Toowoomba Brisbane Gold Coast

ur big trip to oz included a week at the Great Barrier Reef. We started from the Gold Coast and drove for fourteen hours over two days.

After about four hours drive north of Brisbane, it had been a while since we saw any sign of civilisation, aside from the occasional farm, amongst hundreds of kilometres of bush and nothingness. This 'honesty box' banana truck was the first thing we saw. We bought a bag of Lady Finger Bananas for $2, and they made a nice travel snack.

We stayed on the mainland at Airlie Beach, overlooking the Whitsunday Islands. Airlie Beach is a small town in an area called Proserpine and is a haven for backpackers from all over the world. And whilst it's a great spot, location wise, the backpacker trade has dragged the place down a lot. Many of the shops advertise hangover cures (be it breakfast burgers, Hawaiian Shave Ice, or the Chemist) and the outdoor Beer Gardens are overflowing with sunburnt 20 something year olds getting drunk from around 4pm until 3am.

For our 5 night/6 day holiday, we booked into a newly built self-catering flat called Toscana Village Resort.

Sunrise from our bedroom window at some ungodly hour of the day. We got up snapped this shot and went back to bed.

Toscana was a really nice place to stay, and I would thoroughly recommend it.

ulphur Crested Cockatoos were everywhere in Airlie Beach, and these ones were spotted as we walked down the hill from our resort, to the main street. They were gathering the red berries from the Palm Trees, and flying to the other side of the road, to the Gum Trees to eat them.

One of the drawbacks of holidaying in North Queensland, Australia, during summer is that the stingers are out, meaning you can't swim in the beaches (unless you fancy being killed by a Box Jellyfish sting.) Airlie Beach Council's answer to that was to put in a big lagoon overlooking the beach, so that you can still swim.