A Noosa Encore

Last weekend, Alan and I headed back out to Noosa for the weekend. Previously we had spent an afternoon on Hastings Street and the main beach in Noosa, and loved it so we decided to go back and explore some more. We left Brisbane late Friday morning, and started on the ~2 hour drive to Noosa.

Having driven out this way previously, we noticed signs for the Glass Mountains Tourist Drive. The Glass Mountains are these massive craggy peaks that are stunning from a distance, so we thought they would likely be even more impressive up close. Neither one of us really looked into the Glass House Mountain Tourist Drive, we just assumed that it would lead tourists in vehicles to the Glass Mountains. But in actuality, it just takes you slightly closer to said mountains on a road that runs parallel to the main highway, not in fact to the Glass Mountains themselves... To be fair, we did drive past the Information Centre, as we were still operating on the assumption that the Tourist Drive would take us to the mountains. Oh well. We know for next time to investigate this route, and we'll be good tourists and stop at the info centre first. :)

We got to Noosa around 2 pm, checked into our hotel (Outrigger Little Hastings Street, very nice!) and wandered back down to Hastings Street for a drink and late lunch.

Walking down to Hastings Street from the hotel

It was beer o'clock.

Back at the hotel. He may look relaxed, but he's reading a very thick document from work... Notice the wine glass is empty? Yup, it's clearly engrossing reading material.

On Saturday, we decided to hike along the coast in Noosa National Park. We took the blue coastal track. I was really hoping to see dolphins or whales or koalas.

There were no dolphins at Dolphin Point. False advertising.

No dolphins at Granite Bay either. I'm masking my disappointment whilst posing for a photo.

Me on Granite Bay

No dolphins here. But the view made up for it. You can see the aforementioned Glass House Mountains in the distance here.

The scenery wasn't bad. :)

Dolphins continue to elude us, so I took a photo of Alan instead.

Alan

Another example of false advertising. This was Hell's Gates.  The water was the most beautiful shade of aqua blue. Not exactly hellish...

Hell's Gates look pretty nice...

Trying out our new SLR camera lens. I call this one "The Guardians of Hell's Gates".

Next up was Alexandria Bay, which is a beautiful stretch of white, sandy beach. It's also known for being a "clothing optional" beach. Hmm.

Alexandria Bay

 We stuck with our guns and kept our clothes on, as did most people.

Can you see any nudies?

Like good Canadians, we found a patch of shade to sit in, reapplied our sunscreen and enjoyed watching the waves crash on the beach. Alan took the camera and wanted to get some more photos so he wandered away. I was happy just sitting and enjoying the views, and trying to ensure I wasn't inadvertently enjoying viewing any nude sunbathers.

Alan left me with the binoculars, and seeing as I was avoiding looking anywhere on the beach with them, I kept them trained on the ocean, figuring it was a safe bet. There were a few boats on the horizon, plus a few stand up paddle boarders as well as some people swimming.

But then, I saw them. Dolphins! There looked to be quite a few of them. So exciting!

Having only my iPhone and the binoculars, I tried to take a picture through the binoculars, but it was largely unsuccessful, no dolphins in sight, just a blurry picture of a wave.

Unsuccessful iPhone binocular photo

Where's the real camera? Oh, right...  

Where's Alan?

I could see him, standing on the rocks, right where the surf breaks. He would be unlikely to hear me yell at him. But then I see he has his camera aiming almost directly at the dolphins. Perfect! He's spotted them too!

Shortly after they disappeared from sight, Alan wandered back towards me.

Me - "Did you get some pictures of them?"

Him - "Of what?"

Me - "The dolphins!"

Him - "No! Where?"

Oops... 

They had disappeared at that point. Alan was a little bummed. But I looked through the photos he had taken, and spotted a dolphin dorsal fin in one of the photos.

Alan inadvertently caught a dolphin with this picture. It's on the right side, almost at the top of the water.

We headed back the way we came at this point. And on our way back, we spotted more dolphins. (Side note, this did not occur at Dolphin Point either, I'm wondering if it should be renamed). Sadly, they didn't get up to anything too exciting. Just swimming.

Dolphins!

As we were walking back, there was a couple on the path peering into the bush. I'm not sure how, but they spotted a kangaroo just off the trail. After checking us out for a while (and probably hoping we would leave it alone), the roo hopped away, and Alan was only able to get a picture of it's bottom, but it was pretty neat.

Kangaroo bottom

We walked on. Then, this same couple stopped again, peering into the bush on the other side of the trail this time, out of which crawled a lizard. A pretty big one at that!

Lizard. Maybe a Lace Monitor?

We tried to keep up to the creature spotting couple, hoping that they could find us a koala next, but we lost them. We were unsuccessful in our koala search, but we had a great time, and it was a beautiful day. As we were leaving the park, we noticed that the visitor centre has a Koala sightings board outside of it, listing where koalas had been spotted. Note to self, Tourist Information Centres give out information to tourists... including myself. Again, we know for next time. :)

We spent our Sunday sitting on Noosa's Main Beach. Had a FaceTime chat with my parents. Did some people watching. It's funny the things you overhear as people walk by. The winner while we sat there was "It's easier to replace your husband than your children". I wrote down a few other winners, but I can't find where I wrote them, and that's the only one I remember.

Our next trip is to Singapore! We are headed there in September, in part for Alan's work, but we've decided to make a little trip out of it. Should be fun!

Olympic Observations of Australia

Australia is also a proud sporting nation, which was evident over the past two weeks of Olympics. They have a penchant for naming their olympic teams after animals, or failing that, just adding "roo" to the end of the sport (which has turned into a running joke between the two of us, because at the beginning of the olympics we were jokingly referring to every team as the sport with "roos" at the end, until we realized that we were calling them the right name!)

Opals - Women's Basketball (Basketballeroos)
Boomers - Men's Basketball
Stingers - Women's Water Polo (Water Poloroos)
Sharks - Men's Water Polo
Kookaburras - Men's Field Hockey
Dolphins - Swim team, although they weren't widely referred to as the Dolphins...
Socceroos
Volleyroos
Hockeyroos - Women's Field Hockey

So naturally, this progressed to calling any Australian competitor in any sport by the following names...

Handballeroos
Fenceroos
Roweroos
Kayakeroos
Tennisroos
Gymnasteroos
Saileroos
Diveroos
Archeroos
Shooteroos

And so on... Ah, we're funny, especially when we're drinking wine. 

This kangaroo is not impressed.

And neither is MacKayla Moroney (if only she was Australian, this would be perfect)

I actually found a Wikipedia entry on the official names of the national teams (link) if you're really interested...

An interesting factoid for the keen (non-Australian) observer of Australian athletes at the Olympics is the presence of the two animals in the coat of arms seen on their uniforms. Kangaroos and Emus were chosen for two reasons. the obvious one is that they are native animals of Australia, and the other reason is that they are unable to move backwards, and can only progress in a forward direction. Neat huh?

Australian Coat of Arms

We are heading to Noosa this weekend for a little vacation, because in a week WE GET OUR STUFF!!!! Hooray! We are very excited, especially because we'll finally get to sleep in our own bed!

Happy Dance!