Noosa and Brisbane

Noosa
The date now is about March 23(?)...the date then was...March 19?

In Noose we stayed in a very cool old Lodge that was made into a YHA. We liked it a lot...big common area with a ping pong table (which we played every night). Noose is very pretty. It's got nice beaches and lots of little hills and trees. The first day we went for a walk through the National park there along a board walk just off the beach. It was really gorgeous, although it poured rain for parts of it! We saw a wild koala!

Second day we caught the bus to the Australia (Steve Irwin) Zoo! It was quite good, had animals native to Oz and Southeast Asia in large, nice enclosures, and we definitely enjoyed ourselves. We really liked the Tasmanian Devils (which didn't look at all like the Tazz!) They were little, round, dark furred animals and they were very active...ran around their large enclosure all day, occasionally play fighting (I think?). Saw a show featuring crocs (of course), birds and a few others. Got to feed an elephant and pet a koala, oh and we got to pet LOTS of kangaroos and joeys.

They were soooo cute! Very tame too. At the zoo they had a "Koala walk", which was a path through trees that koalas live in and there was just about a koala in every tree. It was great to see them in such a natural habitat. When we stopped to look at one koala, he turned and stared at us, and then started climbing down the tree towards us! He stopped to pose for a few excellent pics right at eye level,

and then to our surprise, continued to climb down the tree until he was on the ground! He then mosied over to us and started nibbling on a guy's shoe who was standing right beside us!!! Eventually the zoo keeper realized when a crowd had gathered and came and grabbed the koala lol. It was so funny!


The next day at Noosa (our last) we had planned to go surfing, but I guess the cyclone was affecting the surf that day and the waves were huge, so we couldn't go :(. I still went swimming, which was pretty crazy as it was. We spent the afternoon instead watching the crazy good people surf and boogie board, since we weren't able to change our greyhound to an earlier time. We left for Brisbane that afternoon.

Brisbane

We stayed in a very modern, nice hostel in Bris called Chill Backpackers. It had a gorgeous rooftop terrace and a movie room with a huge TV, so we spent our first night watching movies and drinking wine on the terrace.


We really liked Brisbane, it is a very beautiful city, combining old pretty buildings with new modern ones, with lots of trees and cool city squares and a gorgeous botanical garden. I could see myself living there, I think. It was really nice.

Our second (and sadly last) day at Brisbane we went on a walking tour through the city, and stopped in some of the free galleries and museums (they were all free there! Crazy!). We would have liked more time there, but in the end it was just a city, and we have those in Canada. We left for Byron that afternoon.

Will update more on Byron and post pics when we visit some of Mike's family friends just south of Sydney! Miss you all!