Koalas and the city (Apr. 6/09 - Noosa, Australia, mileage 216km)

It was another short driving day, as we wanted to spend a bit of time at Noosa and the mainland half of Great Sandy National Park, 200km south of Hervey Bay. Noosa is a chic little resort town on the coast, renowned as being Australia's most popular holiday town. With the hundreds of surfers playing in the ocean, couples sipping $10 martinis on the esplanade, and girls walking around in teeny bikinis, it may as well have been Malibu! What we were interested in was Noosa Heads National Park, which protects the hilly headlands that shelter Noosa's main beach. The park is full of walking trails, and being so close to town makes it accessible for everyone. A boardwalk links the town's main drag with the park headquarters, where you can watch people surfing the point break and crane your neck up to look for koalas - actually a common sight, even this close to town! The coastal path skirts beaches and climbs over headlands, where we counted almost 100 surfers doing their thing. Patches of eucalyptus and "paper bark tree" forests had us walking like idiots with our heads tilted up in search of a fuzzy grey blob in a tree, but no luck. We walked almost all the way to the farthest headland before turning back to avoid walking in the dark. Disappointed that we hadn't seen a koala, we noticed a girl pointing her camera up into a tree beside the road a few steps from town. There he was, a grey fuzzy blog way up high in the tree, passed right out. All you could see was his back, but we waited long enough to see him wake up, yawn, scratch himself, and go back to sleep. (I have just assumed it was a male based on his behaviour!) So we left happy that our luck came through again, and knowing that we can tick off another animal on the list of Australian mascots seen on our trip!