Another lovely day in Noosa. Gosh, we are liking it here so much. Probably one of our favourite places so far if you exclude Sydney (best city) and Fremantle (wow, well, just WA is AMAZING). We could definitely spend a couple of weeks here. We won’t because its too far away from home and there’s nearer places but… you get the idea…. We like it.
Had a restful morning because we woke up early thanks to the squawking birds outside and then fell asleep again and… anyway…. It had been raining in the night and this morning too. As we left our apartment, the sun was breaking through and there were large patches of blue sky. Of course it was warm – about 27C.
Mothers’ Day of course. Both girls called me – it was still Saturday night in the UK. Very good to speak to them both. I do miss them very much when we are travelling.
We had made arrangements to rent a small motor boat for the afternoon to explore the Noosa river and the lakes into which it feeds. It was a pretty good deal – £65 for 4 hours including petrol, 2 fishing rods, all the kit and a bag of prawns for bait. The boat was about 4.2m long, with a canopy and an outboard engine. It made a reasonable speed without ever going fast! We set off up river passing along banks lined with some amazing houses. Very large river palaces with huge terraces and glass walls onto the river. Most of them were very modern in design, making use of a great deal of wood and stone as well as glass.
It was lovely to sit out on the boat and sunbathe as we tootled along. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere a huge rain squall came up the river and blasted us! The rain was so hard and the wind so strong t was blowing horizontally like a curtain of water hitting us. Luckily we had put away our main clothes so they kept dry and it didn’t matter that we got soaked in our swimwear. We pulled over to get shelter on a little riverside beach in the bush. But this was a mistake. Within about 2 minutes we were covered in black midges THAT BIT US!!!!! Pushed off again in a hurry and swatted each other with the towels to get all the midges off. I had about 15 bites.
The rain was over just as quickly and the sun came back out again. We started back down the river and found a little spot to have our picnic. We’d brought chicken sandwiches and crisps and beer for Bob and wine for me. It kept really cold in our cool bag. Unfortunately we’d forgotten to pack any glasses. It didn’t really matter for Bob with his beer but I had to swig the wine directly from the bottle!!!! Sophisticated or what!?!? We carried on regardless.

Tried a bit of fishing.  Needless to say, I caught a … leaf…..
Took the boat back towards Noosa and did a circuit around the sand spits and town. Pulled up for a while on one of the sand spit beaches. Had a swim. The water was clear but brown from the tannins. I was slightly put off by the fact that there are apparently loads of bull sharks in the river “but they’ve never attacked anyone”!!!! Well,…. I don’t want to be the first. So it was a quick dip. Nice and warm though. Then we circled around the town waterway and ogled even more amazing mansions. There is some serious money in Noosa.
About 330, the rain came back in again in more torrents so we headed back to the boat rental place. Had a really lovely afternoon and would love to do it again. Such a pleasant way to spend time and see the countryside from a different angle.
Had dinner at the surf club again. As usual it was rammed. I had barramundi which was as delicious as usual. Then as a Mothers’ Day treat, Bob bought us large cups of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. It was totally yum.
We could definitely stay on longer in Noosa, but tomorrow we move on again…. Starting south….