leaving australia – the last few days.

4th – 12th august

I headed to noosa on the greyhound bus, which was pretty uneventful, but I did get to see the last half hour of the film cool runnings. I arrived in noosa at about 3:30, went to the hostel and checked in before checking in for my kayaking trip. I then went shopping for heaps of food for kayaking, and then I went back to the hostel for dinner before sitting sat the hostel bar with some of the girls from my room (not drinking goon though – couldn’t quite face it after fraser!)

I was up early the next morning, as my pick up was for 8am. I got on the bus to be told that people had dropped out, so there were only 3 people leaving on the trip that day, which was me and two german boys. We arrived at the storeroom, and picked up our barrels to put our clothes in, tents, burners and all the other gear that we had to take with us. We then drove to the beach where I had my final ice cream (its was about 9:30 in the morning, but I wasn’t going to have an ice cream for 3 whole days!!) before getting a boat over to the other side of the river, to the information centre.

At the information centre we had our briefing, and were given maps of our route, before being left on our own. We had a three person open canoe, and as a practise we paddled around the island next to the information centre, I was sitting at the back, and the seat was slightly higher than the other two seats the boys were on, which meant that every time they moved, I felt like I was about to fall out of the canoe, as we were sitting rather low in the water. After about half an hour, we arrived back at the information centre, which was quite quick considering we managed to get a bit stuck in some shallow water about halfway around the island, so had to get out and walk pulling the boat for some of it.

After arriving back at the info centre, we loaded up the boat, and it was packed!! We had no legroom, and the tents were balanced rather precariously on top of the barrels, so any sudden movements and they would have fallen off! At about 11:30 we set off for the campground. We had a paddle around, and paddled around some of the estuary before getting to fig tree point, which was our stop for lunch. We set up lunch on a picnic bench, and heard a rustling in the bushes, we waited to see what it was, and it was a rather large and ugly looking goana, who had obviously noticed that we were there, and was after our lunch. We  were sitting at the picnic bench, and the goana decided that it wanted to come over and try to smell my feet (not sure why…) so we all ended up sitting on the table, as they can get quite vicious if they feel threatened.

After lunch we had a lazy paddle of about 5km to the campground, which we made take about 2 and a half hours, as we floated for most of it. We also took a detour to see lake como, which looked like a big lake, but we did see some bushfires. We arrived at the campground at about 3:45ish, and unloaded the boat before setting up camp. I then had a sneaky nap for half hour, by which point the group that had left the previous day had got back (we camped at the same place for both nights) It was about 5pm by this point, so was starting to get dark, which meant it was dinnertime! I cooked myself some pasta and sauce with bacon and veggies, but I kinda overestimated the amount of pasta I needed, but ate it all anyway. I then had a caramel slice for pud, as they were on offer in woolies when I was shopping. We sat around for the rest of the evening, where it got quite chilly, especially as we weren’t allowed a fire as we were camping in a national park. We headed to bed at about 10pm, which felt like it was much later than it actually was.

We woke up at 7 the next morning, as the other group were packing up to leave. We had brekkie, I had porridge, which was much needed as it was rather chilly as the sun hadn’t come up and made everything warm yet. We left the campground at about 9ish to paddle upstream to campsite 3, which was 6km away. The paddle took us about an hour, where we had a quick snack break before starting the 6km walk up the hill to the cooloaba sandpatch. We then walked around the sandpatch for a while, before finding some shelter from the wind and having lunch. It was then a walk back across the sandpatch, and back down the hill to the river.

The paddle back felt like it took ages!! We were really tired, and so kept having rests, so the paddle probably took about twice as long as it did on the way there.  I was also sitting in the middle, which was heaps more work than sitting at the back, but was more stable. We made it back to the campground at about 4:30, and sat around for a but with the other group that had arrived before I cooked my dinner of chilli and rice. Bedtime was about 9:30, as it was even colder than the previous night.

Our final morning started at 7, with the aim of leaving at 8. We left almost on time for the 6km paddle back to the information centre. The paddle was pretty uneventful apart form the german boys deciding that they really didn’t like canoeing that much, and speaking to each other in german for most of the way. We got to the information centre at about 9:30, where we were picked up in the boat to take us back across the lake to the mainland. I got to drive the boat on the way back, which was pretty cool. It was then a matter of cleaning and drying our gear before getting dropped back at the hostel at 11:30.

I showered and sorted myself out before heading into noosa for the afternoon. I met up with alex m, who was up in queensland for his masters research. We spent the afternoon together sitting in the sun before going out for dinner, as we were both too lazy to cook! We then went to a bar afterwards that did oyster shots, ie a bloody mary shot with an oyster in it. I can’t say I liked it too much, but it was interesting. I was shattered, so it was an early night back at the hostel.

The next day I checked out of the hostel and drove down to Brisbane with alex. We stopped at a few beaches along the way, all of which were really nice. We also stopped at a really random pub on the side of the freeway – Oz seems to have heaps of them! That evening we didn’t really do much, and I was feeling ill, so it was another early night.

Sunday we went to dreamworld, which is a big theme park on the gold coast, which is about a 45 minute drive from Brisbane. The theme park was really quiet, as its considered winter – but i was still quite happy walking around in shorts and flipflops! The good thing was that there were hardly any queues – so we got to go on everything. The best ride was called wipeout, which is like an extreme version of ramases revenge at chessington, as it tilts sideways and was heaps of fun.

Monday 10th – the day I left oz.

We had a bit of a lie in and packed before going into town to close my aussie bank account, giving me enough money to buy some breakfast! We then drove towards Morton bay and Scarbourgh, where we wandered around the beaches and sat in the sun. We had an early dinner of Morton bay bugs with chips and salad. Morton bay bugs are like giant crayfish, but are mean to taste more like lobster. IT was then time to head o the airport, as Alex was heading back to melbs and I was off to Auckland. We arrived at the airport and for once there were no queues, so we sat in the bar for a bit, using up the last of my aussie dollars. It was then time to catch my plane, and I went in with heaps of time, but then was randomly given an explosives test, which took ages, so causing me to nearly miss the plane as everyone else was really early for the plane.

I arrived in Auckland at about 1am local time (3am aussie time) and had a far amount of queuing at the airport, followed by customs that wanted to check that I wasn’t bringing any mud into their country on the bottoms of my boots, so I had to get out every pair of shoes for them to look at. They also split open the seams on my juggling balls to check what was inside them – I wasn’t impressed, especially as the tried to stick the split back together with a little sticker!

Eventually I got to the hostel a about 2am local time, and collapsed into bed.