Road Trip

Having arrived back in Sydney to be confronted by yet more rain & wind (only 4 days without rain in 2 months), Lucy & I decided to go in search of some sunshine (or at least less rain!). Initially, we thought of a trip to Fiji or the Cook Islands – however it turns out that the deals advertised by STA Travel etc are not anywhere as near as cheap as they make out (one trip to the Cook Islands was shown as from A$ 690, but when we priced it up came to over A$ 2,200!). Next thought was that we are in a great country, so why not find somewhere here with sunshine…. Cairns & the Great Barrier Reef was our original intention…. Then we looked at the map and realized that would be a 6,500km round trip – that might take more than a week! So Fraser Island became our target – with a few stops on the way.

Setting off from Sydney on a Sunday morning with a car full of camping equipment & red wine our first stop was Coff’s Harbour. On the way we passed our first piece of ‘Australiana’ – a replica of Ayre’s Rock (or Uluru as they call it now). Arriving in Coff’s around 5pm, we pitched the tent (yes we were staying in a tent for part of the trip) - Not for the first time on the trip we were asked how we were going to sleep in a ‘little tent’ - seems that every Australian either owns a very large tent, caravan or camper van. Some of them have gone to ridiculous lengths – converting buses and even articulated lorries into camper vans! We went for a little wander into town – passing the pet porpoise centre on the way – and grabbed some dinner at a very decent Thai restaurant. Just as we were to find on the rest of the trip, there wasn’t much open after 7pm and so we had an early night.

Next day our first port of call was the Big Banana – the large concrete Banana which started off the craze for all the ‘big things’ in Australia. There’s now a big pineapple, big rocking horse, big wine bottle & even a big spliff (that one is in Ninbin if you want to pay it a visit). After fighting our way past the American tourists who were buying bananas like they were going out of fashion, we treated ourselves to banana & honey smoothies before heading up through the banana plants for a lovely view over the coast.

Getting back into our ‘little car’ (it’s a Golf) we proceeded to Byron Bay – stopping off to take a picture of the Giant Prawn on the way. At Byron we stayed in a funky, hippy style of place called the Arts Factory – this place was there at the birth of the whole Byron ‘thing’ in the 60s. Have to admit that it brought back memories of Glastonbury as we headed to the little campsite at the back of the place (a few less people though). If you are heading to Byron would recommend checking this place out (you don’t have to stay in a tent!) as it’s complete with a library / book exchange, decent bar, cool cinema & has lots of activities going on. For instance, the night we were there a talent contest was held – don’t know where they plucked the people from but they were all very good – including the poets. You can even stay in a tepee or a converted double decker bus if you feel like it! And if you are running short of cash you can even work for your board. Had a good night there shared some of our wine with a German girl called Yana. and then headed to the cinema to see Zodiac (which I’d seen before, but seemed more thrilling the second time around).

Without even seeing the main town or beach of Byron, we continued our journey the next day, taking us to Hervey Bay – the northern most point on our trip. To put the size of this country into context, we were approximately 1,200km north of Sydney and we were still 1,700km from Cairns (as the road sign kindly told us). On arriving at Hervey Bay we had a struggle putting the tent up as the tent pegs just would not stay in the ground – so we spent our time hoping that the wind would not pick up! And the place was not exactly the most lively of the trip, although our tent was pitched about 10yards from a beach with white sand & crystal clear water….a few pelicans checking the place out too. We found a place called ‘Blackdog’ to eat on the first night (good place – interesting take on asian food), and I made use of the bbq facilities to do a stir fry, teppanyaki style on the Wednesday night (actually the great thing about all of the camp sites we visited was that they had seating areas and bbqs so that you didn’t have to spend all of your time in your tent / trailer).

Now, we were confronted with the only real disappointment of the trip…. The reason we were in Hervey Bay was it’s proximity to Fraser Island – we couldn’t take the car to explore as the whole place is made of sand, no tarmac roads, and so only 4wd are allowed – even then they are frequently stuck. Unfortunately, we had neglected to book one of the excursions to the Island – thinking that it would not be too difficult to get on one in the winter – we hadn’t taken into account the whale watching season. As it turned out, we had a lovely day on the Island anyway, heading over on the passenger ferry to Kingfisher Bay & doing a couple of the walks, including one to an old Commando training post. The whole place was picture postcard perfect – white sands, clear water & not a cloud in the sky – we had found the sun we were searching for!

Saying our goodbyes to Hervey Bay & Fraser Island, we turned south & headed for Noosa, stopping at Rainbow Beach on the way. Now, I have to say that the beach was nice, but does not deserve the ‘rainbow’ tag – three slightly different shades of sand were present, but that probably had more to do with the tide than anything else. However, the Carlos Sandblow was very impressive – views of the ocean on one side, the valley on another & a large sand-dune that was gradually blowing inland. Arrived in Noosa Heads & checked into the grand old Hulse Lodge YHA – providing us with our first bed of the trip. The rooms were nothing flashy, but the grub served was good and the other facilities were much appreciated. After a quick walk around town – perhaps the most ‘touristy’ of the places we visited on the trip – we had a few beers in the hostel bar and chatted away to a German primary school teacher (don’t think we found out her name) & a girl from Preston called Donna…. Had a bit of a sore head the next morning. Friday, we headed out to the nearby national park for a spot of walking – which was lovely – and then headed to the cinema to watch Transformers! A lot of tongue in cheek humour, a stunning ‘love interest’ and some great special effects, made it an enjoyable movie – but I wouldn’t go out of your way to catch it – if you do though you might want to buy a Chevy Camaro. Product placements (all the cars / trucks were made by GM (and not Porsche & Lamborghini as in the cartoon), Mountain Dew robots, etc) abounded but the only really bad part was that they never once uttered the phrase “Robots in Disguise”…. Very disappointing.

On Saturday, despite getting up at 6am, and walking 10km through the national park, we failed in our quest to spot a koala – think we’ll just head for the zoo next time! – and after getting over our devastation (we did however see a whole bunch of turkeys walking around) we headed to Brisbane to meet up with Ian & Sarah (who had stayed with us in Sydney for a while back in Feb). Stayed in another cool hostel, complete with cool / interesting bar called Birdee Yum Yum (like the bar I mentioned in Hong Kong it had bird cages, but there were full of dolls in various compromising positions), swimming pool & hot tub. Turns out it was in the ‘Valley’ which is the hot-bed of Brisbane night-life – and after past experiences with trying to get a taxi in Brisbane that wasn’t a bad thing. Had Yum-Cha for lunch & then walked along Brunswick Street (must be the local weirdo hang-out) for a beer & a game of bowls (which we didn’t have time for by the time we got there). A nice trip along on the river on the ‘jetcat’ before heading out for the night. Started off at the hostel bar with pitchers of cider for $8… by far the cheapest booze I’ve encountered in Oz. Then headed to a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant called The Vietnamese Restaurant…. No surprise that it served Vietnamese food. Headed to the bottle shop on the way & got a bit of a laugh from the guy behind the counter when we bought a 4 litre box of white wine for $10 (didn’t taste quite as bad as you would guess – certainly not after the 3rd glass) & again when we entered the restaurant with box in hand. We ordered the set menu for 4 & I think we ended up with enough food on the table for 24 people…. Lovely food, but made all of us feel a bit guilty when we had to leave so much. Where is Bric when you need him?

After filling our faces we headed out, but much to our disappointment we were faced with queues to get in just about everywhere – and cover charges to get into a pub, what is the world coming to? After not been classed as cool enough to get into the upstairs bit of GPO (a converted post office which I visited last July following the Bledisloe Cup game) we headed to the downstairs bar for some pretty average margaritas (too much salt, not enough tequila) and some ‘breaks’ music. One of the Djs was accompanied by a trumpeter which was quite cool. Quickly becoming bored of this place, we headed back along the streets, trying to avoid the crowds (thinking about it, Oxford St & Kings Cross in Sydney has a similar thing – why do they like queuing for a beer?) to find somewhere else to hang. One place (The Beat) seemed pretty interesting, but when asking the doorman what type of place it was, his brilliant description (“Downstairs techno, straight, Upstairs chart music, gay) made us move on & so we ended up back at the hostel bar. 2 things about this place that I would remember if you ever decide to own a bar…. 1) Never put the only ATM in a position which effectively blocks the only entrance to the place, 2) If you only have one toilet in the place, do not position it so that you have to walk across the packed dancefloor to get to it, especially not if you’re selling pitchers of beer at $8 a shot! Anyway, we had a good time. It was great to catch up with Ian & Sarah (although I did miss Sarah’s “Shut Up”) & sort of nice to be back in a City with all of the amenities that go with that (i.e. places are open after 7.30pm).

Woke up with an awful hangover on Sunday – felt relieved that we hadn’t got into the dodgy rum shots again - not good at the best of times but especially so when we had 30 mins to get out of the room and start our 10 hour journey to Port Stephens. Quite why I had decided to plan such a long journey for that day I’m not sure, but to be honest it wasn’t that bad. The roads in Australia can be a little monotonous, but listening to podcasts of the Chris Evans show (good old BBC) made the time practically fly, and we made it to Port Stephens – or more accurately Shoal Bay – around 8pm. For the first time in a week we watched a bit of TV – I fell asleep during X-Men. This morning we were feeling refreshed (although having a dicky stomach from the cheese sandwich of the night before – if you ever see a cheese called ‘tasty flavour’ then avoid it – not sure why we didn’t think that in the 1st place!). Can’t really say we did an awful lot in Port Stephens, but it was another lovely day, another pretty beach and another stretch of crystal clear water. Would also recommend the accommodation we had as good for a group of friends or family to go and chill… easily room for 6 if not 8 and only $79 for a night. Stopped off at Nelson’s Bay lighthouse (small, informative museum & great views) & had a fantastic Venison in red wine & prune sauce pie from ‘Red Neds’ – yet another great Lonely Planet recommendation (fast becoming our bible here) before deciding against a small (96km) detour to Tea Gardens (to look for Koalas – probably wouldn’t have seen any anyway) & headed back to Sydney. Got home about 3.30pm & now washing to do & things to clean before Lucy’s Mum arrives later in the week.

So, end of road trip summary – 6 towns, 8 days & 2,795 km - had an awesome time - meeting up with friends, seeing some wonderful scenery, particularly the beaches, & most importantly it didn’t rain for the whole 8 days!!! More than can be said for the UK by the looks of the news tonight!

Almost a shame to be back in some ways, and certainly looking forward to our next trip around Oz (there’s plenty of it to see) and then NZ & SE Asia. Bring it on!