Next we headed down to Hervey Bay, stopping on the way to pick up a hitchhiker, Glen, who was hitching his way down the east coast. He was an interesting chap to say the least, and told us he hadn’t been to Hervey Bay since the second week of November 2009. When we commented on his amazing memory, he said that stress destroys the synapses in your brain that link your memories, and as he’d led a happy, sunny life his memory was of a high standard. The main reason for us stopping in Hervey Bay was to book a day tour to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. We’d booked a cheap campsite for that night in Hervey Bay as we thought it would probably be hard to find free camping and we wanted to be able to relax, and sample some of our new Bundaberg rum of course! When we got to the campsite and chatted to the woman on reception (a fellow brit) about the Fraser Island trip she was brutally honest with us and said a day trip there in the winter wasn’t really worth it, especially as we’d already seen amazing beaches and rainforest already, and all the nice lakes would be too cold to swim in. It was also pretty expensive at £80 each for the day. We’ll add it to list of things to do when we come back!
Hervey Bay
Hervey Bay was pretty enough but there wasn’t much to do there unless you were going to Fraser Island or whale watching, so we moved on the next morning to Noosa Heads, 193km south down the coast. The eastern beaches were gorgeous and it was the first time in Oz we’d seen lots of people surfing. We headed over to a free campsite that was listed on the wikicamps app, Sumners Creek. It was a car park but right on the beach, what a result we thought. The beach was also where everyone seemed to take their dogs for a walk. When we returned to Bruce there was a ranger there who told us wikicamps was not to be trusted and we couldn’t camp there. We thought about staying anyway and getting up really early before he came back to check, but the thought of getting a £200 fine if we got caught out made us move to another free campsite at Browns Creek. It wasn’t as nice, but we could relax at least and not have to get up at silly o clock.
Noosa was a lovely town, with stunning houses that seemed to be built on land reclaimed from the mouth of the estuary. To the town’s east was the beautiful Noosa Heads national park with a lovely coastal path offering great views of the surrounding headland and beaches inbetween. One of the beaches was popular with both surfers and nudists (but thankfully no nudist surfers). the only nudists there were old men – as is usually the case!
Sand banks
Next we headed down 200km to Brisbane. We didn’t need to worry about finding or booking a campsite as we had a proper bed for two nights, courtesy of our traveling buddies Jay and Emma who had recently moved there. We’d not seen them since our Rinjani trek so it was amazing to see them again, in slightly more luxurious surroundings! Brisbane was another lovely city and we made the most out of the winter sun by using one the free bbqs in the park. We almost lost a burger to a thieving white ibis bird, the Australian version of a pigeon as they were everywhere.
Watch out for that ibis!
A lovely winters afternoon
We invested in a monopoly board game, as we were getting bored of playing cards in the van all the time. We had our first game with Jay and Emma, but with the box wine flowing we didn’t even get to opening the bag of houses! Feeling rather fragile the next day, we headed 165km south to Byron Bay, crossing over the border from Queensland into New South Wales. Byron Bay is a beautiful stretch of coastline and the most easternly point of Australia. We walked up to the lighthouse and watched huge waves crashing on the rocks below, and saw a pod of dolphins in the ocean on the walk back.
Byron Bay
Our stop for the night was a free rest stop at Yelgun, nothing special but somewhere that we could get a well needed good night’s sleep. The next morning we had a long drive ahead of us, 400km to Port Macquarie. To make the journey more interesting we played our game of saluting other campervan drivers. We stopped off at Woolgoolga for lunch as it had an awesome name, and a pretty beach.
When we got to Port Macquarie we had to change into our trousers and jumpers for the first time, winter was definitely more noticeable down in New South Wales! We also had our first rain and had to dig our waterproofs out, and needed to switch the air con to the heater.
Freezing at Port Macquarie
Although we’re sure Port Macquarie is stunning in the summer, it was pretty gloomy and bleak for us so we didn’t stick around for long and headed 30 mins south to a free rest stop near John’s River. As we’d spent so much time in Queensland we had a lot of km to catch up on and we had another long drive the next day. We stopped off at Newcastle to visit the Blackbutt nature reserve – we couldn’t leave Australia without seeing a koala! They were fast asleep in the trees when we got there though, still really cute. We also saw some sleeping wombats – so we figured we’d just come at the wrong time to see any moving animals!
Wake up!
Manly was our next stop, just north of Sydney – we could see the city skyline as we drove there. Manly was another lovely place, with gorgeous bays and beaches, but again it wasn’t quite the weather to enjoy it. We drove up to North Head and the Fairfax lookout, where there was a fantastic view over Sydney harbour, all the skyscrapers in the background and amazing colourful cliffs in front.
Sydney in the distance
Manly cliffs
We were a stone’s throw from Sydney, our finish line, but were not quite ready to go there just yet. First we had a couple of days to spend in one of Australia’s most popular national parks – the Blue Mountains – a couple of hours inland.
Sweet tash!
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