A True Adventure

Friday 30th July 2010-Road Trip

We decided it would be a good idea to hire out a car one day, so we went into the city on Thursday to find the best company to go with. We found that Euro car had the best deal, for 1 full day at $47. Split between all three of us including petrol, this worked out cheaper than us getting trains all day, so it was well worth it.

Thursday night we made a rough plan of some of the places we were going to go to, and we borrowed a road map from Marey. We set off at 9am Friday morning, to get the car for 10 am. We had the car for 24 hours. Leah did all the driving. We set off towards the sunshine coast, and stopped at several places along the way.

First of all we stopped at the Beerburrum Lookout. There was a 1/2 mile climb up to the lookout, although this wasn’t much, it was all up hill at nearly a 45 degree angle. This wasn’t easy in my flip flops! Once we got to the top we were able to see out to the glass top mountains. These are a group of volcanic plugs. These are the centre of the volcanoes (lava) after the rest of the volcano has eroded away. It has left a picturesque landscape. We stopped and relaxed for a while looking at the beautiful views in the distance.

Glass Top Mountains

We then descended down the hill. The descending is sometimes harder than the climb, as it is hard to stop yourself from running down. When we got back to the bottom, we stopped for some lunch. We prepared a cool box with sandwiches and fruit before coming out.

Next stop was Buderim Ginger Bread factory, in Yandina. It used to be in Buderim, but had since moved to Yandina. BuderimGinger factory has been running since 1941. You are able to watch how the ginger is made in the factory and also look around the many shops at the outlet. The tickets for entrance to the factory cost about $20 each for adults. We decided just to look around the shops, although I’m sure it would have been well worth a visit. We all got an ice cream. All the flavours had ginger in it. I got Raspberry and ginger flavour. This was delicious.

Ruth and Paul enjoying their ice cream

There were several different shops, souvenir shops, macadamia nut shop (we were testing all the different Macadamia nuts). Leah bought some chocolate with macadamia nuts in. We then looked around the shops and bought some ginger bread to take home. There was a beautiful forest area that we walked around. There were many different trees and birds in the forest.

Outside the ginger factory

After spending about 1 hour at the factory we drove on to Coolum beach along the sunshine coast. We went in for a little while, but the sun was starting to go down, so the water was fairly cold. We spotted a lot of jelly fish along the beach, so we were watching where we were walking. After spending a short while at the beach we dove on to Noosa Heads National Park and drove up to the Lagoon Lookout to watch the sunset. This is a great place to watch the sunset over the mountains in the distance. There were a few clouds In the sky which made the sunset look really stunning! We were so lucky to find a perfect spot in time for the sunset.

Sunset at Lagoon Lookout

We decided to finish off the day by driving to Mt Coot-Thalookout, which we have been to once before during the day. We didn’t realise how busy it would be up there! Everyone else had the same idea as us. It was a great place to be at night time, as the city looks great from the lookout with all the lights. There is a café at the top which stays open till about 10pm, we got hot chocolates and just sat and watched the city.

It was a great day and we got to see a lot. It was definitely worth hiring the car out. It would of cost us a lot more getting around by trains, plus we wouldn’t have got to see half of the things we did on public transport. Ideally we would have had a car for the full time.

We had to get the car back to the city Saturday morning. Leah picked us up in the morning at 9.30am and drove the car back to the city. There was a big picnic in Roma Street parklands, in the city, which we decided to go to. It was a picnic to raise money for cerebral palsy. There were several bands playing in the park, including the Empty Chair Project, which was a big band, Spacifix, which was a New Zealand group whose music was a fusion of reggae, funk, pop and rock, also a group called Dave Dow and the human grove (a 12 piece funk, reggae, soul band. The event was really well organised and the entertainment was excellent. All the money was going to the Cerebral Palsy League (CPL)

Empty Chair Project

The Cerebral Palsy League supports children and adults with disabilities to pursue their own personal goals and dreams. They provide them with expert therapies, technologies, equipment and employment to meet their individual needs.

Leah had to go about 1 am as she was going to a car rally event in Redcliffe with her friend Marey. Me and Paul decided to continue watching the entertainment in the park.

Last week we were staying with Elissa’s (Leah’s friend) parents, in a town called Nambour, near the sunshine coast. We had a fantastic week their and loved being beside the coast and enjoyed our stay with Liz and David Guy. They have a beautiful home in Nambour, on top of a hill. The town is an old country town with about 10,000 people living there. We will write about our stay there in our next blog.

We are heading to Melbourne tonight. We fly from Brisbane to Melbourne at 6.00pm local time. (9am GMT 11^thAugust 2010). We are flying with  jet star. We found this to be the cheapest company. We are going to be staying with a friend called Rachel Haymes (Bowness) who we have known for most of our life. She is now married to Jarrod with 3 children and lives in Melbourne.

We hope everyone is well and we look forward to speaking more to everyone once we get to Melbourne.

Ruth and Paul