Queensland and on

An easy flight from Proserpine to Brisbane and Paul collected us from the airport.

He lives about an hour and a half outside Brisbane in what is known as the hinterland. We passed the Glasshouse Mountains which are apparently plugs of rocks left from old volcanoes and were named by Captain Cook when he saw them from his ship.

Brisbane was pretty warm but it is much cooler where they live as they are up on a mountain and actually on the side of a cliff with fabulous views across to the coast. It seems more European here - there are green fields and cows. It's a popular tourist area and the local town of Montville seems to only have tourist shops. It's very pretty with lots of attractive buildings. 

We met Paul's wife Lynn and their two children Oliver and Alexandra. We even had the fire on that evening as it gets quite damp up there. Lovely home cooked food - Lynn is an excellent cook.

You have to be aware of the wildlife around here. They get big (and I do mean big) huntsman spiders which live in the post box outside or crawl into vehicles if you leave doors open. Paul had to find and then dispose of one which got into their car. At one point he was kneeling down looking for it and it was looking right back at him from the rear seat. A bit too close for comfort. Luckily this was before we arrived and we didn't see any whilst we were there. They also have mouse eating ones.    Lynn said she had seen one of these. The Australia Zoo (owned originally by Steve Irwin) is nearby and they have loads of birds and animals including crocodiles.

Paul took us on a tour of the sunshine coast - lovely sandy beaches and pretty towns. People lead a good life here. We were looking over the beach at Coolum and loads of teenage schoolkids went past us with a teacher and had their PE class swimming in the ocean. Much better than the local swimming pool in the UK!

There's a sand recycling project on the beach at Noosa Heads. It provides around 30,000 cubic metres of sand a year and this stops the beach disappearing. It's a lovely beach with a river running through it to the ocean.

Next day we were off again back to Brisbane airport down to Sydney and then onto our final stop in Hong Kong. I got scanned for explosives again at Brisbane (I must look very suspicious!)

We upgraded our seats on the Virgin flight to Hong Kong to premium economy. This mean we had more leg room, foot rests and more food and drink than we could consume. They even brought round bars of chocolate. Funnily enough the seats are no wider as they are all fixed and the armrests do not move. I believe this is still the same in the business/first class areas as well. So if you are wide bottomed people you are probably better off with sharing three seats in economy between two as long as the armrests go back properly.

Found our hotel in HK - it is attached to the airport terminal via a walkway. It was around midnight by the time we got to bed. A long day starting in one continent and ending in another.