Glass House Mountains - this national park is about 100 miles from Brisbane. It's essentially couple of very spiky-looking hills, some of which can be climbed. At first we went to one called Ngungun, which was supposed fairly steep track, but still doable for regular people. It wasn't anything expectional to be honest, fairly nice view though. For the second day I wanted something more and so I've picked the Beerwah. It was described in the rough-guide as very difficult, but who'd pay attention to that, right? :) When we got to the parking lot, we were greeted by "track closed due to rockfall", "extreme danger" and similar signs - just to make it a bit more exciting. First couple hundred meters were steps. That lead us to a platform, where the fun started. It's hard to describe - try to look at the pictures. It was just very steep and smooth rock. No ropes or anything. I've managed to climb up about 30ft barefeet, then came back and then we both climbed about 60ft up, called it a successfull day and turned back :) Still very nice trip - I'm by no means a rock-climber, so I felt very adventurous doing this.
Bundaberg - the home to Ozzy rum. We went on a factory tour there, which was actually quite entertaining. We saw the huge amounts of melasa (stuff left from the sugar-cane processing) they use, the distillery, bottling shop, the works. We even found out that the quality testing process was developed by a emigrant from Czech! Well, he should've been shot. The rum is aweful and I mean aweful... They even make Dark&Stormy, but boy is it BAD! It's not even good for coctails. They said the government confiiscated all the production during WW2 for ozzy troops - I can't imagine how desperate the soldiers must've been to drink this.
Fraser Island - the largest sand island on the world. The only way you can get on it is either on foot (good luck) or in 4WD. So we rented good old sturdy Landrover for 3 days and went off. I've never driven 4WD before, so I didn't know what to expect. As soon as we disembarked from the ferry, fun started. The "road" was just a 1ft deep wheel tracks in the sand and through the forest. To see most of the island (which is 60 miles long), you have to traverse from west coast (where you get off the ferry) to east coast and then drive on the beach. Sounds like fun? It is! Except for the fact, that you can do that only 2 hours before/after low tide, otherwise you'd be driving in salt water, which the rental company doesn't like :) Anyway, I had a lot of fun driving on the beach and on the inside tracks as well - the car was like tank, just going, so I didn't really have to have 4WD skill. Still felt good and MANLY! :) We've camped (for the first time) in our tent on the beach, watched the sunset/sunrise, perfect... One of the best experiences in Australia for sure.
Carnarvon Gorge - this was our frist trip to true outback of Australia, almost 500 miles into the land. We drove all the 500 miles in one day, which tuned out to be a nightmare. Last 100 miles was already dark and we were literally dodging kangaroos, going 30mph. The gorge itself can be walked in one day - there's a track (6 miles) with couple of side-tracks where you can see some aboriiginal art, rock formations and generally nature. It was a long day (15 miles total), but we did see all the side-tracks, some of which were really nice. The amphitheater is a huge hole in the side of the canyon with wonderful acoustics. You can see "prehistoriic ferns" there as well - they say they're as old as dinosaurs. Plus our first chance to actually see Aboriginal art - check out the pictures to get an idea. The next day we climbed to the Boolinda Bluff, which was supposed to give a great view of the canyon. Well, it's not entirely true - you can see just the opening, the rest is obscured by the canyon walls as it bends to the right. Still worth doing though - to see lots of puffing german tourist climbing up the steps if not for anything else :)
Eungella National Park - the home of platypus. I was very sceptical about this whole thing since I read about it. I remembered very well how "successful" we were with the home of koalas before. Sure enough - they said it was best to see them at dawn from platform they built on the river side. Not one! We walked along the river for 2 hours, even after it got dark, and still didn't see a single little bugger. I was so determined to see one that I actually suggested getting up early the next day (before sunrise) and try again. Well, to my surprise, I did get up without the use of too much violance from Kacka. And we DID see them! They're little buggers - less than 1ft i'd say - and they were cruising the river back and forth. After this we went to do "forest fly", which is where you strap yourself to a line and zip through the tree canopy. Fairly entertaining, especially when we realized that the trees were full of fruit-bats which make incredible noise and smell... well... bad. Oh and did I mention the place is run by hippies? :)
Yongala and
Magnetic Islands - our 2 days of diving. Yongala is THE ONE site in Australia to see if you're a diver. Long story short - it was a cruise vessel in 1930s and sunk in a storm. Since then it became an artifical reef par excelance - it sits in the middle of a large sand area, so all the fish tend to hang around there. It's fairly deep with quite a bit of current, but othewise absolutely amazing. We've never seen so much fish in one spot. Turtles, rays, humphead wrasses, even sea snakes! If you do decide to visit this site (which I can only recommend), go from Ayr and not from Townsville - it's much closer boat-ride and the Yongala dive guys really know their business. Next day we went to the Magnetic islands, which turned out to be a bit of disappointment - it's a 3 hours ride (one way) to the site, then they gave us 45 minutes for the 1st dive, 30 minutes for the 2nd... Both reef dives, fairly nice, but for sure not worth the 6hrs boat trip.
Townsville - we didn't really spend much time in the city itself. We just went to the Reef HQ aquarium there, which was full of information. They do some kind of "show" every 1/2 hour, so if you do attend them, you get hardly any time to see the aquarium itself. They say they have the biggest artifical reef in the world - making waves for it and everything. We were lucky to also see the shark-feed session, seminar on poisonous sea creatures in Australia (which makes to wander why would you EVER want to go into the ocean there), etc.