Ok so I’m skipping a bit here to the Watagan Mountain trip that me and Tracey did. Mostly this involves photos!

This should set the theme of the day nicely!

We stopped for lunch but realised we were getting a lot of bird attention

Not sure what these were but the crows outnumbered them!

We are surrounded!

The leader approached! I think he was after the food!

After a dramatic gunfight, car chase escape that culminated in a final battle atop a bridge as it was being demolished, we went for a stroll in the woods…

  Tracey using her gumboots/wellies as a licence for anything 😛

Arty shot again!

Now this was the start of a few issues. You see Abbots Falls trail makes it sound like a nice little walk, all marked and signposted, with some waterfalls at the end. Not so. We headed down it and were soon sliding our way down steep, muddy, wet pathway with no end in sight. After a good kilometre of it we decided to turn back, thoroughly exhausting ourselves on the return leg back up!

But what was worse? When I got home and put the data from the Holux GPS Unit that I was carrying into Google Earth… it showed us that we had done a 105m vertical descent and climb again for nothing! There were no waterfalls, no beauty spots that I could see! Nothing!

I’ll get a screenshot of it when I’m next online.

It was 5:30 am in Noosa and I had to get up as quietly as possible in the hostel room, slide out and get to the bus stop then start the trip back to Newcastle.

I had a much better trip back then I did on the way up. I got to Nambour station in an hour then hopped on the train, this time it was more like an Intercity one from home. I can’t tell you much about the trip, just that I was asleep for most of it and was lucky to make it off the train at Central.

Met Alan and Hayley again for the morning (of mostly computery things I must admit) and had lunch back on the South Bank (wow sushi is good over here!). Was great to see them again (hint: both you come to Canada!). Alan also managed to get me interested in WordPress templates and what I might be able to do with it for my Mum’s website… now that’s a hard itch to scratch on the road!

Back to the Airport and jumped on Jetstar back to Newcastle where I was met by my favorite nurse. That same nurse decided half way round a roundabout that we were going to explore Stockton, much to my surprise!

So I was there on a bus, on the way to Noosa with a hostel bed waiting for me at Halse Lodge, phew!

After having a chat with Tracey I got talking to the bus driver who turned out to be pretty interesting, and got me some local knowledge!

Checked into Halse and got a very nice fold out bed to sleep on that I think looked more comfortable than the bunks. Went and checked out the bar and got talking to folks so stayed there for the evening. There is a great vibe here!

This morning I woke up pretty early and checked out, then went for an explore (isn’t it great when you only have a small backpack!?).

The main beach in the morning

The weather looked pretty changable today. It is winter but people are still sunbathing (correction, sunbaking, this is Aus after all), surfing and swimming!

I went for a good explore of Noosa Sounds and it turned out to be pretty good. I was really enjoying the exercise and there were some good sights to see

They even provided free telescopes! 

I made my way round the headland then walked back through the money-splashing resort strip of Noosa Heads and admired all the fancy pants shops. I had another pie for breakfast and then saw the signs for Noosa National Park! I felt like a hike and a quick excuse to see the beach on the other side, so off I went.

I did not set up the rainbow!

Surfers at it

  This one just sort of took me as a great shot

Another wave shot! You’d be right to think I was taking a few too many

Granite Beach, was deserted for the most part

Another arty shot alert!

Forgot to mention, I had a haircut in Newcastle

  Hell’s Mouth from above

Alexandra Bay. Unknown to me at this point, it was a nude beach! There was an old man with his top on but his lad out!

  Anyone want to help me identify this?

One of the best beach break shots

This vandalised sign was the first notice I had of the Bay’s real use!

Yet more wave shots!

The trail

Back to Civilisation

The water runoff you can see in the last shot made a great shot of it’s own!

As did these birds, who legged it from the incoming wave after this shot was taken

I went back to the main beach and saw the numbers of surfers were rising!

I decided it was enough photos for the day (I had 190 taken and 75 keepers!) and chilled out sunbathing on the beach, only getting up to give Halse Lodge a ring and check in for another night! I was sunbathing in winter! Tell me that’s not a good way to be!?

Then I came back to the lodge, put the Bourne Ultimatum on and wrote this! I’m bang up to date on the blog… well I won’t be by the time I post this 😛