I left Janet and Andrew’s on Monday, as soon as the postman delivered the new rego.  With the car packed, I selected my first stop on the satnav up the Sunshine coast, Mooloolaba, and started driving.  I didn’t really have a plan, my only commitment was to reach Harvey Bay by Thursday, because I had booked accommodation and a 3 day tour on Fraser Island.  For the first three days, I thought I’d give it a go, roughing it in the car. 

It is hard to explain the great feeling of freedom I felt, driving up the coast worry-free, on a beautiful sunny day, with the beach boys blasting out of the crappy speakers, covering up the rattling sounds of Bella’s old bones.  It’s something everyone should try, but get yourself a better car!

I got to Mooloolaba just before dark.  I stopped to buy some food and sat in my car, somewhere close to town centre, to make some sandwiches.  I was trying to balance a plastic plate on my belly and the steering wheel when the plate flipped over, sending slices of tomatoes all over my t-shirt and the dash.  That was annoying, it would have been much easier to slice tomatoes on a flat surface but I had nowhere to go.  I paused, all of a sudden I realised that for the first time in two month I had no company, no hostel to go to and nothing to do and it made me feel miserable.  This is the worse aspect of choosing to sleep in a car.  Every nights, when it gets dark at around 6ish and everyone has gone home, you have to work out what to do until bed time and there isn’t much you can do, when most places are shut and the streets are empty.  You can’t even read a book because road lighting is quite poor.  That night I parked up in a quiet residential street, hung up my curtains up and went to bed at 8!

The next morning, a loud engine rumbling right next to my car woke me up.  It was the blooming garbage van, trying to collect the rubbish bins between my bumper and the car in front.  These vans are very impressive, the bin-boys don’t have to get out at all, they simply pull up close and operate a joystick to manoeuvre a mechanical arm, which collects individual bins and empties them in the top of the van.  I’m so sad that I’ve even taken a video of these trucks.  I was just praying that they wouldn’t hit my car, as I didn’t want to get out in my pants and have a go at them. 

The wasn’t much to do in Mooloolaba.  In the morning I followed a sign for fresh fish and found a lovely take away on the water front.  I sat on the beach and had some delicious mussels, as big as ears, in thermidore sauce (cheesy sause).  I soaked up the sun for an hour then headed off for Noosa, looking forward to another sunny drive along the coast.  On my way out, I pulled out my laptop and searched for any unsecured wifi connection, refreshing the program at every red traffic light.  Finding a good signal is quite tricky because the majority of unsecured networks are provided by proper internet providers, like Global gossip, where you have to have a paid account to use them.  I look for free ones, mostly from cafes or hotels.  There are also lots of home wireless routers, where the owner hasn’t bothered to select a password, but I think it’s illegal to use them, so I don’t ;-)

The first thing we noticed in Oz was the weather - it was nowhere near as hot as we'd expected it to be, especially after the scorching sunshine we'd experienced in Asia so far....its a strange concept coming from the end of winter in the Uk to the beginning of winter in Australia. Our first month was spent on the sunshine coast town of Mooloolaba with friends...On the weekend of the 27th we hired a car and headed down to casino for the strange annual phenomenom of 'beef week', a yearly week long carnival/festival affair held in celebration local area's commodity ....beef ! A somewhat strange event for us city folk, but none the less good fun all the same with some hard drinking by night, and some beef-eating, wood-chopping, whip-cracking action by day !!! After a well earned relax it was time to head north, to Cairns....