Thursday 14th - Brisbane / Byron Bay

Handley:

Today we said goodbye to Harry who waved a little leg as we left and jumped on a train back to Sydney to catch our flight to Brisbane.  We arrived safely, but our luggage did not and both of our backpacks went on their own magical mystery tour.

We stood in Brisbane looking at the conveyer belt slowly getting that sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs, but there were about 16 other people still waiting for bags so we kept telling ourselves more bags will come, they can't have lost ALL of these people's luggage!

We were wrong they had lost ALL those bags!  We logged it with baggage services who were less than sympathetic or helpful and travelled lighter than normal with just our hand luggage.

At the airport we picked up a new hire car - not the original plan, but we were finding that public transport wasn't fitting in with our plans i.e. oue next stop is Byron Bay and the Greyhound bus took 6hrs 30 to get there from Brisbane, but to drive took 1hr 30!!  The car is really going to allow us more time in places and better flexibility.

We drove to Byron Bay minus luggage and checked in and were told by reception that Qantas had been in touch and our luggage would be with us by 7pm.  Woohoo what a relief things were going to be ok!

We relaxed had some dinner and at 7pm were told our bags hadn't arrived yet.  We relaxed some more and 8pm we were told sorry no bags.  We relaxed some more - you get the idea, the bags did luckily turn up at 11pm and we have never been so pleased to lug 13 kgs of rucksack around.

Back in the room we turned the light on to be greeted by the biggest cockroach I've ever seen in my life.  This guy was so big I could have strapped a saddle to it's back and rode round the room shouting yeehaa!  It is VERY difficult to kill something this big when it looks like it has the capability to snatch the shoe from your hand and pummel you to death!!

I also learnt that you need to double tap these guys to kill them, as one shoeing isn't enough and when you go to pick them up they re-surface like mini cockroach zombies only to scare the crap out of you again - so it's hit once and then hit again for good measure.

A few more large shocks from others in the bathroom and it was bedtime, hell I was shattered from all that double tapping - but guess what I didn't sleep!