Saturday, 3 November 2012

Au Revoir Hervey Bay and Arrival in Bundaberg


After our lovely day on Fraser Island, we were quite keen to have a relaxing morning in Hervey Bay. We had arranged to catch a greyhound bus from Hervey Bay to Bundaberg, which is where we were due to be picked up on 28th October by the owners of the dairy farm we were due to start working on. We had a quick breakfast, Nicola having an amazing omelette which actually overshadowed my pancake stack…never thought I would say that. Nicola’s real Italian hot chocolate, super thick and super chocolatey – like a ganache drink – easily overshadowed my iced coffee, which was distinctly average. We then headed across the road (the Esplanade is the main beach road in Hervey Bay and seems to cover the entire town) and onto the beach. We spent a few moments relaxing before we were set upon by a lovely at first French couple, who spent an age talking to us and ended up being quite bigoted racists and made us miss our bus into the city centre – they did give us a DVD of nice places to visit in Australia though.

After making our excuses and leaving we headed to the bus stop to try and catch the last bus into the city centre that would allow us to arrive in time for our greyhound. However, after a 20 minute wait the bus came and passed us – it was driving on the other side of the road!  The lady in the motel had told us to wait at the wrong side of the road. As we missed the bus we decided to call a taxi, conveniently, in Australia, they have one taxi number for all of Australia – the number you dial puts you in contact with a local taxi company, genius! We made it to the bus station with plenty of time to spare and when the greyhound arrived (they are red out here by the way) we settled ourselves in for the two hour drive to Bundaberg.

Upon arrival in Bundaberg we were not entirely sure where we were as we didn’t have a map, fortunately, I had written down the address of our motel in my notebook and we spotted the correct street (Woondooma Street) just one road from the bus station. However, after 15 minutes of wandering up and down the section of road we started to worry that our motel didn’t actually exist. We were booked into a place at 77 Woondooma Street but the signs indicated that Woondooma ran from 1 to 52B…confusing. We stopped off at Maccy D’s for a bite to eat and called a taxi company. When the taxi arrived we were welcomed to a blast of “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones and a clear Stones fan taxi driver – he had the forty licks tongue motif tattooed on his left hand.

We managed to figure out that we had to check into the reception for our motel on Takalvin Street but where we were staying was on Woondooma Street; crazy. Nicola, the taxi driver and I were all at a loss to figure out why you would have a reception at one location and the hotel at a separate location a few streets away. Anyway, after dropping our bags off we headed onto he main road near our motel and looked for a place to eat. Nicola and I fancied Chinese food and we spotted a little place called Uncle Chan’s. Well, we walked in and we both thought the place was a little weird, it looked like the function room of a working men’s club and was complete with the token buffet. We ordered food and when it arrived we were a little surprised. My dish tasted suspiciously like super noodles and Nicola’s dish was a weird form of dry noodles (literally dry, really crispy twiglet looking things) with mixed vegetables layered over the top. We ate quickly and left even quicker -  we didn’t want to stick around as the matriarch of the restaurant seemed to be giving people a bit of a grilling over their lives and we wanted to just get out of there and back to our motel.

No comments:

Post a Comment