Ending the East Coast.

 

Airlee Beach roughly marked the halfway point for both time and distance in our East Coast trip.

 

Leaving Airlee fairly early (that’s fun to say!), we took an 11 hour coach to our next destination - Seventeen Seventy. When planning our trip in Cairns, we had been advised that Seventeen Seventy and our stop after that, Rainbow Beach were not places of particular significance, but we opted to do them anyway as we weren’t particularly tight on time and it would otherwise lead to very long coach journeys.

 

To be honest, we we’re disappointed with both stops, we knew that they weren’t going to be particularly lively or interesting, but both hostels that we stayed in were poor, and I don’t remember doing much at either stop, aside from seeing some wild Kangaroos in 1770, and taking a walk along the beach in Rainbow Beach.

 

With that in mind, there isn’t much to report on other than the history of 1770. The rather strange name of the town is explained by the fact that it’s the first place that was discovered in Queensland, when Captain Cook and his crew landed ashore and claimed the East Coast of Australia for Britain. (In 1770! ).

 

Moving on from our disappointing few days, we travelled to Noosa Heads, where we were all thrilled to find a much more pleasant hostel, and a lot of things to see and do.

 

We spent a total of 4 nights in Noosa, 2 nights either side of our Fraser Island trip. On our first night we set off on a trek to a viewpoint and saw a magnificent sunset.

 

The next day, we went to explore one of the two Everglades in the world. A guide took us up the river and pointed out a few interesting spots along the way before pulling over for a short walk and a spot of lunch. On the way back, we ditched the boat and instead opted to travel via canoe, which was hard work but good fun. Upon finishing the journey, we were all ready for a dip in the water and a cold pint. Later on in the day we went for a walk into town, saw the beach and then returned to our hostel for our safety briefing for our 2 night Fraser Island trip that commenced the next day.

 

Fraser Island is famous for a couple of different reasons. The first, is that it’s the largest sand island in the world. The second is that it’s considered to home the most dangerous beach in the world.

 

The beach is considered dangerous for a variety of reasons, with the main issues being dangerous currents, constant shark sightings and a large population of wild dingos.

 

The trip we signed up for was a self-driving experience, so we were split into 4 groups of 8, and allocated a 4x4 for each group. We were all taken aback by how much time we actually spent driving, with only a couple of stops each day for walks or lunch. On both nights we returned to the same campsite where we cooked as a group and had some laughs around the campfire. The nights were great for stargazing and it was nice to be out of reach for a few days, with no signal at all on the trip. We saw a few dingo’s over the course of the trip and visited the spectacular Lake McKenzie, but aside from that the rest of the stops were fairly underwhelming. All in all, we did have a fantastic time, but we all put this down to the fact that we got lucky and we’re with a great group. On the final day of our trip we returned back to Noosa, where we were glad to have a proper bed and an early night!

 

We spent the next day having a surfing lesson, in a 5 person intimate group. I was surprised with how well we all did, with all 3 of us being able to stand up on the board after a few attempts. We all really enjoyed the lesson, but it was very tiring and me and Connor left with rather sunburnt calves! Our final day in Noosa was spent at a golf club, where Connor played golf for the first time and did very well.

 

The next stop for most after Noosa is Brisbane, but seen as we knew we would be spending a month in Brisbane, we decided to skip it and go straight to the Gold Coast. There are a lot of different parts to the Gold Coast, so we chose to spend our time in Surfers Paradise, which is the most common place for backpackers. We were able to secure a really nice apartment with spectacular views for a decent price, which enhanced our time in SP.

 

We were slightly shocked that there wasn’t much to do when we arrived as it’s a place that many people talk about as a highlight of the East Coast. On one of our 3 days we had a fun day out at the Sea World theme park, but aside from that we spent a fair bit of time chilling in the town or enjoying our own space back at the apartment.

 

We then went back up the coast to Brisbane, where we spent a night in the worst hostel yet, before flying to Fiji the next evening.

 

Favourite memory: Driving on the beach on Fraser Island.