After my stay in the Town of 1770 I headed south to Rainbow Beach to join a tour to Fraser Island. Had to wait a few days to get on one so had to spend a few days at Rainbow Beach. By chance people that I had met at the Whitsundays were staying at the same hostel so had great craic meeting up with them.
Next day went up the Carlo Sandblow which was so difficult as you have to walk uphill on sand - the sand is so soft that you take a step and your foot goes right back again... eventually we managed to get to the top and it was beautiful. We brought a bodyboard with us so sandsurfed! Rainbow Beach got its name because of its multi-coloured sand but to be honest I didn't see that many. There is black, white and different shades of golden and yellow but that's about it that I could see...
Had another day to spend at Rainbow Beach so painted a boomerang with local aboriginal artists. It took hours but was so much fun! That night had my briefing for the trip :) As I had signed up to a self-drive tour they had to go through safety etc. It made driving on the sand look very easy on the DVDs they showed us but it turned out to be a bit more difficult! The first few hours of the tour I wished I had signed up to a guided tour purely for the fact that they would have drivers experienced to driving on the sand! We got stuck in the sand and had to get out and push so often that we were nicknamed Team Push by another tour group! After a bit of trial and error we finally found a good driver in the team :) The camping was fantastic. The first night we stayed at a campsite and the second on the beach. The beach was fantastic - the night sky was amazing. We just lay on the beach for about an hour and looked at it. I'd never seen anything like it before in my life! The sights that we saw were so nice. Lake Mckenzie was beautiful and Lake Wabby was the nicest water I've ever swam in. On one side was a huge sand-dune and on the other was forest. It was so picturesque. We also saw a shipwreck that has been there for decades. The island is named after the couple that sailed the boat. The husband died but the wife survived and was looked after by Aboriginals.
After that I had booked to go straight to Brisbane but I was convinced to stop off at Noosa on the way. THere wasn't much to do there but it was nice to just chill out for a few days. I spent three days swimming and reading my book. They also had free canoe hire so spent one afternoon with a few people kayaking round the lakes. It was lovely as something different to do!
Landed in Brisbane on Sunday and decided to stay put for a while. A lot of people that I had met didn't like Brisbane but I'm not quite sure why. I might have had a different impression if I was staying at a hostel but I'm couch surfing here so I've met some really nice people and have been able to take things easy and I don't even really feel like a tourist here. Stayed for a four nights in the best house I've ever seen. It was a complete hippy house - one wall had handprints of all the couchsurfers that had ever stayed in the house. The sleeping area was just the living room which had a couple of big beanbags and that's the bed! There were 6 other couchsurfers staying there, one of whom I had met in Scotland three years ago! I'm now staying at another house on the other side of town. I have done a bit of sightseeing but I'm leaving on Tuesday so I reckon I need to get a move on and see the rest of the city before I leave! I went to visit my great-aunt who emigrated to Australia in 1950. It was so nice meeting up with family on the other side of the world and I think she enjoyed getting to see some family too because she's too elderly now to travel so she doesn't get a chance to see her family back home very often. Anyway that's about all from here. Hallowe'en tomorrow so have to get to work on my costume. Have been invited to a party so should be good :)
