22-26/6/2015
Perth and Bribie Island
Spent some nice days in
Perth, caught up with friends, colleagues at work (even spent about 5
hours in the office) and got some progress on various matters –
more about that later.
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| The Causeway - South Perth in the Background |
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| Gordon Street Garage - cool coffee shop in West Perth |
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| At Gordon Street Garage |
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| Walk to Claisebrook Cove |
Perth was great – cold
at night but beautiful and sunny during the day. The sky is blue over
here as almost nowhere else.
The flight back to
Brisbane was good – used some old Emirates miles to get a business
class seat which offered a flat bed to cure some of my lack of sleep
and hangover from the last few days.
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| A330 Lie Flat Seat |
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| Early morning at Perth Airport |
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| Looks and feels so much better than sitting at the back |
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| Great Australian Blight, I drove that a few months ago ;-) |
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| Breakfast galore at 41,000 feet |
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| Moreton Bay, shortly before landing in Brisbane |
From Brisbane I drove up
to Bribie Island to catch up with Matthew, a colleague from work, who
invited me to stay over at his place on this wonderful spot. We had a
lot of fun the first evening, some friends came over to Matthew's
family home and we had an obscene amount of wine. In short, funny
conversations, a lot of wine, sparkling wine & I think gin and
dinner around 23:00 if I remember correctly. Old war stories from our
projects and hilarious experiences were shared and discussed and
everybody cracked up big time.
Friday morning was a bit
slow but I got a lot of work on the van done (disassemble the bike
mount, clean up the hazed headlights, reorganizing my clothes and
food) and I finally read most of the private emails that were piling
up.
In the late arvo, shortly
before sunset, Matthew took me four wheel driving on the beach.
Entertaining and a beautiful sunset!
I found out that Matthew
is a great cook and likes to prepare most of the meals at home. We
had some home made beef and mushroom pie on Friday and a roast with
vegetables on Thursday, exactly what I needed. We even checked out a
new restaurant/entertainment place called Sandstone which I liked a
lot.
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| Sandstone Restaurant |
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| Bribie Island |
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| View from inside the car, quite soft sand |
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| Home made beef and mushroom pie, yummy! |
Distance traveled: 80km
27/6/2015
Bribie Island to Tin Can
Bay
Started after two
breakfast coffees towards the Glass House Mountains. A picturesque
assembly of mountains in the Great Dividing Range. I hiked up Mount
Beerburrum (probably Aboriginal for 'rainbow lorikeet'), a 280 meter
high hill with a very steep track winding up. Great views from the
top as the sky cleared up a little bit.
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| What a great view from up there |
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| Some of the other peaks in the Glass House Mountains |
Next stop was the Eumundi
Market, an artisan market that is held twice a week. Ordered some
coffee and had a chat with the young barista girl. Turned out that
her mother, who also working in the coffee stall, is from Austria.
Speaking to her was amusing as she is originally from Klagenfurt (not
that far from home!) but has been in Australia for over 26 years. As
I liked their coffee, I asked them where they get their beans from
and if there is a local roaster on the market. I was lucky and went
to the roaster straight away as I needed some fresh roast coffee for
the Aeropress.
Geeking out with the
roaster about the Aeropress was great – bought a blend called
“Cheeky Monkey” and got a receipt how to get the best out of
these beans on the Aeropress – he even wrote it down on the coffee
package I bought.
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| Cheeky Moneky & brewing instructions for Aeropress inverted method |
I browsed around the
market for another while but eventually left and drove to Noosa,
which is part of the Sunshine Coast. Noosa Heads is an amazing,
bustling place and has a lot more 'soul' from my perspective compared
to say Surfers Paradise or most Gold Coast towns that I know. The
beach is great, wonderful waves rolling in and the national park out
to Noosa Heads is amazing. As I didn't do any sports for a while, I
put the running shoes on and ran along the beach and out into the
national park. Reasonable pace for my current fitness level, but the
total lack of food and the fact that I didn't drink much water all
day but a large quantity of coffee made the run harder than it sould
have been.
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| Noosa Beach |
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| Running along the coast in the National Park |
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| What an amazing place |
Just when I returned to
the van, the next shower came in. Probably the sixth time this day
that the outside of the van got wet and I was happy to be inside when
it happened. Drove to Gympie next for a bit of grocery shopping and
phoning up some camp sites in Tin Can Bay to get a spot for the
night. This is the first weekend of the two week school holidays that
start on Monday. Hence I had to put several calls in to finally get a
spot.
It was a scenic drive for
most of the day and the last bit was no different. The sun is still
setting extremely early here, sunset is currently at 5:06 pm and it
is dark by 5:30pm. I picked up a roasted chicken and ate it all
(actually wolfed it down would be the better description) as I was
really hungry after not having eaten all day.
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| Last light at Tin Can Bay marina |
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| Tin Can Bay |
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| 10 minutes after the above photos, at the camp site... another shower! |
Distance traveled: 240km
