EC-Rider Travels

The forecast today was dreadful, with the cyclone still whirling around the East Coast, and due to bring torrential rain. Anyway we awoke to beautiful sunshine and decided to go for a walk at the neighbouring Coolum Beach. Another built up seaside town with huge apartment blocks and hotels. The sea was very rough and…

Oh my goodness, it was like being back in the jungle, with a 4.45 start in order to drive up the coast to meet our coach at Noosa. Never my finest hour, but we made it and met our fellow travellers and Darrell our guide, who I think had similar feelings about the time of…

Sadly our dolphin watching / kayaking trip was cancelled today as the ol’ cyclone is still hovering around causing the sea to be too rough to go out. Very annoying as it looks such a great trip… we hope we might go on Tuesday morning. We decided to head for Noosa, which is perhaps the…

We had a fairly pronto start and headed north to the Noosa Everglades, where we were to join a canoeing trip! The Noosa Everglades is one of only two everglade systems on Earth, the other being in Florida; though our guide Peter questioned this! It is a network of pristine, slow-moving waterways and wetlands lined…

When Diana suggested we should head into the Hinterland, I was not quite sure where she was intending to take me….. However, rather like when they talk about going ‘into the bush’ which simply means going to the country, the Hinterland is the inland region lying behind a coast or shoreline. It is lusher, cooler…

I had a second unbelievably spoiling morning with Queensland Ballet, this time watching Company Class which was such a treat. Before class started, I bumped into the most wonderful choreographer called Paul Boyd, who had come to RBS in 2012 to set one of his ballet. I can’t imagine why, but he remembered me and…

I have to confess to being the true ‘tourist’ today and at 10am boarded the great ship Mirimar and headed down the Brisbane River, to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Along the way we had a commentary about the sights of Brisbane, which to be honest were not too memorable, but it was still a…

My roomie had to leave fairly promptly in the morning and is now safely back in Sydney. I spent the happiest morning watching the pre-professional students at the Queensland Ballet Academy, being taught by a lovely friend of Lindsay’s, Claire Phipps. In the break, we popped into the ballet office, which overlooks the studio where…

Today has been a bit of a challenge and almost the second hiccup of my trip so far. A cyclone is brewing off the Queensland coast and they suddenly had to evacuate the students, we met coming over, from the neighbouring One Tree Island. This delayed our ferry back to Gladstone resulting in us missing…

Amanda joined me this morning for an early snorkel and we headed out to the wreck. It was the most beautiful morning and the sea was much calmer. We had an incredible time, seeing another mass of fish we had not seen before and at last, Amanda saw a turtle – in fact many of…