Byron Bay and the Gold coast

Holy cow was it hot last night. I wanted to catch the sunrise so I woke up the first time, and I thought it was around 5 am: I opened the tent, looked at the stars, then at my watch and realized it was 2 am...I would have to wait quite a bit, so I tried to go back to sleep. I did get up just passed a little after 5 (I couldn't take the heat anymore anyway) and went to the beach: not too many times you can say you can watch the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean. The sunrise was not really exceptional since the sun came up from behind a hill, but while I was there I pretty darn big kangaroo went by: the thing was at leat 6 ft tall, and it just hopped away right next to me. I couldn't catch a picture, so you'll just have to believe me.  We left the campground around 9 to go to Byron Bay. The guide described the town as a “beach Bohemia”, but by now we are both a little skeptical of the colorful descriptions. We finally arrived around 1 pm and we got out of the car and stepped into an oven. Holy moly the heat is on (and so is the humidity). The sun was really strong, so we slathered ourselves with sunscreen and went about the town. The town itself is basically a shop after another and not very Bohemian at all,but we did find a store that was selling authentic aboriginal artifacts so we spent a good while in there to admire all the artwork and buy a few things.
After walking around town for 30 minutes or so and getting properly dehydrated, we stumbled back to the car, guzzled water and blasted the air conditioning to get back on the road. It’s no surprise it’s so hot and humid: we are approaching tropical Queensland (and going farther North where it’s warmer).
Since we changed our plans (no more forests, remember?) David sat in the car while I drove to make a new plan. We will be hitting the Koala Sanctuary a day earlier, go up past Brisbane to Noosa and then back to Brisbane before we fly to Sydney on the 27.
We got on the road to go up to Burleigh Heads, final destination for the day . On the way up, we spotted the biggest spider we’ve ever seen in our life, and a funny looking “tribute” to the Italian community (not in the same place). We stopped at a rest area along the highway to use the bathroom, and as I walked up to the door I saw this gigantic spider on the door jamb (the thing was as big as my entire hand). David went to get the camera (leave it up to him to take pictures of gigantic bugs) and the thing disappeared: at that point there was no way either of us was walking into that bathroom. So we went on to the next rest stop, which happened to be this weird “shrine” to the Italians…funny stuff.
We finally arrived at the campground, but when we got there we realized 1. it was pretty darn pricey for a campground, 2. it looked like rain and we didn’t exactly want to deal with having to wait for the tent to dry. We quickly called a local backpacker’s hostel (called Trekker) and got a room, the only one with a bathroom…whoo hoo this will be the first time we sleep in a real bed in 10 days.
It’s kind of funny to be in a hostel when you’re over 40, but we had a good time talking to the receptionist Kate, which happens to be from Seattle, and a few other girls that are working here for a little while and travelling around the world. Of course it’s not raining, but so be it, fun for Dave to be back in a hostel after 20 years and me for the first time. We’ll see how we feel after we spend the night in the room with no air conditioning he he.
We also just realized Queensland is an hour behind, so we gained one hour (and could have gone further on) but oh well.