Jetsetting to Queensland

The next week was a massive family event, in that my brother got married to his long-term partner and co-parent. It was a really beautiful event which was hosted in the backyard of my parents place which was totally decked out for the occasion. It was a really fantastic party, about which I won’t write too many details on this public blog 😉

Off we go!

After the wedding weekend Manja and I flew over to Brisbane to tour Queensland. In all my years in Australia, I had never made it to the reef, so this was a great opportunity to catch this up!

After flying to Gold Coast, we got into our little rental car and made our way down to Byron Bay. That was kind of the wrong way, but hey, when you’re so close you just have to go and check out the famous sites 😀

Our little vehicle for the trip

About an hours drive later, we arrived at our Airbnb and I have to say it looked awesome. We found out later that evening that looks aren’t everything, but check out this brochure-like view from the entrance and the little welcoming committee which was there for us.

With checkin complete, we drove into town to grab some lunch at the google-recommended Mana Haven Cafe. It turned out to be really delicious and we also found ourselves some info on hikes around the area!

We decided to head over to Arakwal National Park for an afternoon hike. You may have heard of the three sisters, which are visible from this walking track. It promised a nice walk and stunning scenery.

The scenery was absolutely stunning.  Manja is an avid photographer and we tend to take our time to take some photos of the local wildlife.  Today we saw this guy!

… I should say that he was actually the size of a 50c piece, this shot makes him look massive though :D.
We also took plenty of postcard-style pictures, and here’s some of our favourites:

And of course we saw the three sisters:

On our way back we both jumped when this guy crossed our path!

After recovering from the scare, Manja spent a bit of time taking those photos of him. Neither of us know a damn thing about snakes… or legless lizards as this one probably was – so we kept a respectful distance.

By the time we got back to the car, we were both quite hungry.  Some research later, we headed to town to Chihuahua Taco for some awesome Tacos for dinner. It really was super tasty!

It was a beautiful evening, so we headed to the beach via a fro-yo place and settled down to watch the seaside for a bit.  Eventually we decided to head back to our Airbnb to get some sleep, but on the way there we came across this little lake where there was a very very large flock of cockatoos settling into a tree. We watched them for a bit, intending to stay for sunset, but….   It’s a lake. In Queensland. That meant that there was about a billion mosquitos coming for us, so we retreated a bit more quickly than intended. But here is a short video with the awesome sound of Australian wildlife.

When we returned we saw that the Airbnb really put form over substance: Besides showers which didn’t have sufficient slope to drain properly, the Airbnb did not have any sort of air-conditioning, only a pretty-but-not-very-functional-and-very-nosiy fan allowing us to fall into no more than an uncomfortable half-doze for the night.