Having left Fraser Island on the 10.30 ferry back to River Heads, we collected the car and made our way north to Gladstone, a rest point en route to Airlie Beach which is in the Whitsundays area and one of many departure points for the Great Barrier Reef.

We spent a pleasant evening in a very good apartment at Park View Motel in readiness for an early start on the 4 hour journey to Airlie. On the motel owners recommendation we ordered a chinese meal delivery which was excellent with a nice bottle of red.

Setting off at 9.00AM the next morning, Sunday June 14th, left us with a comfortable drive to get us to Airlie for a 2PM check in but I still managed to carelessly pick up a speeding ticket from a humourless police offer for driving at 92 in a 70 limit area. AUD 220. Damn it! You can be sure I was very careful to stay within speed limits for the rest of our travels!

We arrived at Waterview, a luxury apartment development, in time for check in at 2PM. The apartment was lovely, clean and modern and very well kitted out and in a superb position only a few hundred metres walk to the town and with great views over the town and the sea. The landlord was a very amiable and helpful soul and gave us maps and brochures and a run through the various attractions in town.

As a launching point for the GBR, this place attracts a lot of backpackers and there were lots of young Brits and other Europeans in town. Backpackers are fine by us as they are invariably good humoured and chatty and bars and restaurants set their pricing accordingly with virtually every establishment offering one deal or another of the happy hours, BYO booze or free drink with meal variety. However, with a super modern kitchen and a nice big supermarket in town we planned to cook for ourselves rather than eat out too much.

Airlie isn’t a big town but with nice residential areas and a modern harbour with harbour side apartments, it has a well heeled feel to it notwithstanding the backpacking fraternity. As always, facilities for leisure are excellent. Apart from all manner of watersporrts and other activities and trips available, the town offers a free swimming lagoon which is really excellent and especially for kids. A very nice place to sit out, sunbathe, swim and enjoy a picnic or a take away from the many shops nearby. In addition, there are the usual walking tracks with park areas provided with nice seating areas and BBQs.

Apart from cooking, the only thing we planned to do was a trip to Hamilton Island but the weather was mixed with sun, wind and rain for the most part and we didn’t fancy doing this in rough seas and rain; this and Ann’s poorly foot led us to give up on that idea – there would be lots of opportunities for water activities over the next several weeks and of course, as we travelled north we could expect the weather to improve and the ocean to be warmer.

So we had a very lazy few days in Airlie Beach doing nothing very much other than catching up on our “household” book-keeping and paperwork and some easy walking around the area. This is a beautiful spot with a great laid back feel.

Here are a few photos:

Our stay at Airlie Beach was very pleasant indeed. Yet another town on this coast we would love to re-visit one day.

Next stop Townsville for Magnetic Island!

We left the lovely Noosa for a two and a half hour drive to Hervey Bay around 8am on Monday June 8th.

Hervey Bay is the name of the bay which separates Fraser Island from the mainland by about 9 km.We would stay at the Kingfisher Bay Resort on the island and leave our car at Kingfisher’s mainland long term car park at River Heads where there is also a Reception Building and a mini retail park with cafe, supermarket and not much else.

The drive was uneventful but on this route we saw our first serious road kill of kangaroo – and lots of them. It was actually pretty scary as some of these animals are big and the thought of hitting one of these critters full on didn’t bear thinking about -one reason that at the outset we decided that we wouldn’t do any after dark driving here – especially on the Bruce Highway, the main drag up the East Coast.

Only 4WD vehicles are allowed on Fraser Island and if you want to take your own vehicle then you need to obtain a permit in advance. Although our Mitsubishi had 4WD capability, travel to the island was excluded in the hire conditions which is a pretty standard exclusion in the car hire market as accidents are a frequent occurrence .

We parked up and checked in and waited for the shuttle bus which would take us to the ferry.Whilst waiting we made use of a cafe for a coffee and a small supermarket where we stocked up on a few bits and pieces in anticipation of sky high prices on the island.Around noon a shuttle bus took us down to the jetty and within an hour we were disembarking at Fraser Island.

Fraser Island is an amazing place and we expected this to be one of the highlights of our trip. We were not disappointed.

Here are some facts about Fraser Island:

• The Island lies just south of the Great Barrier Reef
• The Island is actually the world’s largest sand bar being 120KM by 15KM.
• There is no soil or clay on the island and only a few rocky outcrops – and yet unlike on many sand dunes, the island is very largely covered in dense forest due to a fungi present in the sand which releases nutrients in a form that is absorbed by plants
• The sand mass has accumulated over 7oo,000 years, extends up to 500 metres below sea level and it is estimated that the combined sand mass above and below the island is more than can be found in the Sahara Desert.
• This is a heritage listed Island since 1992
• The northern half of the island is protected as the Great Sandy National Park.
• The island was named after Eliza Fraser, the wife of a ships captain and survivor of a shipwreck

A place of exceptional beauty, it has long, uninterrupted white beaches with sand cliffs, rainforests and numerous freshwater lakes of crystal clear water. There are huge sand dunes with the biggest reaching 240 metres above sea level and in places they have buried areas of tall forest leaving just the upper branchs of the trees visible to resemble petrified forests.

Forty perched dune lakes, such as Lake McKenzie pictured below, can be found on the island. These are freshwater lakes with crystal clear water are formed when organic matter, such as leaves, bark and dead plants, gradually builds up and hardens in depressions created by the wind.

A surprising variety of vegetation types grow on the island, ranging from mangrove and coastal heath to subtropical rainforests. It is the only place in the world where tall rainforests are found growing on sand dunes at elevations of over 200 metres.

A big variety of vegetation and landscapes:

There are more than 350 species of bird, 0ver 70 species of reptiles and 18 species of snake on the island. Over 40 species of mammal include wallaby, possum, bats and the infamous dingos – there are around 200 dingos and signs everywhere warning about dingo safety. The area immediately adjacent to the resort is alive with honey eating birds feeding on a variety of plants on the wetlands but especially the different kinds of banksia which proliferate. Unfortunately these birds are so small and fast we didn’t manage to get any photos !

The history of the Island is that this was aboriginal land but in the 1860s the aborigines were driven out when loggers arrived to log Satinay, a rainforest tree that only grows on Fraser Island and is valued because of its water resistant qualities. Satinay was used to line the Suez Canal. Logging ceased in 1991.

There are no sealed roads. All roads are of sand including the main road along the east coast which is actually the beach and also the “airport” as a few light planes operate from here providing scenic flights for tourists.

All the above adds up to a truly amazing place and luckily we chose to stay at Kingfisher Bay, an eco resort which would help us get the most from our visit.

Kingfisher was first developed in 1992 and comprises a large Reception, Lounge, Restaurant Building built on a forested wetland area. The resort has villas and hotel rooms all built in clearings created in the forest with a good deal of space in between the various buildings so that each villa or hotel room block is itself within the forest with the buildings connected by boardwalk. The buildings were constructed in materials sympathetic to the environment and built above ground level so that the wetlands and the flora and fauna exist as previously as far as possible. Permission was given for this development because of its’ eco-friendly nature and with various continuing undertakings regarding ongoing eco-projects, provision of eco-education etc.

We stayed for five nights, four full days, and had a fabulous time. The weather, whilst warm, was mixed and we had a fair amount of rain.

What was so good about this place, apart from the excellent accommodation and restaurant, was the activities laid on by a team of Rangers and others. There were a couple of quite pricey day tours available but in addition there was a programme of activities throughout each day which were either free or available at nominal cost.

Upon arrival on our first day we did little other than book an island tour and a few activities for during the week.We then enjoyed a nice lunch and a wander around to get our bearings. After a late lunch we didn’t bother with dinner but managed a couple of drinks on the Jetty Bar whilst watching the sunset.

We had an early start the following morning to join a guided bird watch walk around the resort, its’ wetlands and beach. Later in the day we did a Wallum Walk with a Ranger who explained the very unusual nature of the wetlands here, where banksia and other vegetation flourishes in nutrient poor sandy soils, swamp and wetlands subject to regular wildfire. Our afternoon was spent walking and fishing on the beach – a lovely day that was marred late afternoon when Ann stubbed her toe on a rock – this was still painful and difficult to walk on several weeks later.

On Day 2 we had booked a tour of the island but postponed this until our last day due to Ann’s injury. So it was a lazy day doing not very much at all although we did join a Bush Tucker presentation that evening.

The Presentation was a joint presentation by the Ranger and the Head Chef and it was to give an insight as to how the resorts restaurant incorporates bush tucker ingredients into its food. Apart from wild nuts, berries and leaves we also tasted crocodile, kangaroo and emu which was cooked by the Chef before our very eyes. The presentation and food were both excellent although we weren’t smitten by emu!

There was rain on and off throughout the day and became heavy through the evening and night. We went to bed thinking the island tour next day might but cancelled but miraculously day break brought sunshine which lasted through much of the day with only the odd shower. We did have second thoughts about doing the trip in view of Ann’s injury but we went ahead and it turned out to be an excellent day both interesting and amusing thanks to a very entertaining Guide. This was one of the absolute high lights of our visit to Australia.

We travelled by special 4 wheel drive vehicle across to the East coast on some quite hairy 4-wheel tracks and then along the beach road north stopping to look at notable features from time to time, unusual trees, plants, sand “rocks” and of course sand blows. After a pleasant lunch Ann managed to talk me into a scenic flight over the island in a ridiculously small plane during which I managed to put aside my fear of heights and enjoy the scenery.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the forest visiting and completing a short walk of an hour or so in the area known as Central Station which is the area which was used as base for the logging operations in the past. There is very little infrastructure remaining but its hard to see how many hundreds of men could be based here.

We returned to Kingfisher Bay around 4.30PM. A good day had been had by all.

We finished off our stay at Kingfisher Resort with a memorable Bush Tusker dinner comprising a multi course feast including a main course of kangaroo – all cooked using bush tucker ingredients. After a long day and a couple of bottles of wine we slept well!

Next morning we would continue our journey northwards. In the meantime, a few more random photos:

On Wednesday June 3rd, we drove the short distance from Peregian to Noosa after our one night stay at Peregian Beach Motel.

Noosa is the name of the area comprising Noosa Heads, Noosa Junction and Noosaville. We had been looking forward to this visit ever since we booked our accommodation at Sunset Cove as this is one of the main attractions on the Sunshine Coast with its upmarket shops and restaurants, beaches, rivers and parks.

Sunset Cove is small development of upmarket (boutique!) holiday apartments in Noosaville only 100 metres from the Noosa riverfront and a few minutes walk to the shops and restaurants – a great location. There’s a pool, spa, sauna and BBQ available in the tropical gardens and we loved the place as soon as we arrived.

We were early for check in but the Owner/Manager Steve had our room ready and we were quickly shown the ropes and given maps and information about the area. There was a great bus service around the area and a bonus for us was that a travel card we had bought for Brisbane could be used here and still had credit on it. Result!

We had booked 5 nights here and already wish we had booked longer but we couldn’t complain as this was only the beginning of a long beach holiday that would last until we flew to Darwin in mid July in almost 6 weeks time! The plan here was to do nothing other than a bit of walking, sitting, eating and drinking and we managed that without difficulty.

Here are a few random photos. Whilst its a lovely place to be, there isn’t a great deal of interesting architecture etc. It’s all about the river, restaurants, bars and nice shops. This is a place for “Ladies who lunch…”

Noosa Heads, Noosa Junction and Noosaville are not only connected by a great bus service but also  by the river and there’s a hop on hop off ferry going back and forth throughout the day with dinner cruises in the evening.

The ferry’s northern terminus is Noosa Marina is at Tewantin. This was within walking distance of our pad and a great place to visit with a variety of restaurants, wine bars and some nice arty shops. We attended a weekly market on Sunday with all kinds of produce on sale and a jazz band played on the day we visited. On another day we enjoyed a pocket-friendly lunch of fresh local fish. Fish and fishing prevail here as everywhere on this coast.

Noosa National Park has to be one of the most accessible, only a five minute walk from the main shopping area. As always there are walking tracks throughout the park and you can choose to have a short flat walk or a longer hilly one. This is an amazing place with fantastic ocean views and beaches if you want to stop to swim, fish or have a picnic. Apparently there’s lots of wildlife but we went late morning when there were lots of people around and not the best time of day to spot koalas and other animals which are apparently seen very regularly.

A few photos around Noosa National Park

While Noosa might be a jewel in the crown of this area, there are lots of little townships like Peregian Beach along this coast all with fantastic beaches. This was another, Sunshine Beach, a suburb of Noosa only a 5 minute drive south.

We had a great few days at Noosa. Definitely one of our favourite places and one we would love to return to for a longer spell if we ever get chance.

Next stop is Frazer Island.

Our drive from Coolangatta to our motel in the North Brisbane suburbs was only around 90 minutes and we left in good time to get there late morning. Although our unit wasn’t ready, we were able to leave the car and hop on a bus into the city at a bus stop just around the corner. We chose this location as being well outside the CBD to avoid traffic and to avoid having to drive into town as there are good transport links with bus and train services nearby and a journey time of only 30 minutes or so into the CBD.

The location turned out to be very good. Getting from A to B was indeed a doddle but unfortunately the accommodation itself proved to be the worst we had stayed in so far. To be fair the rooms were as cheap as chips and of course you get what you pay for but the villas had thin walls and were poorly fitted out and lacking any proper heating system – and by now it’s getting chilly at night.

Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and Australia’s third biggest city with a population of 2.3M for the entire conurbation. It’s a very modern city but with some lovely old architecture too making it a very pleasant place to visit with all thats going on here.

Our bus took us into the busy Cultural Centre Busway Station around noon. The bus station is so named as it’s adjacent to several significant cultural buildings such as the Museum and Science Centre, the Performing Arts Centre and Queensland Art Gallery. It’s also close to the attractive South Bank area full of bars, restaurants and leisure facilities.

We headed off from the bus station to cross the river but just as we were doing so were distracted by loud music coming from the South Bank. We wandered down to take a look and found a huge crowd of lycra-clad women of all ages ,shapes and sizes exercising in front of a stage to music and the instructions of a fitness instructor. We discovered that this was part of a series of free fitness classes courtesy of Medibank taking place over a period of months. It all looked like good fun but of course we weren’t dressed for it!

We re-traced our steps back to the Victoria Bridge to cross over the Brisbane River and the CBD first hitting Queen Street mall which is a lively pedestrian shopping area full of every type of shop, department stores, bars and restaurants. A great place to shop, eat or just hang around with a coffee to people-watch.

We did a quick tour of the mall until we found ourselves at the Pig ‘N’ Whistle pub in the very pleasant Riverside area. We stopped for a drink and ended up having lunch in this English-style pub where a signed and framed shirt of the famous England goalkeeper Joe Hart proudly hangs on a wall! We continued our wanderings after lunch and eventually, after booking seats to see Dirty Dancing at QPAC the following evening, we made our way back to our motel for around 7PM.

The following morning, Sunday May 31st, we made an early start into the city to do some more sightseeing before meeting up for drinks and lunch with an old friend Pete Critchley and his lovely wife Ginnine who emigrated to Brisbane five years ago.

We had a super afternoon full of nostalgia. A few scoops at Riverside first and then over on the Southbank where we were treated to an excellent lunch. We then had to say our goodbyes as Ann and I went on to the theatre to catch a very average production of Dirty Dancing.

On Monday we continued our sightseeing, walking miles from one end of the city to the other. By the end of the day we felt we had pretty much seen what we wanted to see and decided to move on the next day, a day earlier than we had planned.

A few more random snaps of Melbourne:

Our decision to move on wasn’t a difficult one given the evenings were now starting to get chilly and we didn’t relish the idea of another couple of cold nights at the motel. We tried to add an extra day to our forthcoming  booking at Noosa which was our next destination but there was no availability and so we ended up booking a night in a  motel, the Beachcomber, at Perigean Beach a small town just a few km south of Noosa.

So Tuesday morning, June 2nd, we checked out and drove the short distance from North Brisbane to Perigean Beach. The accommodation at Beachcomber was excellent. We arrived not long after noon and walked into town hoping to find somewhere for a late lunch. In the event we were now twixt lunch and dinner and most eateries were closed until 5.30 or 6.00 so we settled for a couple of drinks in the Beach Hotel and decided to order a pizza delivery later in the evening. The pizza, from Zachary’s Gourmet Pizza Bar, was delicious.

The next morning we would drive to Noosa.

We returned to Australia on a late evening flight to Sydney on May 21st arriving early on the 23rd to resume our journey north up the East coast. We caught on onward flight to the Gold Coast Airport which is just outside Coolangatta and very handily placed for our accommodation in Coolangatta itself a couple of KM away. A courtesy bus picked us up at the airport and we were in our room by noon.

Our accommodation here was a timeshare apartment at Beach House Resort. There is a lot of timeshare on the Gold Coast which is very much a holiday coast comprised of a 35KM string of beach resorts stretching from Coolangatta on the New South Wales/Queensland border in the South up to Southport, South of Brisbane in the North.

This Gold Coast is Australia’s “Party central” with Surfers Paradise being the capital. The coast is intensively developed with sky scrapers presenting a very distinctive and striking coastline and whilst surf and water sports are a major attraction, there are also theme parks, zoos, casinos, Sea World and all manner of man made attractions to keep the punters busy. It’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea and isn’t ours and so whilst we wanted to have a taste of it or at least see it, we had opted to stay in Coolangatta which gets a justifiably good write up as a quieter, family-friendly town.

Inland from the coast are of some of Queensland’s most beautiful National Parks and so there were opportunities for sightseeing away from the busy coastal fringe.

The Beach House Resort comprises a multi-storey hotel type property with a nice pool and other leisure facilities and a bar but no restaurant. The resort is a front line beach resort separated from the beach by a road and it shares the ground floor of the building with a variety of restaurants with a very handy underground car park which is free to residents.

Our room was a 2 bedroom, 10th floor apartment on the end of the building with views on 2 sides over a side street on one side and the beach on the other. The room was nicely furnished and very well kitted out with everything we could possibly need. This is definitely one of the best timeshares we have used.

The beaches here are fantastic and the weather was sunny and hot and we spent the remainder of our first day walking the beach, getting the lie of the town and planning our activities for the week ahead. After a very long journey, the second within 14 days, we were feeling the effects and were well and truly shattered. After an excellent Malaysian dinner, an early night was called for and we were in bed by ten.

The following morning, Sunday, still feeling less than 100%, we walked the 2km or so to Apex Car Hire to pick up our chariot for the next several weeks. We had used Apex in New Zealand and had found them to be excellent with very quick and positive responses to any email queries we sent them. We had no qualms with continuing with them in Australia although the fact they are relatively new to Oz with a younger fleet of vehicles meant I would be driving an automatic rather than a manual. No worries, they did us a great deal on an almost new Mitsubishi 4WD which was a pleasure to drive. After half an hour driving the streets of Coolangatta to get used to the automatic, we parked up at the hotel. The car didn’t move again until we left Coolangatta five days later.

After parking the car up we went to buy SIM cards for phone and iPad and then lunched at the Hogs Breath restaurant. By 2pm we were shattered again. We picked up some bits and pieces of groceries at Woolworths Supermarket which was conveniently only two minutes walk from the apartment and then returned to the apartment and bed.

Unfortunately Ann had been fighting flu since our flight back to Manchester and fatigued from the travelling she finally succumbed to it and remained stuck in bed for the best part of another two days until Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, just as Ann was beginning to recover, I went down with the same bug myself and spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday morning in bed. Thankfully by Wednesday afternoon I was on the mend and fit enough to take a stroll along the seafront South to the next beach, Kirra Beach where we found a number of fishermen who had just hauled in a huge catch of mullet and were just setting about sorting the catch and packing the fish into boxes. The fishermen apparently wait until a shoal of fish is spotted from a vantage point on shore and then a net is taken out to encircle them and then pulled in using trucks and jeeps. This type of fishing is done under licence in only 2 places in Queensland.

With 3 days of our week in Coolangatta pretty much written off, we fortunately recovered sufficiently by Thursday to take a trip to see some of the hinterland on an organised tour to Lamington National Park and Tambourine Mountain that we had booked via the Beach House when we first arrived.

On Thursday morning at 7am we were picked up for our tour by a Scenic Tours minibus driven by a Kiwi driver, Tom, who like most of our drivers thus far was a very affable and humorous gentleman with tonnes of knowledge and information to share.

Our experience of organised trips so far, both in New Zealand and OZ was that these were worth the expense (none of them are cheap!). Invariably we were travelling through stunning scenery often in mountainous areas with narrow winding roads with continual ups and downs and as a driver needing to concentrate 100%, you don’t get to see too much. In addition, the drivers of these tours were, without exception, very experienced drivers like Tom, who provided a running commentary throughout the journey to give us a much better appreciation of what we were seeing – the landscape itself, the fauna and flora and the history of the places we drove through and visited.

Not only that but the general conversations that take place give you a much better insight on life in the areas – the good and the bad. And finally, these trips present opportunities to chat with fellow travellers who are invariably a mix of locals and international travellers.

As usual we considered our Scenic Tour to be money well spent. We were part of a group of only 8 or 9 passengers with one Australian and the remainder Chinese, Singaporean and Indian and all good for a natter. A good day was had by all.

Photos from our Lamington National Park and Tambourine Mountain 

Lamington National Park was declared a National Park 4 years after the O’Reilly family took over the land in 1911. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1994 because of its’ high biodiversity in terms of its flora with various types of forest ranging from beech forest to tropical rainforest to dry eucalypt forest. There are walking tracks and and a treetop walk and lots to see and do over a day or longer if you wish to stay – there are holiday cottages for rent.

There’s a fascinating history of this place and the O’Reilly family including a gripping story about Bernard O’Reilly and the Stinson airplane crash of 1937. There’s a book telling the story of this crash and a dramatic rescue but a shorter version can be found on O’Reilly’s website.

After Lamington we headed over to Tambourine Mountain, a very pleasant and affluent little town with some nice shops, restaurants, microbrewery and a winery. We didn’t get to visit the brewery but did enjoy an excellent lunch at Masala Shanti.

Our final day in Coolangatta, Friday, was a chill out day spent walking areas we hadn’t managed to see before including some beautiful beaches South of the resort at Tweed Heads where a piece of sculpture marks the border between New South Wales and Queensland.

As we were about to leave Coolangatta the town was getting busy with seemingly hundreds of folk setting up Marquees and shelters and stages in readiness for a 50s and 60s music festival which was to start the next day and so sadly we missed it.

We left Coolangatta on Saturday 30th May. The week had been decimated by our flu virus but nevertheless we had probably seen most of what it had to offer. We liked the place very much and wouldn’t hesitate to visit again.