Brisbane, Bays, and Funky Beach towns

The next part of Kara and I's Aussie walkabout was to fly up to Brisbane on the eastern coast of Queensland, drive as far north as Hervey Bay to get some warmer weather in, and then hop along the coast for the next 9 days staying in beach towns and exploring as we went.  It was a really beautiful trip that we spent walking on beaches at sunrise, exploring funky Australian beach towns during the off-season, so calm vibes were the norm, watching the Olympics, driving along the coast and through the hills of Australia, and taking in this beautiful country!  I was most excited to get to wear shorts during the summer as the temps were much warmer up North with highs in the upper 70s.  I even swam a few times too!  My trip ending summer vacay!  It was awesome.  These posts have been mostly delayed due to relaxing vibes but also due to lack of internet.  Australian hotels outside of the big cities don't seem too worried about your connection while you stay and our data usage was very limited and didn't allow any uploading of pictures.  So here they are now!

Map of the path we cut along Australia's east coast.

We returned to Melbourne from Tassie on Monday afternoon, rented a car, and came back to the shack to do all of our laundry and clean up so I could officially check out in the morning.  We then flew up to Brisbane after stashing some luggage in storage to pick up when we returned to the airport to head home.  We ALMOST didn't make it and ended up flying separately because of a weird hiccup in flights.  Unbeknownst to us, our flight up to Brisbane was part of an international flight with the Australian domestic carrier Jetstar that was traveling on to Asia, so we would be subjected to international security and baggage rules which we were not aware of.  Domestic flights in Australia are very lax with no liquids restrictions, so Kara had packed all of her full-size toiletries in a carry-on.  We didn't find out about the international flight until we arrived at the airport and tried to check-in, and we had cut it close because we had done this several times and it was always very fast.  Now we had to book it to the international terminal and go through security, where we learned of the liquids issue, so Kara went back out to check her bag instead but was too late to make the original flight.  LUCKILY she was placed on a domestic one leaving nearly at the same time and we both arrived via separate planes at nearly the same time, I having to grab all of our luggage at the international terminal and take a bus to domestic to meet Kara.  Hectic and crazy but we MADE IT and grabbed a cab to get to the car rental location just before they closed to pick up our car!  This was upgraded to an SUV as this car needed to get back to Melbourne and we had booked a one-way rental to do just that, so we had a comfy vehicle to cruise in.

Pic of Brisbane along the river at sunset, not great, but all I got.

Flying in to Brisbane was beautiful as the region is covered in mountains with cool funky carved limestone peaks (very tri-angular) and sinuous rivers.  Brisbane itself is situated directly on a river with regions of the city occupying the elongated lobes formed by the river's sinuosity.  It seemed like a VERY pretty and interesting city integrated fully along the river, but we had to get up the road to our Airbnb stay for the night at Sunrise Beach.  We hit some traffic on the coastal highway as it seems like development away from Brisbane has outstripped highway capacity quite a bit.  Because of our delay, we grabbed some food at this restaurant attached to a small local amusement park, which was kind of a hilarious stop as the place was themed as an oversized Outback Saloon with MASSIVE swinging saloon doors at the entrance.  After eating, traffic had finally cleared and we made it the rest of the way to Sunrise Beach, a small coastal community near the Noosa Headlands, where we stayed in a gorgeous apartment above the garage of some really nice folks and recouped from a hectic travel day!

Comfy porch in Sunrise Beach.

Coffee and bird-song as this tree was filled with birds throughout the morning.

This place in Sunrise Beach was so nice!  I really like the homey feel of the places we had stayed with Airbnb.

We woke up slowly with coffee and toast and fruit and yogurt and birds and the faint sound of waves from the porch.  We really loved our place and kind of wanted to stay and check out the headlands nearby (headlands = coastal cliffs to explore, common all along the coast, reminding me quite a bit of Oregon), but we had reservations for a really cool place up in Hervey Bay for the next two nights and some relaxed settled chill time sounded great.  But FIRST we had to check out the BIGGEST outdoor market in Australia, which someone had suggested to us, at Eumundi, a local village, and we are really glad we did!  This place was a weaving complex of stalls and tents selling cool local crafts, interesting Aussie goods, produce, hot foods, used treasures, etc.  It all wove along the hills of this small town and was PACKED with people and sounds and smells.  We picked up some souvenirs, produce for the next few days (passion fruit, papaya, paw-paws, custard apple, etc.), and lunch (paella with local seafood, dumplings, and sausages!).  It was really fun and a great introduction to the laid-back and kind of tropical vibe of this sunny, warm region of the coast.

Welcome to the BIGGEST outdoor market in Australia!

Tents wove in and out of groves of shady trees along the hillside.

A massive market tree shading us from the bright sun!  It was so much warmer up here!

So Hervey Bay was our farthest north destination and this area is well-known as a humpback whale stopover for mothers and calves to rest in peace in the shallow protected bay along their journey to Antarctica.  What we didn't realize is that the bay is MASSIVE and we were staying at the southern-most end where it is very shallow and the whales congregate farther north at the mouth, so sightings would not be likely.  Oh well, we were happy just to be together and enjoying some peaceful relaxation after lots of travel days and sickness recovery!  The place Kara found was this funky house turned into many multiple units and we had a suite with living room and several bedrooms all linked along an outdoor hallway.  It was a super cool layout with a balcony shared with other guests overlooking the beachside park across the street, complete with trees FULL of squawking parrots and cockatoos.  We spent our days here walking the beach, to the pier at sunrise, riding bikes (provided by the hotel) along the long trail linking several beachside communities, cooking in, watching the Olympics, eating tropical fruits, etc.  It was a really lovely stay in a quiet beach community and we both kind of fell in love with the Australian coastal scene from the start!

Map showing Hervey Bay, protected by the MASSIVE Fraser Island to the east, the world's largest sand island

African themed living room made our place with living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms all separate and connected by an outdoor hallway feel like a safari bungalow.  It was awesome!  Everything was old and solid wood and really unique.

Balcony view of beachside park and ocean peeks under the trees.

Safari bungalow bedroom.

My favorite bench across from our room.

Sunrise colors.

Classic vacation pose with statue pic.

Pelicans.  Not Peli-cants.  Peli-CANs.

Sandbar marsh sunrise, Hervey Bay.

Sun coming up over Fraser Island from Hervey Bay pier.

Heron on pier

On our bike ride we came upon a resident fruit bat colony that signs said could number up to 2 million at times.  This was at the mouth of Tuan Tuan creek and it was SO dense with bats.  The noise was AWESOME!

We got off our bikes and walked to a shady area with rocks to sit on and take in the bats and something happened, either a bird of prey in the area or Kara's bright red shirt, but all of a sudden hundreds of bats were leaving this one tree to move to others.  This caused a MASSIVE explosion as every time a bat would land on an already crowded branch, the bats already there would flip out and chatter and snip at them.  It was so cool to observe!

Cool monument depicting dolphins that were respected and held in high esteem by local aboriginal tribes.

Beach flats at low tide.

Cruisers make you take it all in slowly.  We biked about 20 km up the coast and back along a nice set of paved trails connecting beach communities of Urangan, Pliaba, Torquay, and Scarness (fun names!) along a linear beachside park.

Directly connected stormwater pipe with garbage filter at the end.  I WAS here on research, right?

We drove to a park on the opposite side of a local peninsula so we could see the sun set and we had the place to ourselves and it was really nice!

Suns setting on coastal rocks that we scrambled along.

So in Hervey Bay we did a lot of relaxing and it was nice to just chill for a few days in one place.  The rest of our trip would involve daily drives as we made our way along the coast, but here we just enjoyed some simple down time, and it was great.  We watched LOTS of Olympic coverage when we were not out and about, and it was interesting to see it all through the eyes of another country.  We got to see a bunch of different sports as Aussie teams were aired for the most part, including rugby, sailing, rowing, field hockey, and water polo.  We left Hervey Bay rejuvenated and happy, ready to see a lot more of the eastern coast of Australia.