sunshine coast

Thursday morning as usual - breakky and then back to looking for work. That was the plan. I am glad however it did not turn out that way - Rebel, house owner asked if I would be interested in going to Sunshine Coast. She had to go there to pick up her daughter and also celebrate the hens night of her friend. Hens night or hens party is the bachelorette party, the last night the future bride to be spends as single. So why not, at least I do not have to pay for going there and an option to get off the computer for a while.

And off we drove. It's just so wrong to be sitting on driver's seat and not having the steering wheel nor the pedals there. :) During the almost 1h drive I got to know some very interesting things about the driving school and the whole system of getting drivers licence (DL). You can apply for DL when 16 years old, same as in Estonia. When learning, you get L-plates (learning), then after a year and min 100hours of driving you get P-plates (provisional), which are either red or green, depending on the years of experience. Nevertheless, you have quite a number of restrictions to cope with, including day and night driving, both are obligatory. To read more about DL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-plate

Sunshine Coast is about 100km north from Brisbane, a nice place to go to the beach as it's more a quite place while Gold Coast is more energetic, lively. Sunshine Coast consists of three municipalities - Noosa Shire, Maroochy Shire and Caloundra City, first of which is most northern, then Maroochy and just 10km south is Caloundra. This time I did not go and visit the Underwater World marine park in Mooloolaba, town in Maroochy Shire, which has an underwater tunnel through the shark pool, however will do that the next time (http://www.underwaterworld.com.au/), nor the Australia Zoo which was created by the late Steve Irwin, also known as the Crocodile Hunter who passed away in 2006 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

However, I enjoyed it quite a lot, the sun and the beach, a nice meal. Also thought about maybe staying the night ad a backpackers hotel, but still decided the head back to Brisbane in the evening - a 3,5hour trip as it turned out!

Some photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/saksmargus

In Mooloolaba the were quite a few roadblocks and the whole beach area was closed for traffic. As it turned out, they host an important triathlon competition which took place on 25-27 March.

http://www.usmevents.com.au/Triathlon___Multi_Sport/Mooloolaba_Triathlon_Festival/Media___Gallery/Media_Release_-_Australian_trio_firing_for_Mooloolaba.htm