Noosa Blue Skies

We've been spending a good deal of time in Noosa, Catherine's current home town. Her father, Phillip, owns a resort here, called Noosa Blue, where she's the General Manager. It would be an understatement to say that the resort is a luxurious spot to stay a while. The decor is modern, the aesthetic and feel are light and airy, the pool is warm, the drinks are cold, and the beach is a mere hop, a short skip, and a soft jump down the road.
Noosa itself reminds me a lot of Santa Cruz, save for the fact that the ocean is about 10 degrees warmer, shimmering in all of its teal glory. The town is much smaller, and not nearly as bustling as Santa Cruz, but it's got some of the same sort of feel, what with its cute little esplenade areas, very similar vegetation and weather, and pristine beaches.

We've been making good use of the beaches, "lying out", bodysurfing, and praying to Neptune for more and bigger waves. All in all, our stay thus far has been very comfortable and quite breathtaking, and I'm finding that I could spend a lifetime on the Australian coast.

Fraser Island

Tim took a lot of fotos of me taking a lot of fotos on Fraser Island. These are my favorites.

Fraser Island, Day 2

The next day we headed back out to Eurong and down the beach, driving south to pick up the ferry back to the mainland. A couple of times we stopped and farted around, taking pictures and the like.

Once off the island we drove past Rainbow Beach, where the sand blends in hues of red, orange, yellow, and every mix between. We stopped to have a look at the Cherry Venture, the aging skeleton of the ship (wrecked) buried in the sand.


We took another ferry into Noosa, and got a good five minute carwash. Not sure if I mentioned it yet or not, but driving on the beach is fun...

Fraser Island, Day 1

We spent the last couple of days up on Fraser Island, up off the coast a short drive from Noosa. We barely made it onto the island in the first place. We were jamming up there Tuesday afternoon, and the odds of us making the last ferry were looking very slim. So Catherine called ahead, threw on her best phone voice, and finally the lady at the other end said they'd hold the ferry five minutes for us. (Gawd, Dido is the all-time favorite singer in Aus). Well, five minutes had passed, and nearly ten, but Tim was still cruising at upwards of 150 kms/h to get us there, all of us holding on for dear life. We made it. Beautiful.

So we get out to the island, find our rooms (Catherine's been giving us the grand tour of Queensland's 5 star resorts), take a swim, have some drinks by the pool, stuff ourselves with wonderful food at the restaurant, and pass out for a good 12 hours.

The next morning we headed out in our rig for a tour of the island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. So, imagine if you will, if someone took a sand dune and a jungle, mixed the two well, and splattered the resulting mixture on a large canvas. That's Fraser Island. The roads are all sand tracks, in varying degrees of dryness, and are one way for the most part. When you come upon a vehicle coming at you, one or the other finds a sandy pullout so the other can pass. The whole island is a park, so the vegetation is largely undisturbed. We found Hoop Pines, Paperbarks, Scribbly Barks, all sorts of trees totally new to us.

We went first to a beautiful lake called Lake McKenzie, which has the whitest sand imaginable, and has two shades of blue, one light and one very dark and deep.

I dove in, opened my eyes, and found myself at the edge of a steep drop into the darkest blue I've seen that could still be called blue. As I was swimming alone, I couldn't help but be freaked out by this, so I got back out onto the safe, visible white sand.

We left the crowd at McKenzie and headed for another lake, called Birrameen.

There were only a few folks there when we got there. We walked around through the plentiful reeds in the warm shallows for a bit, then decided it was time to head out to the coast and up the beach for lunch.

Eurong is a small town on the beach, and consists of a petrol station, a bakery, and a hotel. This was the sight that greeted us when we got there:

As described, the island is wholly sand, so the only way one can hope to get anywhere is in a 4 x 4.
We got some caffeine pumping in our blood, and headed down the road and straight onto the beach.

We went up to Happy Valley for lunch, and had to turn around directly afterward in order to get down the beach to a road that would take us back to the resort before high tide rendered the beach impassable.

Birds Stealing Eggs

Cute story. So I'm sitting outside at breaky(fast) with Catherine. The breakfast buffet was included with our rooms, so I'd loaded up on scrambled eggs and some toast. Well, the eggs were putrid, so I slid them to the side and went back in for some fried eggs. When I came back, this bird hopped up on the table, and was eyeing my first plate of eggs. I tossed it a piece of toast, thinking (logically, no?) that birds wouldn't be interested in eggs for breakfast. I mean, I guess some birds are known to steal the eggs of others out of their nests, but I'd always figured this was a competitive move, not a means to an end of hunger. So this little bugger's not into the toast at all. He swoops in, beaks a large hunk of scramblers, and plops down on the chair next to me to pick it apart. Before long, another bird's come along. Before we knew it, there were three different types eyeing the eggs. So the little guy/girl from before hops back up, and his/her friend joins him/her, and the two start doing a b'fast dance all over the eggs, tossing them all about, and managing to peck a bit of the mess into their feeding beaks. Their beaks were covered in eggs. It was a real hoot. When we left, I noticed that there were birds scouring the floor of the inside dining room. I mentioned this to the staff, but they said it happens all the time. Out of all of the wildlife we've seen on this trip, the birds have been the most prevalent, and I dare say the most quirky and amusing in their entertaining behavior.