Sunshine Coast / Gold Coast

Leaving Brisbane, we headed back up to the north again the next day to the Sunshine coast. We had heard that the end of year students’ parties of “schoolies” week were wild on the gold coast so we wanted to try the more mellow “Sunshine Coast”. After passing loads of lovely beaches, we stopped at a town with the great name of Mooloolaba and enjoyed body boarding, and splashing in the surf. Dorka and I had a great time trying to body board the massive (to us at least) waves here. This beach has what is known as a “dump” which means that when you ride the wave, there is a strong force wanting to pull you forward and especially downward, so if you surf too far over the edge of the wave you suddenly end up on the sand upside down on your head, which was quite a surprise the first time, I can tell you! Emma is rather little for all this but she had fun sliding around on the board in shallow water. It was a little crowded, as this was the last Friday of the school year, so all the “schoolies” in town ran down to the beach and right into the sea in their school uniforms! With all this activity, we were foolish enough to stay too long and got very sunburnt, and then the next day we managed to re-fry our sunburnt skin quite effectively (Did you know Australian sunshine can burn you even on a cloudy day? We soon found this out!)
The next days we spent hiding from the sun - body surfing whenever it was really cloudy and exploring places like Noosa Heads and Surfer’s Paradise.

Searching for a hostel the next day, we found that the Schoolies had filled up every inn, tavern, hotel, motel and especially all the hostels in beautiful Byron Bay and Lennox Head. Luckily, a local YHA hostel-owner was kind enough to let us use his own spare bedroom, this actually turned out to be the nicest, softest bed so far. Actually he’s a pretty good example of New South Wales’ reputation for being very new age. He’s a reflexologist, Reiki practitioner and is learning a sort of alternative clinical massage called Bowen, he did a few moves on Dorka, who said it felt powerful and quite wierd. We talked to the other guests (all of them, I think) who were very friendly in this lovely but tiny hostel. The next day we had a picnic by the lake (where all the girls in the family were not at all worried about attacks by freshwater crocodiles) and then a leisurely walk on the windy beach before slowly moving on from Lennox head.

We drifted down the pacific highway to Coff’s Harbour (never did actually find the harbour) and then at sunset we arrived in scenic Port Macquarie, the 3rd settlement in the original colonisation, and at that time a prison for the worst of the convicts from the other two places! Now it’s stunning, and we enjoyed a lovely walk nature walk around Karoombung Creek searching for Bats (saw hundreds - see picture) and Koalas (saw none)

As a little side note - This tiny, open-to-the-public nature reserve rather summed up Australia for us: that animals and other natural features are such a big part of the attraction here. It’s weird if you think how different the tourist attractions are in Europe or America. But they present this unique feature so well here. We keep finding new parks, reserves, zoos and most are excellent. This one went through marshland, but because it was lined with boards the whole way, we could even take the pram!

Finally we puffed up and down the cliff walk (complete with Pram) which turned out to be totally worth it for the amazing views!

Leaving Port Macqauarie late allowed us to see more of that town in the daylight, but this and a rest stop in Newcastle meant that we hit Sydney at night.

To see the album, click here: