Easter Break

Today (April 20, 2015) is the first day back for school kids after the Easter holidays. They have a solid two weeks off from Good Friday on. All the schools have the same break, private and public, primary and high school, university and technical schools, no difference when it comes to breaks. I can tell you from experience that having that being set for everyone would be a huge benefit to parents. You can plan years ahead if you wanted to have a big family vacation with all the kids, and no one having to miss a day of school. If it's one thing I've found out about Australians is they vacation, a lot. Maybe that's why they have figured out the school vacation dilemma.

We live in a vacation spot here in Bargara. We arrived January 2 this year as one of my first blogs described. We landed at Kelly's Beach Resort in Bargara, having found one room available for 2 nights. We had no idea how busy the area would be with Christmas and New Year's, which is at the end of their summer break. We got REALLY lucky to have found any room, any where in Bargara. Now that I've experienced a full on Spring Break in Bargara that luck has really hit home. We live on the Esplanade in Bargara which is the main "drag". There are many units that are rented out for the breaks, not in our building, but all around us are what we call condo complexes. The owners rent their units out for weekly rentals at very high costs, and they are snapped up. (One of the places I looked out for a long term rental was $1800/month or $900/week short term.) The unit we are in was a short term rental until we rented it for this year. The beaches were full, the roads had a lot more traffic, and you needed a "booking" for a dinner out.

What is really fun to see is how much the vacation time is cherished here. For the last 2 weeks we have seen hoards of families coming back and forth to be beach, to eating establishments, to shopping areas, playing tennis, cricket, bike riding, walking, camping, and really just having fun.

One of the local places where all this fun happens is Bargara Beach Caravan Park.

As the name describes, this is camping, caravan style.

But you can also tent camp on powered sites.

I'm not sure how many sites of each kind they have, but the place was full with no vacancies of any kind.  We had never seen it during a break and it reminded us of San Destin, Florida over Spring break in the US. This is a destination for families coming from New South Wales (where Sydney is located) as it's warmer the further north you travel. Up and down the Queensland coast would be the same, lots of vacationers.

We did travel a bit during the break time. Many people had said the Eumundi area, which is just an hour north of Brisbane, was loads of fun especially on Saturday mornings when the market is on.

I want these!

John wanted this, someone to crack his neck.

We got going early as it was a 3 hour drive on the Bruce Highway, yes, the same highway that we traversed on our first trip to Bundaberg in January. I absolutely HATE this highway. It is a 2 lane, 100 km/hour, death road. The road has a shoulder which is about 8 inches wide. During the day it is drivable, but I've decided that driving it at night is not an option. I'm jumping ahead here, back to the story....as we got off the highway we both had the same deja vu about where we were. As we drove this stretch of highway the first time, the traffic was terrible, bumper to bumper, no end in sight for miles. We decided to get off where there was food, we didn't pay attention to the name of the place, and ended up in a quaint little town with a lovely restaurant. When we tried to get back on the road to get to Bundaberg, we couldn't figure out the round abouts, and that is where both of us realized we had been there before. It was another "Ah ha" moment. 

 We stayed about 4 hours wandering about the stalls and shops at Eumundi. We then drove to Noosa Heads which is a beautiful stretch of beach, with a main drag that has some of the highest end shopping we've seen. http://www.traveller.com.au/hot-to-shop-noosa-1b6tv

Not this shop!

We had dinner at the Noosa Surf Club

It was literally one of the prettiest settings we've enjoyed. We had a lovely meal and headed back to Bundy hoping we'd get some of the drive in before dark. (Reminder here that we are in late Autumn, meaning we're loosing the daylight early.) I volunteered to drive. BIG MISTAKE! This road could have been the death of me, and still may be as you need to use it to get most anywhere. John was tired and woke up about 60 minutes from home. I had managed to get us that far without his "help" but as soon as he awakened he saw me veer to the left, away from the on coming 18 wheeler who had a car trying to pass him on his left. All I know, or saw, was 3-4 headlights coming toward us at 100 km/hour and I needed to move over as best I could. (Remember the really wide 8 inch shoulder?) He wasn't sure what I was thinking as there was no real place to go, but I didn't go off the road, we survived, and I let him drive the rest of the way back.

Now add darkness, oh, and notice the shoulder?

So we made it home, barely. 

The rest of these 2 weeks have been noticeably cooler and less humid. We are still enjoying 75-80 degree days, but with the sunlight leaving so early, the evenings are quite cool. The locals say Winter is the best season here, go figure. We will take whatever the Winter serves up, even down to say 62 degrees at night. We're from Wisconsin, we can take it!

We really think the weather is addicting. It's like a really good drug after you've had surgery. It just makes you feel so good. But like that drug, it'll wear off and we'll be back in the Frozen Tundra soon enough. We'll also be back to where people drive on the correct side of the road and they have real shoulders on those roads. But until then,

I reckon we'll suffer through. Cheers!