Maroo-something-or-other

We only spent a couple of days in Brisbane before deciding to carry on to Maroochydore, which is further north along the Sunshine Course, and spitting distance to the Australia Zoo. We weren’t going to be in that area and not go visit the late Steve Irwin’s stomping grounds, so we got beds at the Maroochydore hostel, ate loads of the complimentary breakfast (continental, of course) that is provided for the hostellers, and took the courtesy bus to the zoo.

The zoo is lovely and a great deal of fun. It costs an arm and a leg to get it, but we weren’t about to let that deter us. The habitats are brilliant, demonstrations occur throughout the day, and the dedication to conservation is evident. Oh, and if you want gadget xyz with Steve Irwin’s madly grinning head on it, you can find it there. The gift store is a little creepy, like his ghost is watching you in the guise of spoons, t-shirts, and bobble heads. His message and his passion goes on undiluted, though, so it’s all good.

As for the rest of our time in Maroochydore, we spent it walking the beaches, which were very nice and covered in white sand and surfers. There are a few shopping centres to take a peek in, and as expected everything is wildly expensive. The same goes for the restaurants. There must be more restaurants and cafes in three blocks along those beaches than there are in Times Square. There are also water dragons everywhere.



Somewhere between the six dollar lattes and the two hundred and fifty dollar string bikinis, we succeeded in finding squishable wide-brimmed hats. As our lily-white complexions and sensitivity to heat (more on my part than on Glen’s) doesn’t exactly jive with the dominatrix that is the Australian sun, hats were necessary. All efforts to find suitable hats either in Edmonton or abroad failed miserably. This is partially due to the apparent scarcity of responsible sun wear that doesn’t make one look like a hippy, and partially due to the fact that any reasonably shaped hat had some sort of tourist patch or brand name logo on it. As Glen put it, we would not demean ourselves to being "Australia’s or Billabong’s bitches".

So up until our third day in Maroochydore, we were going about heads uncovered. No sunburns or illnesses resulted, but this is because we haven’t been going out during the worst heat of the day. Happily, we came by a hat shop that contained good, wide-brimmed sun hats that didn’t make us look like complete gits, were reasonably priced, could be crushed into a backpack friendly size and still return to its original shape, were certified by the Australian Cancer Society, and didn’t sport a single place name or brand logo. So now we have our hats, and can enjoy both greater visibility and greater protection from sunburn. Incidentally, both of us have yet to get sunburns, which says a great deal about the strength of the sunscreen cream we’ve been using.

As a side note, it appears as about a quarter of the towns along the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast bear a name that starts with “M” and ends in something completely unpronounceable. Maroochydore is relatively easy, but the tongue-tiedness carries on with name such as Mooloolaba, Murwillumbah, Mullumbimby, and so on. I’m sure I would have had the hang of these names were I a local, but trying to stutter through them is awfully embarrassing from a tourist point of view. I feel like a complete git whenever I attempt to pronounce any of them.