Australia Zoo and Noosa

We left Brisbane, despite the hotel managers objections, and ventured further into Queensland. Queensland (according to lucys' non-relatives) has the least educated population in Australia, and seems to be the butt of numerous jokes, the subject of dire warnings and the home to many missing persons. Indeed some queenslanders believe that their lost prime minister (who,according to Bill Bryson, went for a swim and has never been heard of since) did not drown but was actually abducted by a Russian submarine and, even as I write, may to this day be languishing in a siberian jail. This said the queenslanders we've met have been very friendly and helpful. On occasion some of them could have come from a "phones-for-you" advert, but on the whole nice.

On the way to Noosa we stopped off at the Australian Zoo and spent the day feeding kangaroos, cuddling koalas and leaning how to avoid being ingested by crocodiles. We also practiced our Steve Irwin impressions:"Crikey, what a beauty!" with Ozzie accents. (And then in Welsh, Somerset, Irish and American accents too).

Sadly we missed viewing the Big Pineapple although we saw many pictures along the way to Noosa. Noosa is another beach town, quite an expensive area, reputedly populated with millionaires. (Who probably made their fortunes selling fridge magnets to us tourists!)

Our hostel here was beautiful, even without the inevitable comparison to the hotel Broadway! Our room opened onto a wide veranda with sofas! We shared our four bedroom dorm with a man - not ideal as there's no getting past the fact men snore, and there are difficulties inherent to waking one you don't know in the middle of the night. He was going to stay in Noosa until February. I say 'was' as Lucy and Laura managed to persuade him to see the error of his dissipated lifestyle and sent him back to his christian grandparents the next day. We also left for Rainbow beach the same day.