Rainbow Beach

On 7 March, we caught a short flight to Brisbane in Queensland, hired a car and headed straight through to Rainbow Beach on the Sunshine Coast where we encountered what they call “the Wet”. “The Wet” refers to the humidity. Pietermaritzburg is often compared to an armpit, well this was more like a wet nappy while still warm. On the first day it felt as if we’d stepped into a Turkish Steam Bath. The only difference was that through the haze we could make out rolling hills somewhat similar to the Natal Midlands, instead of naked Turkish men. Fortunately the Wet didn’t last long.
We were lucky enough to stay in the house that Wal and Vyv (friends of Ricky’s parents) built in a forest right next to the beach. (Wal and Vyv, thanks so much for your hospitality – particularly the wine bottle with the “break in case of emergency or thirst!” instruction and Wal’s travel diary full of brilliant architectural descriptions of Spanish and Italian buildings with humours anecdotes from his travels with Ricky’s father). Their house was in the middle of a forest, which had goannas walking around, cockatoos, butcher birds, kookaburras flying around, and let’s not forget the spiders. While Wal informed us they were not harmful, the big hairy brown spider that found its way onto Tereza’s towel was terrifying (size of an open hand). “I had Mr Big Fury spider looking straight into my eyes when I tried to dry my hair and he fell onto my face. I threw it across the bathroom and at the same time let out a bloodcurdling scream at which time Ricky came in armed with a broom ready to kill the demon from hell that he expected to have caused such terror.” We were both in a state of shock and were not quite convinced when Wal later assured us that the spider was probably more frightened than us.
Rainbow Beach is a little bit of paradise, the beach stretches for miles alongside a nature reserve with ridges of coloured sand giving way to forests and finally a long finger of sand pointing out to Fraser Island. We enjoyed a relaxing time walking in the forests and lying on the beach, though we didn’t wander too far out to sea due to the man-eating sharks. Unlike Cape Town, that tries to deny that sharks ever eat humans, Australia is quite frank, even the tourist information warns of man-eating sharks. We note that their man-eating sharks include the same Great Whites that swim between Cape Town and Australia.