Australia - Brisbane & Surfer's Paradise

So it was time for some R&R after all the excitement of The Whitsunday's and Fraser Island. We hit Brisbane and treated ourselves by actually staying in hotel after having spent the last 10 days sleeping on boats, buses and in tents - I have seriously never appreciated having a comfy bed and clean towels more. As it was the last few days of Rich, Jules and Lisa's holiday we decided to completely spoil ourselves and went to the award winning steak restaurant Cha Cha Char for..... award winning steak - really hit the spot!

The following morning, on the recommendation of Paul and Maz we went to visit Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Its primarily a Koala Sanctuary but it also had all number of Australian themed animals including Kangaroos's, Cassowary's and various snakes and spiders. There was a massive Kangaroo enclosure you can go into and feed the Kangaroo's, it was very amusing watching a load of Japanese tourists chasing Roo's around the enclosure with massive camera's trying to capture the elusive action shot.

The highlight was obviously the Koala Bears and at the risk of sounding like a proper soft-lad they were undenyably cute! Apparently they sleep for 20 hours a day as their diet is made up solely of eucalyptus leaves which has very little calorie content so they have no energy to do anything else. When they aren't asleep they just chill out in the tree's. For a measly $15 you could have a picture taken with one so I coughed up and had my photo taken with Bertha.

Me & Betha

[u]Could this Koala be more chilled out?

After the other guys had gone home myself and Mark stayed in Brisbane for another 3 or 4 days just exploring the city and relaxing. We satisfied our cultural appetites by visiting the Queensland Museum, the Botanical Gardens and did the walking city tour recommended by Lonely Planet. We also met up for drinks with some of the people we had met on our Whitsunday's trip. On our final day we went to the Mt Coot-Tha lookout which promised to deliver a breathtaking panorama of Brisbane city. Unfortunately, just as we reached the top it started to piss it down so we sought shelter in the Thomas Brisbane Planetarium - I am now an absolute expert on the solar system.

All in all I really enjoyed Brisbane it's a pretty chilled out city (and Australia's 3rd largest Fact Fans) you can easily spend a fair number of days exploring, I'd recommend it.

Surfer's Paradise

Really didn't rate Surfers at all. We were going to pass through anyway so we figured we might as well stop off for a few days - we managed 24hrs. It's just one of those places which is full of massive high-rise hotels, tacky souvenir shops and hideously expensive bars. No one there seems to own any clothes either.

We did stay in a pretty good hostel and shared a dorm room with two nice lads from Bournemouth so we decided to go along to the hostel organised drinks night. We tried our best to have a good night but when everywhere you go is the sort of place where they are looking for volunteers to get naked for a round of appaulse I suddenly went all shy. We decided to leave the following morning.

Our next stop - Byron Bay