From Tin Can Bay, I drove us south to Noosa Head. We were now on the Sunshine Coast. It was a very pretty drive. Noosa is a ritzy town that has more roundabouts than any other city in Queensland, and maybe the whole country, I forget. Maybe even in the world! I navigated us through so many roundabouts we were dizzy. Once we found a place to park at Noosa Head, we got out of the car. The town was really cute, but it looked a bit expensive. We walked down to the beach and walked along the sand to the other side of town. The waves were huge. People were surfing—it was the first surfing we had seen in Australia. (Further north, there aren’t big enough waves on the coast because the GBR blocks them.) Surfers wore wetsuits and carried their boards along a pretty, wooded path alongside the curvy road on their way to the beach. We were walking on the very top of the beach, near the rocks, when a huge wave came in. There was nowhere to escape. I was up to my waist in unexpected ocean water, and absolutely covered in sand. It was an uncomfortable walk back to the car, but we got into dry clothes, and Kelly drove us to another side of town, where we walked along Sunshine Beach, which was absolutely beautiful. We then went to a cute coffee shop where I ate some pretty fancy banana bread before getting back on the road.
The drive from Noosa down to Redcliffe was absolutely the most gorgeous drive. We passed the Glass House Mountains, where I wish we could have stopped. On our right, the sun was setting, and the sky was a brilliant yellow of golden light. It was raining a little bit, and on our left, up the lit-up, dew-dropped greenness of the cane fields, a rainbow shone out of grey clouds. As we drove, the rainbow grew taller and taller. It arched around and reached the ground on both sides. It was the largest rainbow I’ve ever seen. As we drove further, a second rainbow began to double over the first. I was glad Kelly was driving, because I could not stop looking at the scenery and wouldn’t have been paying any attention to the road. We got to Redcliffe past nightfall, where we just stopped for a short walk on the pier before continuing to Brisbane.
We got a little bit lost driving into Brisbane, but after a short detour which actually took us around the perimeter of the city, we made it to Kelly’s friend Dan’s apartment. We went inside, where we met Dan’s cousin Jackie, an immense Maori woman with a beautiful face and long black hair. Soon after, we drove to downtown Brisbane, which was really just like any other city, to have dinner at Bow Thai. Steve paid for my green curry, which he owed me after our sky-diving bet. After dinner, we headed back to the car and waited on the street to meet my friend Tim. Tim came to New Jersey during the summer of 2006 for about two months, and we had spent a fair amount of time together at Culver Lake. I hadn’t seen him since, but he and his friend Matt met me in Brisbane. I said goodbye to Kelly, Steve, and Eva for the night (they were staying at Dan’s), and Tim and Matt and I walked to Tim’s car.
Tim drove the three of us up to Mount Coolth (or something like that), where we could see a view of the city all lit up at night. It was sort of a hilarious drive to get there, because Matt was giving directions from the back seat, but wasn’t really paying attention, and it took much longer than it should have to get up the mountain. But we made it. We ordered coffee at a small café on top of the mountain, a skill I never mastered in Australia; what I wanted was a plain black coffee, and what I got was a luke-warm small puddle of espresso. Yuck. It was a bit chilly on top of the mountain, so we didn’t stay too long, but we did get a good view of Brisbane. When we left, Tim dropped Matt off at his house and we went to Tim’s dad’s house for the night. For the first time since homestay, I had my own room! I stayed in Tim’s brother’s room with a bed all to myself. Before bed, Tim and I talked for almost two hours, just catching up on the past three years of our lives since we had last seen each other. It was really nice.
I definitely slept in the next morning. It was wonderful. I was so warm and comfortable and relaxed. In the morning, Tim, the best host ever, made me a breakfast of orange juice, toast with butter and jam, and instant coffee (the only kind they drink, basically). We ate on the back deck. It was a pleasant, slow morning. Unfortunately, the koalas that Tim had nearly guaranteed would be outside our windows in the trees in the morning were completely absent. Because I had never seen a koala in the wild, Tim was determined to find me one. After showers and packing up, we headed out to Redlands IndigiScapes Centre, an area of restored forest and gardens where koalas could often be found. We walked through some of the walking trails, but all of the koalas must have been hiding from the rain, because we could not find any. When it started to pour, we ran back to the car. Luckily, Tim’s friend Taco, who knew we were on a koala hunt, gave us a call. He had found one in a park near his house. We drove over to Taco’s and walked to the end of his street where I saw my first koala, about one million feet up in the tallest eucalyptus tree in the world. It was nothing but a wet gray blob swaying among wet gray branches. But it was a koala, nonetheless.
Believe it or don't, but there is a koala in that tree.
After our semi-successful koala hunt, Tim and I headed off on an American food hunt, where we obtained bagels and Dr. Pepper. I have no idea why they don’t have bagels in Australia. They don’t have Dr. Pepper because there is a medicine that tastes very similar to it, and the soda went bankrupt there because people associated it with being sick. But Tim knew where to find it, and it was delicious. The bagels were stale, but I got them at a severe discount because I complained. They man at the bakery was like, “Bagels are supposed to be a little bit hard…” and in my head I was thinking, “These are the only five bagels in the entire country. Don’t tell ME what a bagel is supposed to be like.” But I didn’t say that.
Tim drove me back into the city to Dan’s apartment, where I met up with Kelly, Steve, and Eva again. We said our goodbyes to Dan and Tim and Steve drove us into the night, leaving Queensland, the state we had lived in for the past four months.
No comments:
Post a Comment