Surfing and the Sunshine Hinterland

First of all, here are a couple of photos from our deck. The first one is of our dinner the other night, and the 2nd is from when we were going to bed. Oli said "there's a cat in the tree," only to discover that it was actually two possums.
They don't seem interested in our deck, but rather in the neighbour's dog food, which is good. Apparently they make a real mess if they get into your stuff.

The next day we headed down to Queen Street in downtown Brisbane. There was a kids' comedy fest on, which was fun. It was a really hot day though, so we tried to keep to the shade as much as we could.

On our way camping, we made our first foray into the "Hinterland", north of Brisbane. When I hear the word "hinterland", I think of barren wilderness, snow and desolation. Well, this is not the case in Queensland, at least not the part we've explored during the past few days. On our way to do some more camping along the coast, we took the scenic route through the Glass House Mountains. We made our way to the lookout and did a short walk to begin with. The mountains are the remaining lava cores of former volcanoes.

They are also sacred to the aboriginal peoples and there are interesting creation stories related to them. The mountain in the picture, Mt Coonowrin, is said to be bowing his head in shame for abandoning the rest of his family in a flood.

We then had a great lunch and look around at the town of Maleny, which has beautiful little shops, local cheeses and wineries. We also passed through Montville - again very cute with shops and retreats. The roads in the area are extremely steep and windy - 10 to 12 percent grades. It was fun to drive them on a nice day, but I wouldn't want to try it in a storm. Oli and I agreed that the best moment came when we stopped at a lookout over the valley and the out to the coast. We had the coolest breeze we've felt in Australia and were refreshed. It's the mountain people in us!

We spent a couple of fun days around Noosa again, including a stop in Great Sandy National Park. The highlight for the boys was trying out the surfboard. It was a big hit and Evan is definitely hooked. He got up on his 3rd wave and hasn't stopped since. Oli has learned to arch! Eric, Marcia, Nathan and Josh joined us for some beach frisbee, boogie boarding and beach fun.

The next day, we also saw our first "wild" kangaroo on a hike near Lake Cootharba. As you can see, he wasn't all that wild as he let me get this close! On the way, we also saw these cockatiels on someone's lawn. It was interesting to see so many "exotic" birds just milling about.

Finally, we returned to the Glass House Mountains again today and did a great summit hike of Mount Ngungun. The boys were pretty hooked on the hike and are now talking about how we should do one of the Great Walks in Australia (they're 5 days - 100 km). We'll see!