Brisbane......

Sorry guys! I had typed a huge thing but I guess that it did not save and post. Oh well. I will try to update as much as I can as I have the lovely 15 minutes of internet and a really bad keyboard.

In Byron Bay, we basically just walked around and looked at all the shops around the mainstreets and decided to go and book a trip to Fraser Island. While we were there we saw an ad for zorbing. So we asked about it.....and within 20 mminutes the man was there to pick us up and take him out to his farm!!! If you don't know what zorbing is you basically strap yourself into this huge bouncy ball and you roll down the hill. It was freaky! But definitely fun! Don't know if I would do it again..lol. I really liked it though. On the ride back to the city we learned about this man's recent break up with his girlfriend and the best fish and chips place ever! He dropped us off there and boy was it good! It was called Fish Mangers...or something like that. Now being the old ladies that we are we headed back to our campground (after many wrong turns with our wonderful Ken, the gps voice!) We talked for quite a while with our neighbours and learned all about their Australian adventures (She was South African and he was Irish). They were older than us....probably in their late 40s, early 50s. As we went to bed, they headed out go to a pub and experience the niight life of Byron Bay.

Next morning we headed off to Brisbane. We found a car park right away (underground) and decided to park there and walk around....no driving the big van in the city (I dont know how people drive minivans around all the time...ekks!) We found ourselves underneath part of the HUGE Queen Street Mall. This is like 4 cornwalls with side street stores all along every side too! We decided to travel around first and do the mall last. Bad idea. What we thought would only be a 30 minute walk ended up being an hour and when we finally decided to give up we found out that where we were wanting to go was actually a few kilometers outside the city. So we started to walk along the water and saw some beautiful buildings.. that we had wanted to go to...but coouldnt because of distance. We walked into the wonderfullly air conditioned casino and thought we would play a couple coin machines. Well as we walked towards the room a guard stepped in front of us and told us we were not allowed in there without covered shoes! stupid flip flops...(or thongs as they call them here) We spent the rest of our afternoon over whelmed with the Queen Street mall and then headed to Redcliffe, just outside of Bribane where Vave's mom opened up her home to us. Her and Vave were so wonderful to us. Vave's mom and her roommate had to go to bed quite early so he gave us a tour and history of Redcliffe and then we went into Brisbine to Mt. Cootha to get a good look at Brisbane at night time! Woooweee was it beautiful. We then sat there and had coffee and chatted as we overlooked Brisbine.

We got up early morning the next day to head out to Australia Zoo!! Good times we had there. I got to have a personal encounter with the wombats (in the pouring rain I might add). Stephanie got to watch a trainer get up close and personal with a tiger. We got our picture taken with koalas (Stephanies pooed on her). We saw lots of crocodiles and watched visitors feed elephants. There was a show where it showed many of their animals. Part of the show they had birds fly in froom all over the zoo to the main place where the show was. The lorikeets (cute little colourful birds) got really close to the audience's heads. I am sure Auntie Lois would have loved that ppart of the show. It really was a fun time and we got lots of sweet pictures! It was one of the major highlights of the trip. We spent the night at a really creepy caravan park. We were up and out of there pretty early. We stopped and went to a look out point of the Glass House Mountains (google them). They were a beautiful sight! I would have loved to have more time and hike up one of them.

Next stop was Hervey Bay (pronounced Harvey). This was where we had to be to catch the ferry to Fraser Island. This was the best campervan place ever! The man who checked us in (I am assuming the owner) was polite and friendly and told us right off the bat where all to go in the town. He was also seen all over the site doing maintence and always smiling! I loved it. The first place we went to was this really neat museum. There is a guy who lives in Hervey Bay who believes that if a "man eating" shark injures a person or animal it should be killed. He is world-known. Vic Hislop (another google). His museum was more to be an awareness to people that these particular sharks are very dangerous. He had lots of bones from animals found in sharks (dolphins :() and many clippings of deaths and disappearances from shark attacks. The main attraction : 3 real life sharks in a freezer. SICK, big and scary sharks... I would not like to see them inthe ocean. This is the only museum where you can see real life "man eating" sharks. Sea world and other water attractions cannot have these kinds of sharks in their aquariums. All sharks that you see that are man eating and in an attraction like that are usually fiberglass! It was exciting and freaky to go there. We walked along the beach and the shops and found a nice place to eat right across from the ocean. We watched the sun set. Beautiful. I went out on a limb and tried Kangaroo. It was pretty delicious!

The next morniing we woke up and got ready to be at our bus (that picked us up at our site) at 7:00am.

Uh OH It is starting to rain reallly hard right now and I am outside. I think I am stuck here for a bit till it stops.

My time is almst up. I will tell you more about our trip to Fraser Island in a few days. Tomorrow Stephanie and I are on our way to do a sailing trip in the Whitsundays. It willl be raining but the sites wwill still be beautiful. Up north there are monsoons and cyclones. Steph actually had to c hange her flight to get picked up in Brisbane because the highway is closed to Cairns. It is rainy season here right now.

There is a little update for yoou all!

Seee ya later!