5-10 September

Now we've one week to discover the Sunshine Coast. – This is on our agenda: driving with the Mary Valley Rattler, visit a Gold Mining museum, check the Big Pineapple, have a look at the bigger cities, go into the Hinterland and get a glimpse of Fraser Island.

The train ride (Valley Rattler) was great – old steam train (carriages were built between 1920 and 1950). You could see a lot of the country side during the ride. The little gold mining museum was ok although half was closed due to breeding Mac Pies.

We paid our visit to the Big Pineapple on our trip thru the Hinterland. On this drive we walked to some waterfalls, underneath some big trees (Giant Fig Trees and Giant Stinging Tree [never touch any leaf nor on the tree neither on the ground] and followed by the sound of a catbird (it cries more like a baby).  We even saw some younger people which kept our head turning – 4 people travelling in a two-seater camper...

Our glimpse at Fraser Island was really a glimpse... we took the inland way to Rainbow Beach as the tide was not right to go via the beach. Rainbow Beach is the town from which you can set over to Fraser Island. The inland way was a rough 4WD track with several washouts, bumps... but they were no problems for us but we nearly got stuck on the way to a beach camp ground – the car is not made to travel on soft sand – this means that we can't head over to Fraser Island. Anyway we watched other cars setting over – really interesting how the barge is working – just go to the waters edge, lower the ramp and the cars can drive on or off...

Today we head south to the Underwater World near Maroochydore - the Aquarium/Oceanium on the Sunshine Coast. It was good - we just arrived with the start of the Seal Show, watched the Otter Show and then by luck participated in the Ray feed and talk. The other animals on display were turtles, fishes, sharks and so on and on. Their shark tunnel was really good as you didn’t had to walk through/underneath it - you could drive-walk on the walkway, just step off if you want to take any pictures. The last exhibition was called “scary and crawly”. it was about spiders, lobsters and other underwater crawling animals… for lunch we discovered a Thai restaurant directly at the wharf and it was really good. Then we headed further to see if we could get a Netbook in one of the shops and were successful - luckily we stepped into the Good Guys before having a look at Caloundra as the shop closed at 5pm even on a Thursday. We just walked down the beach in Caloundra - this city is definitely more touristic than Coolum Beach, a real promenade lots of restaurants and of course more high-rise buildings.

Cu, Anja & Tom