At the time of writing we have been cruising the Australian East Coast for almost a month. We are mainly enjoying the beautiful nature from our campervan. This way we find out that Australia can be super cheap, like you could read in the previous blog! Even in a place like Gold Coast, Australia’s hippest area. We pay little for the camper, buy our food and drinks in the supermarket and we often visit nature reserves. Between those we find the most beautiful beaches along the Pacific Ocean for free. This is easy if you use the WikiCamps app. We always find a free camping spot and otherwise we stay in uncle Ronald McDonald’s parking lot. We often shower at the beach under the lovely sun and every now and then we use free WiFi to upload another video. It is a simple and ideal life that we are happy to get used to!
Skyscrapers on a pearly white beach: the Gold Coast of Australia
From ‘hippie paradise’ Byron Bay, the next stop is just as impressive. For us, this ‘Manhattan on the Beach’ is even one of the highlights of all of Australia. We hop from beach to beach and look around at those enormous skyscrapers that almost seem to emerge from the water. It’s a bizarre contrast of busy and urban on the one hand and the relaxed beach vibe on the other.
The beach at Burley Heads is especially enjoyable. Under a clear sky and a blazing sun, we almost literally drop the camper on the beach. We just fry an egg and enjoy the view.
One of the most striking beaches, especially in terms of name, is Miami Beach. The beach here is slightly quieter than its American counterpart, but is not inferior in appearance. We even find a Hooters there, the American restaurant where only ladies are allowed to work. They are hired purely based on their, how can I put this.. well-filled work resume. Women with balls, so to speak. I walked in curiously ‘to see what the beer prices were’ and yes, my friend Suus fell for that too. But after I approached a waitress with a great ambition for the menu, Suus thought ‘the beer was just a bit too expensive’. It probably had nothing to do with beer, but we went somewhere else anyway. When we walk outside, Suus says: ‘well, but she wasn’t beautiful at all, was she?’. The typical man-woman-Hooters-conversation.
Finally we enter the Irish Pub. This is the only place in Australia where the beer prices are better than the appearance of the waitresses. You can get a pint for about four bucks, while the supermarket often charges this for a small bottle. Long live the Irish!
Gallons of beer and tropical lagoons in sun-drenched Brisbane
From the Gold Coast it is only a short camping trip to Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, but perhaps the number one in terms of appearance and allure. This wonderful city has the best weather of the three and the tropical climate is therefore eagerly used.
We take a walk through the botanical gardens, which with all those tropical plants, a large mangrove forest and gigantic lizards, you could simply call a ‘jungle in the city’.
From there we do everything you should do during a city trip. We do a little shopping, a little eating and more than a little beer drinking. We find the ‘Bavarian Beer Café’ where all European beers are on the menu. From a seat on the balcony we have a fantastic view over the water and each drink a liter of beer from a mug. At a certain point I don’t know anymore whether I’m chilling with a beer or lifting weights. Drinking beer has never been such a good workout, I can say.
The best and most spectacular place in Brisbane can be found on South Head. We walk past some museums through a large park and suddenly see a beach with azure blue water. In the middle of the city!? Because the center is not located on the sea, they brought the sea here: a large artificial lagoon, with funky music, where the ‘Brisbanians’ lie spread out next to each other like solar panels on the weekends. There is even a large swimming pool next to it and everything is free. As we lay there in the sun like gods, I thought to myself: if we had this in the Netherlands, within two days that lagoon would be full of waste, shopping carts and loitering youth. We would break our necks on that beach over the empty beer bottles. But it’s all possible in Brisbane, because the atmosphere here is so relaxed!
Giant waves on a stormy Sunshine Coast
On the south side of Brisbane, you’ll find Australia’s Gold Coast. On the other side in the North is the Sunshine Coast. Unfortunately, this chain of beaches does not live up to its name when we land there. We start in the center of this strip of sand, namely in the town with the special name Mooloolaba. When the rain is pouring down, we briefly consider correcting the Sunshine Coast sign to Rainstorm Coast with a large marker. On second thought, we would benefit more from a day of surfing the Internet and planning travel in a local coffee shop. When we get outside again, the sun is almost setting. We decide to lie on the beach of Mooloolaba for a while. But to say that this was a must-see in Australia, no, not really.
Well worth a visit, whatever the weather, is the northernmost point of the Sunshine Coast, namely the town of Noosa. This small, fairly chic town full of gourmet restaurants is nice to see in itself, but the Noosa National Park steals the show. We set our sights on a walk along Noosa Heads, rugged cliffs with tropical rainforest, with a hidden beach here and there, which are overgrown with beautiful Tea Trees.
Today, because of the apparently fantastic waves, the city has been completely taken over by Surfing Australia. On the one hand it is annoying and difficult to find a parking spot, but on the other hand we see from the cliffs how the best surfers show their skills. On the right side of the path we search the Tea Trees for koalas, which live here in large numbers; while if we look to the left we see gigantic waves with Australia’s best surfers on them. So we are being spoiled again.
Walking around Noosa Heads
When we stand at the very tip of Noosa Heads, the waves are so high that we realize we have never seen anything like it. An inlet in the rocks even has the name Hell’s Gates and when we look down into it, we understand where the name comes from. If I try to take a photo even within five meters of the cliff, I hear a little voice in my head saying, ‘you’ll fall down and then you’ll die.’ When I turn around, it turns out that the little voice is a screaming Suus, who always gets scared of heights when she sees me climbing. As we walk further the wind blows so hard that we are occasionally pushed a meter aside and this time I agree with Suus.
Things were pretty rough here on the ‘Noisy Ocean’. At the end of the walk the weather is beautiful and we of course go to the beach, where the waves are still so high that the Center Parks wave pool is starting to look like a container of contact lens solution. For about an hour we ‘swim’, read: get tossed around like a grape in a blender, in the gigantic waves of Noosa Beach. Until today, there was still no nudist beach here. I changed all that with the right timing of the waves. When I jump over a wave the ultimate height, it pulls me under and drags me around over the bottom. I came back to the surface without my swimming trunks on. Another unique experience, shall we say!
The pure natural paradise: Fraser Island
From the Sunshine Coast we drive to the town of Rainbow Beach for one of the most special places on our Australia trip: Fraser Island. Off the east coast there is a large sandy plateau which nature has developed into a paradise on earth, over thousands of years. The world wonder is complete with lagoons and crystal clear rivers. Scientists are still investigating the unique conditions that shaped Fraser Island. It is the only place in the world where rainforest can grow on sand.
We spend a day driving around the island in a large four-wheel drive truck; there are no roads. This has to do with the protected status of Fraser Island. Nothing or no one is allowed to hinder nature here. It is therefore as pure as you can imagine a paradise to be.
Suus and I sit in the front and enjoy a ride over this vast sandbar. We drive along and through the surf of the sea. We also cross straight through the jungle to get to Eli Creek. Here we walk through pure spring water, which feels fresher and cleaner than in the bathtub at home. We also visit the shipwreck of the Maheno, which has been lying untouched on the beach for 81 years. It is slowly disappearing into the sea, so we made it on time.
During our lunch, in the middle of the jungle of the island, we see dozens of ‘monitor lizards’, large monitor lizards, whose exact name in Dutch I would not know. They are about one meter to one and a half meters long, they scavenge around to see if there is anything to snack on and are also described by Suus as snake-crocodile animals. At such moments we have the perfect team division: while I run after them to get videos, films or even an autograph from them, she sits on the lookout further up in the highest tree.
Crystal clear Lake McKenzie
The highlight of our trip to Fraser Island is Lake McKenzie, one of the most beautiful lakes on earth. The swimming pool-like water is even bluer than a group photo of the Smurfs in Italian football shirts. Really a typical case of ‘pinch me because I’m dreaming’, if you ask me. We chill on the white sand that you would almost confuse with snow. Then we dive into the fresh water that smells and tastes so good; I have never seen this before. It saddens us to have to leave Fraser Island again, but we will come back here one day!
Visiting family in the Australian country side
There are no interesting things to see in the first hundred kilometers from Fraser Island, but we do pass the town of Yeppoon. Ever heard of it? No, me neither, of course not. Until my grandmother said to me just before leaving: ‘If you pass by Yeppoon, you should visit my sister’. I made grandma a promise to visit ‘aunty Cor’ and there we were in Yeppoon. Without any prior contact, because we simply only have a street name and number, we drive on an unpaved road on a large piece of land, really in the middle of nowhere.
After some field research we see a large country house and drive towards it, while we still have to dodge some wallabies with the car. When we get out quite nervously and walk to the front door, dogs start barking. We slowly creep closer and hope with all our hearts that our road trip doesn’t end on this driveway, torn apart by a pack of ferocious Rottweilers.
Hospitality is fundamental in Australia
Fortunately, we see that the sound only comes from a few glorified lap dogs and we see a woman approaching. It turns out to be Corrie, my mother’s cousin and aunt Cor’s daughter! The bizarre thing is that she didn’t think it was bizarre at all! I am the first member of my family to visit here in thirty years. And still we are welcomed as if we have been coming every week. We go up a staircase to the apartment of Aunt Cor. She is knitting from the couch in front of a fantastic view.
Corrie explains who we are and in no time we are making small talk in Aunt Cor’s Dutch English, over a beer. Her North Holland accent is beautiful and she has exactly the features of my grandmother! Bizarre to see. She also loves that we are there and almost doesn’t want to let us leave. Corrie and her husband, who live in the other part of the house, also immediately offer us to stay. We could eat and sleep for as long as we want. And so, while the grandchildren came to visit, I discovered a whole new branch of my family. And just as nice, we got a very nice insight into life in the Australian countryside.
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