noosa Everglades to the north I got free in Sydney for booking 2 things with them. Phoning up the company, I was informed that I'd have to wait 15 days to get on the trip! Stuff that! It might have been free, but they should really get some more Kayaks if there was this wait in the off season.

The following day we hit the beach. I think this was one of the first tropical-ish beaches I went to - clear waters, cool fish, tropical trees bordering the beach, magical green headlands sticking out to the south/east and bright sand that makes a funny squeaking sound when you scuff your feet. After a few false alarms of big rain drops and grey looking clouds, we started beaching properly. Going for a swim in the clearest waters so far, we started seeing fish swimming not 2 feet away from us! These were about 10/15 cm long and striped. Staying still in the shallows for long enough, these fish started swimming around us and brushing against our legs, as if it was fashionable. They had amassed to a shoal of at least 30 fish by the time we started trying to catch the slow moving (fast running) critters. I touched a couple, but they're instinctive and sensitive, so this was an effort.

Going out after chilling out in the (Harry Potter(?!)) Convention Centre, which had a piano, we walked the 15 minute walk to Noosa Heads, the paupers part of the Noosa area. Entering the first discotheque, a place attached to a hostel called Koalas, I almost got punched. Apparently I was standing in front of some girl's way, and her boy/friend didn't like that, so I get shoved aside by some unseen force. Turning to face the force, I found a cropped hair, gold necklace wearing guy who was saying something unhearable over the music. As if it was alright, he patted me on the shoulder and placed his other hand around my neck. Not forcefully, but the body language was pretty obvious. Wierdo. I'm not exactly the person to go 'What you want mate??', but there were loads of other people in the club of a similar demographic. By this time we'd realised it was a crap place and it was shutting up anyways. We went home, because that type of people would be at the next place, too, and none of us were really feeling it anyway.

The next day we went to Sunshine Beach, a town and beach a bus ride away, with Tommi, Andy and Izzie, Eric and Basil's roomies.

What a cool beach! Big old waves and water that got deep enough for nice waves only a 5 metres from the shore. Renting a couple of surfboards from the local surf shop, I tried surfing for the last time in Australia. It was largely unsuccessful aside from a couple of waves; trying to body surf the fairly large waves was creating more success. Knackered and with bruised shins and stories of pointed boards flying past heads, we returned the boards and relaxed on the beach which must have been 5 miles long and largely uninhabited. What to do?? We thought. Dig a hole! So we did, over a metre quarter deep and bean shaped, it was a good hole. I think we discovered oil.

Noosa National park was on the list of things to do. Ollie and myself made a day of the large nature reserve, and walked it the following day. It featured brilliant rocky little coves inaccessible by man, clearer waters than legally allowed and some amazing wildlife that just jumped out at you, in some cases. I saw a huge goana on one of the tracks - it was a 2 ft black and yellow lizard that looked like a croc without the scales. It jumped off the path, which made us see it, and just slowly walked back to the bush, gifting us a good look at him. We also saw a big turtle in one of the coves, just swimming about solo, looking for chow.

After walking for a few hours, we came across another big beach (just another soft sanded, warm watered one). After sitting down and relaxing for a few minutes, we saw a man in the mid distance walking the shore. I thought he must be wearing a beige set of shorts because... Coming closer, he turned out to be starkers. Yes, we'd stumbled across the only nudist beach for hundreds of kilometres either side of us.

"Crikey, Its gonna be a big day!" I said the following morning. Ollie and myself were off to the famous Australia Zoo, aka Steve Irwin's Zoo. It was blooming cold at 6.30am when we left - I think I was on the verge of illness, so I wrapped up in shorts, 2 t-shirts and a beenie. After boarding the huge shuttle bus to the zoo and watching a (frankly depressing) video about Stevo and what he's done, we arrived at the zoo, which is in the middle of blooming no where! Apparently there are ambitions to expand the zoo from its current 72ha to 1000ha. Wow, that's a lot of animals.

The current amount of animals was amazing for one day. After a pose with a bronze Irwin statue, we watched some cool otters chasing each other around and preempting their feeder/demonstrator's movements. They've escaped before, apparently, using team skills to make a branch-bridge to leap out of their enclosure at night and steal other animals' food, jumping back before dawn. The only way the zoo keepers found this out was the poo they left around. Clever, eh?

The highlight of the whole zoo is the "Crocoseum" a 5000 capacity arena with display space for birds, snakes and crocs in the middle. The keepers were getting the crowd excited. "Shout if you're from England!!!.... Canada!!!.... Australia!" after which one man shouted "....INDIA!!!" in a moment of quiet. Brilliant timing. After the birds screeched around at head height and the snakes did not much, the keepers coaxed a croc through the water and made it jump high in the air for the food he was dangling. Quite a good spectacle, to be sure.

Other highlights included some fat wombats that did nothing, and got picked up like big teddy bears by the keepers, seeing a leopard being taken for a walk, tiger cubs playing with the filter cover from their pool and feeding an elephant. Their trunks are strangely dry and muscular yet delicate.

There was a heavy emphasis on Steve and the Irwin family. A great wall of condolence and things devoted to steve was under the Crocoseum, which was sad. The amount of promo for the remaining family was weird, to the extent that their 10 year old daughter had a dance/exercise video out that had clips being played on the big screen in the Crocoseum. That kid's going to grow up messed up.

Noosa is a cool place that not everyone visits; its good to get away from backpackery places, and chillax after a big city. We ended up staying there for 6 nights or something at the end of which we were ready to move on, to the Fraser Coast! Land of sand, 4x4 trucks and baby-eating dingos.