Thursday 26 November 2015

November 24th - 25th - 26th
Bororen to Gympie to Shorncliffe and in Brisbane

The journey to Gympie took us via Rainbow Beach, a little village with access to a stunning front. We spent an afternoon sun bathing before going to Standown Park. This site is run by an ex soldier who fought in the Vietnam war. When he finished his service he went and worked as a life guard on the Sunshine coast. This was in the late 1970's when according to him you could drink the coast dry in a night. Now, he said there are so many bars there that he could have fought 3 wars by the time he would be able to sample every bar along the strip. Earlier today I noticed on my map that we were coming to the most unfortunately named town in Australia or maybe even the world, ISIS Central. How bad must those Towns folk feel? We're do you live? Oh, ISIS Central. More suprising was the next town was called Promised Land. So crazy, there is even an ISIS River and an ISIS Highway. I see social media full of Muslims saying ISIS are not real Muslims but spare a thought for the inhabitants of ISIS Central who have to keep reminding everyone that the Islamists and Jihadists from ISIS are not really from ISIS. You couldn't make this shit up......

Two bits of local knowledge, the United Kingdom could fit in Australia 31 times and the highest mountain in Queensland in Mt Bartle-Frere.

Our Warmshower hosts in Shorncliffe are Rose and her husband Ian. Rose was born in Sheffield but had travelled from a young age until setting up in Australia. They live on a road over looking the beach from the front and a tropical suberb at the back. We had a fantastic beef lasagne for dinner and listened to stories from her travels like she sailed from New Zealand to Australia in a boat through a storm that had the captain thinking the end was nigh. He didn't tell Rose that he thought they were finished until they were safely on dry land. We will be staying here for two nights which is fantastic as the views, local wildlife and community is brilliant. Ian mentioned two animals that come to the house every night. First is the Possums that get into the roof and run about or sit in the tree by the bedroom windows and the second is the green tree frog that sits on the window ledge. Both turned up on cue once the sun had gone down.
For our day in Brisbane on the 26th we took a lift from Rose with our bikes into the city and rode around the centre on the unreal bike paths. I thought Portland was number 1 but I'm not so sure anymore. The lay out follows the Brisbane river including the man made swimming areas, the botanical gardens, restaurant district, past the airport and back to Shorncliffe 18 miles away. It also goes out of the city in other directions creating one massive spiders Web of bike lanes. In this weather with this infrastructure I can't see why anyone would drive into downtown.

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