18/10/10 The sand is almost gone

After a fun last night with all the Fraser Island crew I headed to Brisbane the next day. We dropped Arrin and Sarah in a small town called Noosa which if I had time, I would have also chosen to stay in as it reminded very much of Naples, Florida and is the stop to visit Australia zoo which unfortunately I had to miss out. But to make up for it the next day in my first morning in Brisbane (my first Oz city) I picked up Elise from the train having just flown from Hong Kong to come travelling with me for a week. Whilst in the city for almost three full days we enjoyed the Queensland museum where we acted like children measuring how far we can jump against a kangaroo and played a version of top trumps whilst learning about dangerous animals. We parted with cash so we could go on a hop-on hop-off bus tour round the city to the few tourists sights the city has with some amazing veiws looking over the very spread out city. the city infact has 2.2 million people only but has an area larger than sydney. For a special treat on Elise's first night in Oz we were meant to be meeting Christina's friend she had made whilst living here but at the last minute there was a change of plans so we still decided to dress up a go for a lovely meal. This was my first meal not in a hostel since arriving in the country and it was amazing. I started with a sushi cocktail then an amouse bouche of crocodile, main of kangaroo rump and finnished with a selection of deserts. The food was gorgeous and I finally got to try both crocodile and kanagaroo.
  We left Brisbane the next morning a kept heading down south drove through Surfers Paradise and past the five biggest theme parks in the country. The water park is the biggest in the world but because of time and money I just drooled looked at them rather than attending.
   We are currently in Byron bay a rather hippy town with a lot of surfers and grass skirts. We are spending 4 days here and I think I'm really gonna like the chilled out vibe. This morning we woke early to drive to Australia's most easterly point to see the sunrise. At the same time we watched dolphins and humpback whales frolick only kilometres off the coast which was fantastic. Today the plan is... no plan but as I have now officially booked my flights to Melbourne I am going to book one or two day tours for the time i'm there which i'm very excited about as I think I'm going to like Melbourne alot.