Our first stop was Airlie beach, gateway to the Whitsundays, a group of small picturesque islands off the Queensland Coast ideally suited to cruising about in a yacht over a few days, awash with snorkel spots and silica beaches. Sadly despite being a big backpacker destination it is also a fairly exclusive and expensive place full of posh island resorts. I was also wary of much here first time around as I knew I would be back for a week with my parents the following month. Having almost decided that it was too expensive to do anything here we took a last walk into the tour agents to ask about deals and settled on a standby rate for and inclusive resort on nearby Long Island. We raced to catch the earliest ferry we could and once on the island determinedly worked our way through kayaking, tennis, bush walking, swimming, crazy golfing, snorkeling (again in silly stinger suits) and eating (and stashing) as much as we could from the buffet, oh and picnicking with a giant monitor lizard!
Refreshed from our break in Airlie Beach the next spot we aimed for was Hervey Bay where we stayed a day before joining a group of 7 other backpackers in a landrover to explore Fraser Island. The biggest sand barrier island in the world.For the trip we got an extensive briefing on 4wd driving as there are no roads on Fraser, just sand tracks, beaches and alot of dingos (wild dogs!). The first obstacle though was to meet at 7am in the morning with a bunch of other backpackers and try to decide what and how much food to buy for 3 days for 9 people (not a calculation any of us had done often) let alone how much alcohol we would also require! Luckily we still j 
ust about made it intime for the 9o'clock ferry and were happily pushing landrovers out of sandpits by mid morning.
It was an awesome few days of powering up and down beaches, jumping in crystal clear rain water lakes and camping out under the stars. At night the sand would sparkle if you moved it due to tiny phosphorescent particles that released light when activated by movement, a surreal addition to the beautiful landscape!
Sadly though the trip did wind to an end, and as we caught the ferry back tothe mainland a thunder storm ripped across the skies. We returned to Hervey Bay just inorder to make our way down to the nearby Rainbow Beach, the first place on our journey south not covered by the Great Barrier Reef (which is flipping huge!) and therefore the first place with waves! Rainbow was a small and quiet town, relaxing after the major backpacker hotspots we had been in before, we liked it so much we turned our 1 day trip into a 2.5 day stay and happily spent our timetrying to learn to surf...and kind of succeeding, standing up pretty regularly on a big board with small waves and thinking we looked much cooler than we really did! Surf wasn't the only thing Rainbow had going for it though, as a short walk out of town there was an enourmous sand blow (a huge area of sand, a bit like a dune but further inland and much larger area) on top of a cliff which gave fantastic views out to sea and round the coast on the one side and inland over miles of bush and rivers on the other. Accompanied by the harmonica, and a few litres of good lemonade we waited there until darkness and a massive thunder storm came in before making a run for it down the dune, through town and back to our tent. We paid the guy who rented out surf boards one 6 pack of beer for 2 night camping in his backyard and in return he gave us the consolation leaving gift of fresh mackerel, caught by himself that morning that we took down to the beach a barbequed straight away.
By now Christmas was fast approaching and we had decided that when it came Byron Bay was where we wanted to be. There was just one place left in mind to reach before then and that was Noosa, a busy beach town another short hop down the coast from Rainbow. Noosa was a large town compared to most paces we had been so far and the 24 hours or so we were there weren't enough to really do it justice apart from for a couple of walks I took through its Nature Reserve on a search for koalas which I finally did spot (very cute picture to follow!) on my way home from the second walk having pretty much given up.
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