We left Byron Bay the night before and parked in a street near to a hostel we thought we could get a free shower the following day, but we were out of luck. Instead we drove closer to the city centre near a YHA, a guaranteed free shower we thought, but security was good and we couldn’t get in. However, we could in the one next door so we showered there, and Mike bumped into Kev and Anna, we went back to try and find them after our shower but they had checked out heading off to Australia Zoo.

We spent our day wondering around the city, including lunch in McDonalds where we noticed the time had gone backwards an hour, apparently the time zone changed when we got to Brisbane or somewhere before. On our tour of the city we saw Streets Beach, an inland beach in the city sponsored by Streets, the Australian version of Walls Ice Cream.

More botanic gardens and a stroll along the harbour which had been redeveloped to look very posh, which in turn means we couldn’t afford much on our backpacker budget.

Before we left we planned on eating at a free barbecue in a bar we had seen, unfortunately we were suckered in by the thought of free food. We bought 1 beer to find out that only got a 1 hot dog (1 slice of value bread, a value sausage and some really burned onions if we wanted). Still hungry we left on the hunt for more food before heading to the cinema to watch Yes Man. We were very disappointed with the fish and chips we found outside the cinema, the fish was dry and the chips were quite old and covered in chicken salt (chicken salt was our own fault).

After watching the hilarious Yes Man we drove to Beerwah, a town very close to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo where we parked up in a rest stop with a number of other campers. The next morning we drove the remaining few KMs to the zoo to be stung by a surprising $53. Crikey we thought.

But, as we wondered around the zoo all the displays and shows made it well worth it. We went to the Crocoseum to see Terri, Steve’s Wife and Wes, his best mate handle some crocs, sometimes they looked like they weren’t following the rehearsed show and got a bit close for comfort, but that made it all the more enjoyable for the crowd.

During the performance there was also a bird show, they had been trained incredibly well as they displayed when they flew into the stands, got very close to our heads and landed on some designated people in the audience.

We only anticipated the Zoo taking half a day, but there was so much to cover we ended up spending most of the day there. We went and saw some Koala’s which as always were sleeping.

As we got deeper into the zoo we reached the elephants, who liked to burst the balls they were supposed to be kicking and some tigers who were being teased with a furry toy. As we headed back to the entrance we went into the kangaroo enclosure, an area where you could get up and close with the roos to feed or stroke them.

We headed off from Australia Zoo bound for Noosa, a short drive away where we would be staying the night. We found our parking spot to sleep and the next day we didn’t hang around for long, only enough to fix the speakers in the back of the van near Bunnings Warehouse, the Aussie B&Q then headed to Hervey Bay, the starting point for our self drive Fraser Island trip.