Christmas at Noosa Heads

We rented an apartment at Noosa Heads for 5 days over Christmas and enjoyed the extra space and facilities.

We had a fairly conventional Christmas celebration other than strolling down to the beach for a swim and sun bathe.

The rest of the time we explored the various beaches and the rainforest around Noosa.

The last couple of days we were back in the campervan and we headed further up the Noosa river to camp site on one of its lakes. From there we were able to hire a canoe and paddle to the upper reaches of the Noosa river.

Sunshine Coast Hinterland

Will and Morgan have flown up from Sydney to join us for 10 days over Christmas. We’ve spent the first 3 days touring the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in the campervan.

The strangest feature on the landscape is the Glasshouse mountains. These are pinnacles formed by volcanic activity 20 million years ago. We climbed up a couple and the views are amazing.

On Saturday we visited the Eumundi market which was fascinating to wander around with its huge variety of stalls, buskers and street food. After that we visited the ginger factory which processes the ginger grown around here.

The third day we chilled out around our campsite in a forest near lake that is very popular with motor boat people and water skiers.

Mount Glorious

We had to go to Mount Glorious because we almost bought a campervan from there and the location sounded so wonderful. It’s just a small mountain village, but there are views of the lake created as a reservoir and for flood prevention in Brisbane.

Descending the mountain we continued our magical mystery tour and found a lovely lunch spot by another lake that feeds the first lake (if you’re still following).

Mount Coot-Tha and Botanic Gardens

Confusingly, Brisbane has two botanic gardens. The ones we visited today were out of the city centre and were vast, with different areas for different types of plants – fragrant, arid, rainforest, native Australian and so forth.

The gardens are at the foot of Mount Coot-Tha. The summit gives splendid views across the city.

Brisbane

Moving on up the coast, we reached Brisbane. Brisbane is a relaxed city and small enough to walk around and see most things in a morning (mainly because we could only find 3 hours parking!). We particularly enjoyed the botanic gardens and a walk by the Brisbane river.

Ben’s Mum

We’ve reached the Gold Coast where Ben’s Mum, Erika, lives with her partner, Sebastian. They live at Hope Island, to be exact.  We had a lovely time together; they took us to an Italian restaurant for lunch and we chatted about our families and life in general.

Byron Bay

If you’ve really been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that we’ve been heading north, avoiding the coast since we left Newcastle. The inland route along the mountains was very scenic. However, we’re now back on the coast and we had to come to Byron Bay as we’d heard so much about it from James.

We arrived in the evening and the small town was buzzing with hippies, surfers and buskers – a wonderful atmosphere. The bay itself is lovely, set with the mountains behind it and there is no high-rise development here as is the case with much of this part of the coast.

Bald Rock

We’re heading north, following the line of the Great Dividing Range on the New England Highway. We stopped at Bald Rock, which is the second largest rock monolith in Australia after Uluru. The view from the top are amazing and well worth the climb.

Barrington Tops

Barrington Tops is a remote mountainous region covered in a variety of types of forests. We drove 40km along a stony track to reach a camping area near the centre of the region. It certainly feels wild and remote up here – we wondered how far we were from the nearest human being. Being at an altitude of 1500m it is blissfully cool and we loved being able to sleep in our sleeping bags again and have porridge for breakfast.

The next day we explored the forests and sphagnum peat bogs that are a feature up here.

Ben’s Dad

Ben is Olivia’s boyfriend and he’s Australian, so we had an invite to visit his Dad, Wal, and his wife, Jenny, in Nelson Bay. It was great to meet them and we got on really well. Wal showed us round Nelson Bay which is a peninsula off the main tourist track, but it has some fabulous views and beaches. In the evening, they took us out for dinner to an Italian restaurant.

Newcastle

Newcastle is a busy port but is an attractive town. We’re camped at Stockton beach, which is on the opposite side of the Hunter river to Newcastle, so we took the ferry across. We strolled around the town learning about the work that the convicts did to build the harbour and the steel industry (now defunct).

There are many fine surfing beaches around Newcastle and where we’re staying at Stockton.