Oliver is happy to take us, even if it is the spare car offered by his brother with no central locking, no air conditioning and also no petrol! It also has a child seat which Oliver removes so neither Mum has the indignity of sitting in the child seat and removes all the child paraphernalia that goes with it (remember order in which it was removed for replacement later!), (I have grandchildren and I know how mum's come out to the car ready to go out and only then realise that it all has to be reconstructed and doesn't have time and who's fault is this, grrr - I don't want it to be my fault!). His mum comes with us for the trip and we get going, after a petrol stop and a quick phone call to the car owner to check which fuel-type it takes, we're off on our road trip. Australians are used to covering quite a lot of mileage so a two hour drive up the coast is really nothing to them, a bit like a trip to Plymouth from home for us - just 15 minutes or so! I don't tend to drive very far at home, we have to cross a Toll Bridge to get to Plymouth and my poor little car doesn't like it, the last time I tried to go any further than Plymouth, it coughed and died after about 20 minutes and I had to get roadside assistance to drag me back to the car hospital to make it better and it cost a fortune (the car's only 5 years old and only done 10k mileage, and that was two years ago, so you can see it doesn't go far!), so this is quite a road trip for me!
The rain is persistent and we make a coffee stop at Coolum to see the rain, well they said to see the beach as its so nice, but we pretty much could only see rain. We drove round twice to get a space near the shops and beach and managed to park eventually, then went for a lovely coffee. After, we went to see the beach as it wasn't raining and, as ever, the moment you're furthest from the car, it started to rain so we sheltered under a tree and then a beach shaded area for a short while before deciding to get back on the road as we couldn't see the beach under the pounding waves and it wasn't going to improve!
Another hour or so and we hit the area called Noosa or, apparently, the Shire of Noosa (Lord of the Ring wannabees) and its a National Park, but the bit we found was a street of lovely looking shops which runs alongside the beach so we park up and go find the beach which, when we got there, it did stop raining for a short while and we actually managed to get a walk on the lovely sand and get our feet wet in the sea, which wasn't freezing cold as all seas I've ever stepped in have been!
A lovely locally made ice cream came in handy to keep us going as we dawdled back to the car as we'd parked in a 1 hour area and didn't want a fine, so we drove up to an area of the National Park where we could get out and walk and maybe see some wild Koalas, by that I mean ones that aren't in a Zoo, not really angry ones, although you never know! We drove round the car park three times and eventually gave up, who cares about seeing Koalas and who wants to walk in the rain, not me!
We went back to the street where we'd started, making comments about how familiar it looked and eventually managed to park. It seems Sunday in Noosa is pretty busy and everyone comes to get a bit of it; we, or maybe I should say I as I don't know about the others, never even thought about the day, in fact I'm having trouble working out what day any of the days are, so anyway, we park up a way from the shops and walk back to get some lunch. Hog's Breath - the name didn't make me feel like I wanted to eat there but we went in as it wasn't as busy as some of the others and actually all had really good steaks for lunch.
It was at this point I noticed the 70's and 80's music playing inside and remarked to Becky about it as it was one of the things I thought strange about Las Vegas - a lot of the music playing in the background there was 70's and 80's and whilst a lot of it was good, there's some good modern stuff out there too, and I do not need reminding that I'm old enough to remember it all from the first time round, thanks very much!
Re-fuelled and ready to go, we get back to the car and drive up to see if we can park and see the "wild" Koalas again, but still it's full and still it's raining and still we don't really mind so, decision made, we start the long drive back home! It's still persistently raining and we have to stop in at Oliver's brothers to drop off the other car and pick up Oli's, having removed the child seat in the back, it had to be reinstalled on drop-off and i think we got it right, no doubt they'll find out tomorrow when the child is ejected from the car! Coffee and a catch up later (coffee for me, beer for everyone else) we leave in time to go to the pie shop to get pie for tea. As we know the state of Oli's food cupboard, we suggest stopping at a supermarket to pick up potatoes as you can't have pie without mashed potatoes and also some frozen peas, you ask Becky, and we can have a proper meal!
Fortunately, as we've now got the right car, the secret bottle of red wine we bought the previous day to bring home and drink in the evening is now with us (we missed it last night) so we can have a glass of wine too! Oli's mum stays for dinner and Becky and Oli manage between them to produce a lovely Pie and Mash meal, better than any you could buy and the wine finishes us all off just right!
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