Today I finally took the effort in adding pictures to all the entries where I have written about my travels the last couple of months. Go looksie!

As my parents have now left I could finally spend some time with friends again, so this friday I had my first real party in the Valley since I moved here. Runar and Karianne had a vorspiel in their apartment here at cathedral first, and we then checked out several cool places elsewhere. Later in the night I ended up at the Family, Brisbanes only real club, and I must say the change in music was extremely welcome, despite the $10 covercharge. Everywhere else in Brisbane they only play Top40 or R'n'B music of which most fall into both categories, and I'm quite frankly getting a bit tired of it. It really wouldn't hurt them to do something different once in a while...

A quite interesting article in the New York Times today about copyright. Sums up both sides of the argument, which is good. Personally I agree with the copyleft movement; Give someone a certain amount of time to reap the fruits of anything they create, say 20-30 years, and let it expire to the cultural commons afterwards wether anything was earned or not.
This would ensure public access to the sum of human creativity, while still giving the creative ones a chance to live off what they create.

After returning from Airlie Beach we spent the evening repacking and turned in early. Monday morning I went with my dad over to a 4WD-hire company and picked up a Toyota Landcruiser. No problems with lack of space in this one, so we just threw everything in the back and set off to Noosa Heads for our first stop on the way to Fraser Island, the worlds largest sand-island.

And then we're once again back in Brisbane to repack for our next adventure. We returned from Airlie Beach this afternoon, and have spent the day by our pool and preparing to pick up a 4x4 tomorrow morning so we can head off to Fraser Island and Noosa Heads for the final trip with my family this time around.
The last 5 days have been wonderful, despite some stormy rainshowers and fog on occasion. Due to this we didn't get to either Whitehaven Beach or Blue Pearl Bay as originally planned, but we anchored up somewhere else instead that were just as scenic.

The last couple of days I've been sampling beaches with my family. We got a Holden Commodore V6 rental and drove out to Kurrumbin Animal Sanctuary, I had to let them see some roo's and koalas while they were visiting down under. It was great even if I had seen it all before, a small but still very good place to see the Australian wild-life.
We then continued down the Pacific Coast Highway to Byron Bay, stopping only at the Moo-Moo Cafè, a small village that have made cows their speciality, down to painting the light-poles along the road in black and white cow-checkers. They serve an excellent frozen banana that is covered with chocolate, if you can't get to the area make some yourselves and try it. Its yumyum! :-)

Happy New Year everyone!
I'm just back from Sydney where I watched the fireworks with my parents outside the Operahouse and then travelled around with them to take in all the major sights in the area. It definetly was a New Years Eve out of the ordinary, and the Sydney beaches were really nice despite the water beeing freezing!
Read on to get the full story! (Finally updated 2003.01.14!)