Noosa

We had an early morning flight to Noosa, our destination for the next seven days, so we’d booked a hotel at the airport in order to be able to make a quick start. We’d handed in the car the night before, and took the hotel shuttle to the airport, as Quest Melbourne Airport, despite its name, isn’t actually at Melbourne Airport. A short flight later we were arriving in Noosa, where I felt ridiculously overdressed in long trousers.

We first headed for our hotel, the South Pacific Resort & Spa, but it was too early to check into the room, so instead we decided to explore Noosa by means of the hotel’s shuttle bus, as we were advised by reception that parking was extremely limited due to the events taking place at the weekend. These are the Noosa Triathlon and related events. The Noosa Triathlon claims to be the biggest in the world, and a lot of the car parking had been covered in seats for spectators, changeover areas for the athletes, and the finish line. So bus it was.

The first order of business was to get an early lunch. The “breakfast” supplied by Quest was a pre-packed selection of foods which were largely unappetising, apart from the cereal, so that’s all we’d had to eat – and that at six in the morning. We’d gained an hour flying to Queensland (they don’t do summer time there) so although it was late morning to them, it was lunchtime to us. We zipped into Café 63 and got lunched; then found our way around Hastings Street, noting the location of Bistro C and booking a table there for the evening.

At 2:30 we met the shuttle bus again and went back to check in to our room. It was spacious and clean, and had a pool just outside. Not bad. After unpacking we headed round to the nearby Aldi to stock up on supplies. In retrospect this was a bad idea, as Aldi’s range of goods is eccentric, to say the least. If I’d known that Woolworths was just around the corner I’d have gone there instead, but the hotel, for some reason (money?) directs people to Aldi. Among the items they failed to supply us with was tomato juice, and coffee in reasonably-sized packets. We had to head to Woolworths anyway to find a bottle shop in the same retail park. So I’m really down on Aldi.

Nicola, meanwhile, had located leaflets by the dozen, so we happily spent some time perusing these before selecting which trips we were going on. It’s the end of the whale-watching season so the chances of seeing a humpback were diminishing by the day, and I didn’t fancy it after my last experience with whale-watching, so we booked trips to the Everglades and Fraser Island instead.

In the evening we went out to Bistro C for cocktails and dinner. On the advice of the maitre d’ when we booked, we’d reserved one serving of the daily special, and decided to fight over who would have it when we got here. When we spoke to the waiter, however, she told us it was a pretty substantial dish – whole snapper – and we could easily share it. Which we duly did. It was delicious.