On Sunday (the 7th), we left Brisbane in the morning and drove up the East Coast, first stopping at the Glasshouse Mountains, named by Captain Cook for their appearance. It was a short walk to a lookout, where Jane, our guide told us the creation story for the area.
I'm not sure I've elaborated on this before, but the Aboriginal people believe that the world was once flat and that all of the geological features on it were created by spirits. So every river, mountain, lake and so on has its own little story behind its appearance on the landscape and although we only get the basics of the story, it's an interesting insight into their culture. The Glasshouse Mountains, for istance are a family fleeing from a flood. Don't quote me on that, but that's the general outline. It's the same everywhere else in the country. Rivers might be the tears of an animal and boulders might be an animal's eggs. Whatever the story behind them, they always have a moral which is used to educate each other and pass down a code of laws and values.
So after our stop at the Glasshouse Mountains, we proceeded onto Noosa, where almost all of the people on our bus got off and we picked up an equal amount for the journey North. We only stayed there for about an hour, but I was in for a surprise nonetheless. Getting on our bus was Nicky, one of the English waitresses from Heron Island, who I didn't even know was doing Oz Experience. I had worked with her for over two months and she left the island a couple of days before me, but I had no idea where she was travelling to next. So we caught up on what we had been doing and although she was only travelling as far as Rainbow Beach, a couple of hours away, it was good to see such a farmiliar face on a day when people were coming and going without much of a chance to get to know them.
When we got to Rainbow Beach, we had the chance to play around with a didgeridoo, a few boomerangs and a spear. It wasn't much of a cultural talk but more of something to break up the day's travelling, but it was fun to try out things that you see so often in shops but so rarely used. After that, we went for a walk along Rainbow Beach itself and then I said goodbye to Nicky as the rest of us headed to Hervey Bay where we would stay the night.
