warning: 41 degrees celcius + al fresco dining + bottle of red wine = bad idea. add in some gelato makes it even worse while walking home with full belly of delicious food, wine and dessert.

it is so fricken hot.

QLD was hot. not as hot as here and not as dry as here. the joke when we got up there was we needed to get away from the heat in melbourne. we stayed in surfer's paradise for 4 nights. the idea of going up there was to get some relaxing time, which did and didnt happen. i thought it would be fun to stay at the beach and do beach stuff. we did, on day number 2 when the rain decided to stop and the skies became blue and sunny. after half a bottle of sunscreen and 2 hours on the beach i had a nice blotchy sunburn. no ozone layer is great fun. from that point on the going to beach to relax became much less of a fun time than it originally seemed in my head.

in a quick run down of some of stuff i did- surfer's, byron bay, green mountains, australia zoo, brisbane city, botanical gardens. the day trip out to the green mountains was fun. as with all coach trips it included a stop off for morning tea (at one's own expense) this was the best morning tea ive had in ages. pot of tea + scones + cream + jam. oh yeah. the green mountains were good too. kangaroos at the side of the road and all. we visited a rainforest, and like the two other rain forests ive been too, it fucking poured rain. how authenic. i got sort of wet because i had a sort of rain coat to cover up with. it wasnt cold so that was good, just wet.

and all that rain.. well yah, all of australia needs rain, its aridly dry. thanks to cyclone helen who went through the north, now there are massive floors in NSW and QLD. when the rain stopped the beach in surfer's wasnt as nice and clean as all the aerial photos seen the world over make it appear. debris and everything, including a deceased cow washed up on the shores the days after the worst of the rains.. the eroded shores. everything in the valleys in the hinterland was flooded. massive destruction. byron was much nicer since its more sheltered. getting to byron on flooded out roads was interesting. ive never seen flooding that bad.

$9.95 for an hour of internet at a hotel is a rip off. $24.95 for 24 hours isnt much better either.