One very full river.

Our Noosa trips are never complete without visits to the sandbank near the mouth of the river. Unfortunately, due to the high tides and high river flows (from all of the rain we've been having) there really wasn't much sandbank to enjoy on most of our visits. This photo shows Eli at his 'favourite place', a small depression between two banks of sand dune vegetation. He always races to this spot when we come to the sandbank (and declares that 'this is my favourite place') - I particularly like this photo because it makes him look like he's on his own little island, complete with a catamaran in the background.



The fact that there was so little exposed sand on most of our visits also led to some confrontations between some of the sandbank inhabitants, most notably the terns, seagulls and bar-tailed godwits that had taken up residence and the young upstart (Eli) that occasionally took great joy in making them take flight.



On several occasions, there was so little sand at Eli's favourite place that we had to bypass it and stop at the North Shore instead, right near the mouth of the river. Here Eli enjoyed the stingy sand (it was quite windy) and he even went for the windswept and wistful look whilst gazing out into the water...



We eventually made it out to the sandbank one day when the tide was low enough for us to have a good look around and to our delight, there were heaps of soldier crabs. Eli loves running into the middle of the 'clouds of crabs' and he picks as many up as he can. Alora is a little more reserved in her appreciation of them, but she's starting to come around to touching them.




These final two photos are from down along the river where we enjoy picnics and fish and chips in the park from time to time. We'd scheduled, and then cancelled and rescheduled, fish and chips in the park a number of times before the weather held off long enough for us to finally do it, towards the end of our holiday.