The overnight train was very comfy as we both could sleep almost without any interruptions. That’s definitely a recommendation whoever want to do this trip in the future. While we were sitting in the bus to our accommodation, we experienced what it means to be in the middle of the summer in Queensland. We were welcomed by a very heavy rain shower! Since the north of Australia has a sub-tropical climate and therefore has a rainy season, you always have to expect short heavy showers if you walk around. When we arrived almost dry we had a bit of a rest to recover the 5 days of camping and train. Our hosts, 2 people from Singapore, living in Australia for 8 years, were both very nice and helpful.
In the next days there were two things on the schedule: exploring Brisbane and planning our trip at the northern east coast.
Let’s start with Brisbane: as we both were not really excited about Sydney (not even ask about Perth and Adelaide) there was the next bigger city of Australia. While thinking “things can only get better” we started exploring and we were pleasantly surprised. Of course Brisbane is not as big and busy as Sydney, but smaller with a lot of charm and some very nice sports. Southbank is one example for such a spot. It’s something like a park area directly close to the river (which remembered us a bit of the Thames in London). The park was built for the EXPO 1988 and one can walk through a little rainforest path to a Nepalese temple. Or you can walk through arches surrounded by flower. Or you take a swim in the free swimming pool directly next to the river. At the other end of Southbank, next to the museums and the theatre, one can see the BRISBANE sign, which became famous during the G20 in November. The CBD is a mixture of older buildings and modern architecture that is situated very beautiful along the snaky river. Additionally, there are a couple of beautiful bridges with lookouts on Southbank and the city. One thing was always a highlight when visiting an Australian city: each of them had a nice botanic garden and so does Brisbane. However, the one in Brisbane has an outstanding feature, as it is the habitat of a special kind of animal: the Australian Waterdragon. There were so many of them, that we even had to be careful not to step on one of them. Last but not least we indulged a visit in the cinema. “The Hobbit” finally arrived in the southern hemisphere.
So let’s have a look on our further plans:
We had some ideas, what we wanted to do. The two highlights of the east coast, Fraser Island and Whitsundays, were definitely part of it. The big question was, however, if we wanted to go until Cairns (only 1700km north of Brisbane) or not. Cairns is something like the Mekka of all backpackers at the east coast, mostly because of its countless offers for tours to the Great Barrier Reef (incl. skydiving, helicopter etc.), but it’s also famous for the Daintree rainforest. Besides that, it’s almost twice as far away from Brisbane as the Whitsundays, which makes it expensive for both, time and money. That’s why we shelved the plan, but still had a bad feeling because of it until Tobi got a weird call. He posted on several pages that we need a lift to Cairns and an Indian called him and offered us a completely FREE ride (he just searched for some company for the long drive). After we met him we almost wanted to confirm, but the plan had two problems. First he wanted to drive to Cairns within 5 days, so we could have seen only 1-2 attractions and would have to rent a car to see everything we wanted to see on the way back. Due to the one-way fees, that would have been more expensive than renting a car Brisbane-Cairns-Brisbane, including the money for the fuel. That’s why we declined the offer and decided to give Cairns a miss.
So the final plan was as follows: We wanted to drive up to the Whitsundays and make a nice tour with the car in between. So we rented a car for 2 weeks, this time one which could be used to sleep in it in order to avoid too many camping grounds. Additionally, we tried to find couchsurfers on the way, which worked out so good that we spent only 4 of 14 nights on camping grounds, but more details will come up later 🙂