Good evening everyone!

It's been a while since we blogged because internet on this side of Australia is awful and because we got distracted by a tv... Yes, a tv! We have a television in our new camper. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Tuesday (March 13) we went out to Cleland National Park with Mary-anne, Alana and Isaac. You may have already seen the pictures of that adventure! It took some time to get there by car (for our Dutch standards) but the ride was through the mountains and the views were amazing.Once we got there we entered the park where they had all sorts of Australian animals which had big open areas to walk around in. The difference with a regular zoo was that you could actually walk in some of these areas yourself, amongst the animals and of course feed them as well.

We had seen lots of things, fed some of them and encountered some fashionable birds with great haircuts and some funny looking emu's which looked a bit different from the regular ones, before we went back.

After dropping off Alana and Isaac we went straight to Mary-anne and Mikes place where Mike was waiting for us after a hard day working. We had a great barbecued dinner and then listened to some music while talking about anything before going to bed early. We had to wake up early to pack our bags and such, but most importantly to say goodbye to Mary-anne who had to go to work.

Mike dropped us off at the airport where, after having some trouble with the passports, we checked in and left for Brisbane. We couldn't take the guitar along so we gave it to Mike to pass to anyone who wants it (Isaac?).

The flight was short and once we arrived in Brisbane it took us no time at all to collect our bags. We took a cab to the rental company where we were going to pick up our next campervan. Once we got there we learned that they had no Britz campervans left so they gave us a Maui instead. We asked about the difference between these cars and the main one was that Maui has a TV.

We didn't mind that change, and after a careful inspection we found the bed (leather cushions) to be a bit more spacious and the fridge a bit better designed (it closes automatically so it will never open during driving). On top of this all, it's a lot more quiet on the road and handles a bit better. We were quite satisfied with this ‘upgrade' and left quickly for Noosa Heads.

In Noosa Heads we quite soon realised it was made for the rich. There were mansions everywhere, shops with big names on them, restaurants with a lot of fancy stuff on the menu and cars worth more than certain houses. There was quite some youth there and everyone had surf boards.

We ended up asking the local police where we could camp for the night and they suggested a camp site near the water or the national park where we could ‘wild camp' for one night (they said the worst that could happen was them knocking on the window next morning telling us: don't do that again). We chose the camp site though, because we needed electricity to charge our battery.

The next morning we left quite early (they don't know about daylight savings time here..) and we drove towards Gimpy. Somewhere along the way we stopped for lunch and contemplated about how we could get the most out of the few days we had here. We wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef and Fraser Island at least and decided that it would be best to swing by Elizabeth on the way back and head out towards the Great Barrier Reef first. This meant we had some driving ahead of us. We drove all the way up to Agnes Water but had a quick meet up with Mary-Anne van Rooij first.

It was nice meeting her and we got lucky that we did so because she will be leaving for Yepoon tomorrow. The last 30 minutes of our journey today were in complete darkness but we safely arrived and found a very nice camp site (had to run over some frogs on the way though..).
No internet here though so you'll not get this story immediately (written on 15-3-2012).

Jeremy

P.S. Our camera just died on us, it's probably the extreme humidity here. We have a backup but it's not so good..