Maroochydore Bust

Another early start was not what I needed that day, but we needed to be up and ready to get the bus at 9:06 outside the hotel. We got everything packed up again, checked out of the hotel, printed our Australia Zoo tickets and asked the girl behind reception where the bus stop was for the 16 to the bus depot. She waved outside and said something about just outside and to make sure you wave it down or it won’t stop. We thanked her and set off to find the bus stop. We got confused. There were no bus stops on that side of the road, only on the other side, which would take us away from the bus depot. After asking a few locals it seemed that we could just wait outside the Mexican restaurant Nacho Libre, or Gringo’s, or whatever it was called and it would stop for us if we stuck our hand out for it.

We waited outside and the clock ticked down. If it didn’t show we would need to taxi it our power-walk the 5 Km back to the bus depot to get the Greyhound to Maroochydore. Eventually it turned up, later than expected, and we settled in for the short journey through town. We had an hour to kill between buses as the Greyhound was scheduled for 10:30. Again, it was pretty much empty on the bus, and we grabbed a pair of seats each and made ourselves at home. The bus would be getting in to Maroochydore at 16:10 so we had plenty of time to kill.

Our kooky room

When we arrived the place seemed pretty nice. We checked with the Visitor Information where the hostel was and they were curious to know that we were Greyhounding it to and from the Australia Zoo - something that they didn’t think would be possible. We turned up at the hostel and were greeted by the many people sitting around outside, a most warm welcome. Sadly, the guy behind reception, Luke (or Luuk), hadn’t a copy of our booking or any idea on how to do anything. He eventually found it and got us booked in – there wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t found it as the strawberry season finished last week so it was quiet around town. The room, and indeed the entire hostel, had a certain kooky charm to it, but not as nice as the place we had left behind in Hervey Bay. First thing to do was grab a shower each and go exploring.

As we had arrived quite late in the day we only had a limited amount of time to check out the place, and it was pretty much complete in half an hour. It seemed like a cool little place, with a massive caravan park and a great little bay with pelicans swooping around in the fading light. We were also on the hunt for food and checked out a few local places before settling on a meal deal from one of the pizza joints in the area. We took the food back to the hostel and went upstairs to the kitchen/eating area. Before we had even sat down, a young girl came up to me (as I was carrying the food, and James had snuck off to the restroom) and begged me for a slice of pizza. I tried to fend her off with talk of anchovies, but she reckoned she loved them, and it seemed that she wouldn’t leave me alone until she had grabbed one of my 8 slices. Just to placate her I offered her a slice and then we sat down at the table with her and her friend from Korea, Benjamin.

The kitchen/eating area...before the pizza theft

The conversation was about as bumpy as the coach ride on Fraser Island the day before. Benjamin spoke little English and seemed a fairly quiet chap whereas Elise was brash, begging for more pizza (to the point whereby she was polishing off James’s crusts from his pizza), talking rubbish and quite clearly leathered. There was half a bottle of wine in front of her, and a large wet patch on the tablecloth in front of that, where there had obviously been a wine-related accident. She said that she was from Bali and had only been in Maroochydore for 3 days, after flying into Sydney, then to Brisbane and then getting the bus to Maroochydore from there. She said that her and Benjamin were 25 years old, studying English and were a couple. She also said that I looked like Howard Moon from the Mighty Boosh, which I took as a backhanded compliment, and was probably down to the facial hair rather than a love of jazz music. She even ate the remainder of the garlic bread that we said we had found by some old man in the street. All in all it was a rather strange sequence of events and thankfully they left…well…she dragged him downstairs, for reasons unknown…and me and James legged it into our room before they came back.

As it was still early we updated the blogs and relaxed with a few games of cards and tried to drown out the noise that was coming from the next room with some music. The windows were open as it was a reasonably warm night and we heard a familiar voice from outside. It was Elise, who had gone downstairs and was hanging around with the lads outside the hostel. We listened closer as the voices seemed to be getting more and more irate towards each other – Elise and another guy (unknown) with a Welsh guy attempting, every now and again, to break them up and keep the peace. He was unsuccessful in this as the irate voices turned into a slanging match between Elise and Unknown Guy, and the reason seemed to be that she had taken more than what was on offer, much like she had done with the pizza and garlic bread only an hour before. We weren’t sure what it was that she had taken too much of this time (probably without being offered) but we did think that they needed to buy a different brand of cigarettes because the ones that they were smoking seemed to smell quite odd. Maybe they were out of date or something. Whatever had happened there were threats of police being called, people being thrown off the property and someone’s Hungarian step-fathers gypsy friends getting involved. It quietened down after about 10 minutes, but it gave everyone who was looking out of their window a great little finale to the evening.