Headed to the Great Barrier Reef - Pumpkin Island

This will likely be my only update from now until mid-December as finding internet is becoming more difficult. We are currently in Yepoon which is 7 hours north of the Sunshine Coast where we will be taking a ferry across to Pumpkin Island tomorrow. We drove up here on Tuesday in OUR NEW VAN but weren't able to get to Pumpkin until  tomorrow because the water has been rough according to the owners Wayne and Laureth.

Let's backtrack a little shall we. First of all, after looking at 4 different vans and getting our hopes up each time that it would work out we finally ended up with a Mazda E2000, year 2000 with just over 200,000 clicks on it. It was in pretty great condition besides being filled with the stink of curry as it was owned by an idian dude who worked in an indian restaurant and must have used the van as the restaurants garbage depot. We took it to our mechanic and bff Bruno over at B & T Autmotives in Nambour where they gave us some new tires, tuned up the beast and cleaned out the curry from the dashboard...yes there was literal curry in the dashboard when we drove it over which almost resulted in me vommitting all over the van. We got a great deal and brought Em to drive it off the lot as Stew and I didn't know how to drive manual. With an awesome instructor (Em) and some side streets we were able to learn and are getting better with each drive. We're still a little nervous on hills but overall, the stalling is becoming less and less. Now we just need some sweet sunglasses to drive in and more hippie stuff to decorate and we'll have the most epic vehicle Aus has seen.



We moved out of our apartment and left 56 alcohol bottles nicely displayed on the shelves in the kitchen. Our final count was 2 bottles of CC, 2 Vodka and 54 bottles of wine. Well over a bottle a day for the amount of time we were there. I'm sure the cleaning staff will LOVE us and I'm sure they'd love to have us back there. lol. We crashed with Em on Monday night and then hit the road on Tuesday.

A long 7 hour drive and we made it to Emu National Park where our Pumpkin Island friends were able to get us into the Hostel for free for the night as we weren't able to get to pumpkin right away. Spent one night in the hostel and then bummed around the nothing town of Emu on Wednesday. We decided to go x to the z xzibit on our van and totally revamped it taping down a tarp on the ground which was MUCH cleaner after a solid cleansweep session with our friend Zac on Monday (top to bottom scrubbing was a must). We tarped the ground, decorated and organized our van to have a bed and storage for everything we own. Em gave us a Canadian flag to sport inside it and we have a Merry Christmas decal on the window. We're going to get bumper stickers in each place we visit with our van so it can be a part of our journey. While we still need more comforters to make the bed comfortable we survived our first night sleeping in it last night and didn't suffocate from the heat. There was a huge bus group that came in from Airlie beach so we couldnt stay in the rooms last night but were still able to use all the facilities and just sleep in our van on the lot. We met some Swed's and had some drinks with them.

Today we got up early and headed into Yepoon, saw the harbour where we will be departing from and walked around the town of Yepoon that had some cool shops. We are currently sitting on the floor of the mall where we found oulets to charge our electronics and free wifi which is pretty hard to come by here in Australia. Tonight we get another free stay at the hostel and then we'll be heading to take the boat to the island in the morning.

Peregion was a great time back a couple sundays. We took the bus up and met Em and Zac and Mick there. We had lunch and listened to live music and drank some beers on the lawn. Definitely a hippie festival and some great music. Our last night in Mooloolaba was probably one of the best. We went to our friend Matt and Jay's (who we met our surfing one day) and the girls joined for some drinks before we all headed to O'Malley's. Matt and Jay's was hilarious as they had a fake wedding ceremony for Matt and his fiance Kyla. I guess it's not fake since they are really getting married in Aug and Lisa and Jay got ordained online haha but it was the classiest ceremony yet on their balcony with vows exchanged in high-fives and the reception being in a pub with cheap scooners lol. A lot of fun but bittersweet having to say goodbye to everyone. A lot of the Canadians were heading back to Canada for Christmas as they all just graduated from teachers college and its time to go. Seems strange since we're just starting our journey really. It was really hard saying goodbye to Em and we missher so much already!


Amanda Kutner or shall i say KUBES came to visit us last week who I met in the hostel who is the most hilarious Canadian girl as I mentioned previously. She partied with us a couple nights in Mooloo and it was so amazing to catch up with her. We were hoping to take her surfing but the weather was pretty crappy while she was here so we just bummed around, watched movies and caught up on each others adventures. Definitely going to miss her SO much when she heads back to Canada but we've already promised to keep in touch and have stuck to that almost every day. I'd love to travel with her again in the future as we have a great time together.

It's really starting to get hot here as the summer kicks off which is awesome but meltinggggggggggg. Also seems weird when we're in the mall with Christmas decorations and Christmas carols in the grocery store--just seems weird to be in bathing suits and barefoot all the time with Christmas around the corner. I definitely will miss the snow just for Christmas but the heat is something else :)
We're really excited to get to the Island tomorrow as there isn't too much to do in Emu and we just want to see what we've been anticipating for a while. Then its our journey back down the coast where we will be meeting Mick and Andrew in Byron Bay for Stew's 26th birthday December 18. We're gonna be itching to surf by then so it'll be great to get down there and reunite with our buddy!

Won't be able to update while on Pumpkin but I will update when we reach internet again soon! SO excited for daddy to get here for Christmas and only 21 days away now. Cannot believe I'll get to see him here in Australia! woo woo! Anyways, happy Christmas shopping to everyone and miss you all back home! Hope those who snowboard are taking advantage as I would love to board this time of year but will take the beach easily.