An end of Oz

Our Australian travels came to an end today as we boarded the plane for New Zealand. We will miss the pristine beaches, and most importantly the last bit of warmth as we head down south to New Zealand and winter. A bit about what we did on our last days in Oz...

On Thursday we enjoyed the weather as we visited Maleny, Mapleton and Mortinville. These quaint old English style villages were beautiful and set high in the mountains.

We enjoyed perusing the shops and admiring the architecture and beauty of these small towns. An interesting site was the lily ponds in Mapleton.

Here, the lilies were so dense you could barely see the water at all, and birds were actually walking across the water from lily to lily, eating as they went.

At night, Bree and I enjoyed a wonderful Thai dinner (again, going on about food, but it really is a high point of our days). As we were told by some locals, the place was a bit dodgy, sporting high quality plastic lawn chair furniture and plastic mermaid molded decor on the walls. The high fashion aside the food was cheap and fabulous, really what more could we ask for? After dinner, Bree and I were informed that we could not go into any of the restaurants/clubs, as we were wearing flip flops, and it was much to casual for a night out in high class Maloolaba.

With that, we decided to go back and go to bed, but only after Bree and I made ourselves sick eating an entire DARK (75% cocoa) chocolate bar each. Let's just say I woke up with a horrible headache the next morning to say the least.

The next morning we headed back down the sunshine-less coast, to Brisbane. We had a bit of a detour when we climbed a mountain to see an old fire lookout. The views were beautiful and the mountains on the skyline reminded me of Goonies where they use the old medallion to find there way to the buried treasure.

After our climb, we made it back to Brisbane and South Bank where we wandered around the various museums and art galleries and met up with Lindsey for our last Australian meal. Tomorrow morning we fly out wicked early for New Zealand... kiwi's here we come.

For Australia pics, click HERE