I was excited about visiting Byron Bay, as everyone we know who has been here has raved about the place. Australia's original hippy haven, Byron has now become more developed but still a great place. The locals have managed to keep some of its original appeal and restricted too much development. And they have stopped MacDonalds from opening up there too.
We stayed in a place called the Arts Factory Lodge, which retained some of the town's original appeal with an arthouse cinema, yoga classes, digereedoo lessons etc. The place is so in tune with nature that our double bedroom was actually a tent on a little island the hostel had in its gardens. It was very comfortable but we couldn't help to be a bit paranoid with all the venomous creepy crawlers that were surely waiting to get into our bed. The garden was more like a forest and we had our fair share of 
wildlife on our doorstep, including this frog who was busy munching insects on the boardwalk most nights. One morning Vania managed to get stung by a caterpillar (yes, even they are viscious stinging machines here!) but was quickly reassured by someone at reception that it was harmless. The mosquitos were out to get us but we put our stock of repelling coils to use. One night I woke up to this acute sound in the tent and was trying to figure out what was going on when Vania jumped up and started opening all doors and windows. I had never seen her wake up this fast! It turns out our tent had a smoke alarm which was sensitive to the coils smoke (even when they are burning in the tent's entrance)... Fortunately it was not connected to the central fire alarm system or 
we might have woken up to find our tent being drenched by the local fire brigade! Finally there was this massive lizard which silently hung around our tent, perfectly camouflaged by the dead leaves. It seemed to be enjoying constantly making us jump when it suddenly sprung away.
Whilst relaxing on the beach on the first day, we watched as a big flock of sea birds collected out to sea and the lifeguards started rushing around before shutting the beach. A large school of batefish had arrived, attracting the birds and also some sharks. After much activity involving lifeguards zipping around on jetskis, the sea was reopened although we were a bit more apprehensive about going back in. The lifeguards said that the sharks are far more interested in schools of fish than people but Vania refused to believe this without proper scientific evidence!
Byron Bay is so relaxed that we started our day with Yoga classes. We spent the evenings in a great pub overlooking the beach, watching the final rounds in the Australian Open and supporting Djokovic. When I suggested watching Sharapova v Ivanovic, Vania was less enthusiastic though!
On our last day we finally made the long walk up to Byron Bay's Lighthouse. Sunset there was quite good, in particular since the sun actually managed to come out between rain downpours. It was a long walk so we rewarded ourself with a really good curry afterwards.
Our next stop after Byron Bay was a quick overnighter in Surfers' Paradise. Surfers is the original purpose built Gold Coast resort. If Brisbane is the self styled BrisVegas, then this is the Gold Coast's version of Bognor Regis! It's everything Byron Bay wasn't - big, loud, lots of skyscrapers and large resorts. And what they don't tell you, is that the surf is pretty rubbish here. When dreaming up the resort in the 60s, the name was chosen as there was an hotel with that name and they couldn't find anything else about the place that sounded good. What I don't understand is given that Australia has about 25 billion miles of coastline, why would you park yourself on a 3km strip of beach filled with rubbish and lined with skyscapers?! So what were we doing here you ask? The main reason was to visit the water slide park 25km away, which involved a fairly painful journey on several buses to get to. When we were dropped at neighbouring Movie World and told to walk along the highway, it started to hammer it down with rain. Vania was looking particularly unimpressed with my idea of going to the theme park at this point, and was complaining about getting wet until I pointed out we had our swimming stuff on and were going to some water slides anyway. When we finally arrived, we found the place fairly empty and with a variety of great slides. One in particular involved the two of us on a large dinghy being dropped into a large cone shaped slide and whizzing about before crashing into the pool at the bottom. It was years since I'd visited one of these places and at happily lost myself in youthful abandon in the park. I even had a childish strop when they shut one of the rides!
We boarded another Greyhound Bus and headed to Noosa. The bus drivers here wear tailored shorts and very long white socks, which appear to get longer the further north we are heading. At this rate the Cairns bus driver will be just a couple of big socks holding a steering wheel. We stayed in the Halse Lodge YHA in Noosa, on the promisingly named Sunshine Coast. This was one of the best hostels we have stayed in, housed in this 100 year old Queenslander building, with a aussie style barbecue, free wine on the first night, surfboard hire and good rooms.
We were looking forward to a couple of days on the beach, what with it being called the Sunshine Coast. So much for Sunshine Coast, it was pouring down with rain for most of the time! After this and Surfers' Paradise, I am starting to get distrustful of the names of places in Australia. Anyway, Noosa is a very nice upmarket resort, and I was more than happy to spend the two days surfing and making use of the hostel's boards. Despite the bad weather, initially the waves still weren't that good. Vania did a fine job of catching my skills on camera, although the video of me wiping out spectacularly was cut short as she was laughing too much to continue filming!
We then reluctantly left Halse Lodge and Noosa and made our way up to Hervey Bay, gateway to Fraser Island. Bye for now,
Tom
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