Craig & Sam Down Under

Hello everyone!

As promised we moved on to Byron Bay after our last entry. It was a total hippy town with madfolk everywhere. There wasn’t much to see or do as far as sightseeing and tourist attractions go, it was mainly fancy cafes, restaurants, bars and hippy shops selling shiny stuff! We stayed from Thursday until Sunday morning and booked another dive for Saturday morning (look at the dive centre) www.byronbaydivecentre.com.au

We spent most of the time reading books, I went through one in just 2 days and Craig’s not far behind, having finished his Stephen King book and moved onto one by Micheal Moore. We’re so lazy! Saturday’s dive was down at Julian rocks just 5 minutes off the coast and this one was a huge success. The people were very friendly and patient with me and we had a great time. We saw a turtle and massive shoals of Dew fish as well as hundreds of other types of fish. The highlight of this one was when, having seen a pod of whales on the surface during the boat ride out to the dive site, we then heard them singing under the water. How cool is that?

For the following couple of days the weather has been a bit grim, we saw plenty of rain on Sunday as we drove up the coast to Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, which is where we are now and it has generally been very cloudy and overcast. A couple of people have asked who drives the van, it’s mainly Craig but he does let me have a go sometimes! When we were on the highway on our way to the Sunshine Coast I actually managed to avert a crisis quite neatly – bloody Aussie drivers not used to driving in the rain, started skidding all over the place and my superb driving skills saved us from skidding off into a ditch or running into the back of someone. Go me!

Anyway, we’re staying on yet another beautiful holiday park, this time with an ocean view. Yesterday we went to the BIG PINEAPPLE! Australia has quite a thing about big fruits and stuff, so far we’ve seen the big pineapple, the big banana and a big prawn !?!? The big pineapple was an actual pineapple plantation and they also grew tons of other fruits and stuff including Macadamia nuts. We went on a train ride around the park, fed more kangaroos, patted more koalas and talked to more birds. We had a go on the nut-mobile when we saw the Macadamia plantation and factory and went on a boat ride. We also got to go inside the big pineapple!

Today we drove out to the Glass House Mountains and stopped off at a major lookout to take some pics and then drove to Mount Tibrogargan where we did a 3.3km walk around the base of the mountain – our first experience of bushwalking! Sadly we haven’t seen any creepy-crawlies or anything like that yet, just lots of lizards.

Going to some markets at Eumundi tomorrow and then we’ll be moving on again! Not sure where to, we’ve got some map consulting to do later today when we’ll formulate a cunning plot. No need to worry, we stop off at Visitor Info centres quite often where there’s always a friendly old lady or two to liken us to her grandchildren and give us all the help we need!

Thanks a lot to Dad J for your humour-tips, Craig has started to berate me every time I leave the van in ‘midget – mode’. So cheers. I’d like to point out that he always leaves the camera strap in ‘giant-mode’. (We’re managing very well having only each other for company – honest!)

Love everyone lots, miss you all muchly, take care

Love Sam & Craig

PS Will Aunty Sharon pls say hello to Katy Smith, Trevor, Tubby & Kevin for us? Ta!