MELBOURNE:
After a not so bad 15 hour flight to Sydney we stayed the night at the cheapest hotel we could find and then flew to Melbourne. We stayed with Jo's Mum's cousins George and Jenny in South
Morang, Melbourne. George and Jenny were very accommodating and put us up with us for nearly 2 weeks.
Christmas was amazing! We were invited to Jenny's daughter's house where we spent the day with Jenny, George, Margaret, Bart and the kids, Laura, Thomas and Angus. We had Prawns on the
bbq, huge prawns in their shells, Oysters and flat head tails! Then, a huge roast dinner with ham and turkey! Will drank his way through the beers and played Cricket in the garden to try and work off some of the food. We were very fortunate to have been invited to such a lovely Christmas day. Thanks to everyone x
We managed to meet up with Lorrie and Janet who we met in South Africa. They were staying at the Hilton right next to the
MCG cricket ground. They had tickets for every day. Obviously the cricket has been fantastic! Great time to be English in Australia!
We also met up with Anna and Tom who we met in Guatemala. They have managed to get jobs here in Melbourne for 6 months. The wages are much better here, at least double of what you would get in England! It made us think about what we could be doing and earning here.
After a lot of calling around, we managed to hire our camper van. We hired a 'high top' camper. Its quite compact, but ideal for the pair of us. The only downside is that it drinks Petrol like Will drinks his beers! We tested it out for a couple of days along the Great Ocean road and managed to drive all the way to
Warnambool which I think was about 300km. We stopped at Apollo Bay and then went on to see the twelve Apostles (only 9 left) and London Bridge (which has half fallen down). The Great Ocean road was amazing, the views and sights were so worth the drive.
We set off the day after boxing day in our camper! We stopped in at
Mafra to see Paul, another Cousin of Jo's mum's and then set off the next day to Sydney.
George's Birthday at the Growling Frog (a golf course)
Will displaying all of the pegs that came with the camper van.
Angus cooking the prawns on Christmas day
More prawns
Preasant opening time
Around the table for Christmas lunch
Will giving the Ausies a false sense of hope before the Boxing Day Test
Apollo Bay, Great Ocean Road
The 12 Apostles, well some of them
London Bridge.... has fallen down
Our camper van
The MCG and tennis club in Melbourne
A pelican
CANBERRA:Half way, we decided that we should have
pre-booked a site near the city as every campsite was saying they were fully booked!
Ooops! In the end we changed our plans and stayed in a quiet campsite in Canberra. We had party poppers and lots of nibbles and drinks. The site was very friendly and we had a good new years eve in the end. Instead of fireworks we had a spectacular thunderstorm the following night!
The Telstra Tower
From the top of the tower
The view from the war museum
Happy New Year
SYDNEY:Sydney is a lovely City. We stayed in a campsite in Sydney Hills, about 40 minutes bus drive away from the city centre. We spent a few days exploring. The weather was hot, so we did not go too mad!
We decided not to spend $200 dollars each on the bridge climb. Instead we spent $9 dollars each and climbed the Pylon at the city end of the bridge. This had the same views and was about half the way up. Really worth doing instead of spending so much money. So we advice people if they are on a shoe string, when visiting Sydney, to walk over the bridge and in the middle there is a pylon what you can climb up. The views are fantastic and it is well worth the $9 dollars. You get to know all the workings and the history of the bridge as well as watching a short film about them making it.
We visited the Aquarium which was really good apart from all the kids!! Lots of pushing and shoving! Our own fault really for visiting Australia on the school holidays.
When walking to the Opera house, along the promenade, there were several street shows. One in particular was quite fun.
We also met up with Alex and Bill, Wills parents friends that were also here to see the cricket. We had a lovely meal at a Chinese in China Town.
A sea horse
Penguins
This photo is upside down
A pineapple fish
A Dugong
Arrr.... a croc!
The Opera or should I say Oprah House
Sydney
This man is a Kiwi!
Sydney Harbour Bridge
From the left, Bill, Alex, Alex, Will and Jo
BLUE MOUNTAINS
:Because of a tight budget we went to see some of the sights without doing them in full. We went to have a look at Echo Point where we saw the three sisters. Amazing views as you can see in the pictures. We also trekked a little way to see a waterfall. We then went to
Jenolan Caves. We just could not bring ourselves to pay for a tour, so we walked around on our own. If anyone visits the blue mountains, we would recommend going to
Jenolan Caves and paying to look around a couple. It was very hot the day we visited so I think this also had something to do with our not bothering.
The Three Sisters
The Jenolan Caves
GOSFORD
:When arriving at our choice of campsite, we though we might be back in the shanty towns of Argentina! It turns out that this was one of the best campsites of our trip. The main reason we stopped in Gosford was to go and see the Australian reptile Park. A fantastic place and well worth the money!
Wow a Croc.... Well its not, it's an alligator
A Tasmanian Devil, cute isn't it!
A very big Tortoise
A Wombat
Fruit Bats
A Barn Owl
A kookaburra
A Kuala
Elvis is a croc! It's lucky this guy had a chicken to feed him
An Alligator Snapping Turtle called Leonardo
CESSNOCK
- HUNTERS VALLEY:Well, what can we say! the flood news was pretty bad in Brisbane, so we decided to stay in Hunters Valley for a couple of nights. This turned out to be 4 nights! Hunters Valley has 150 wineries!! We spent the first couple of days walking around a few. People thought we were mad to do so as they are quite far apart and it was very hot. We even got a lift back from a couple of the wineries from staff members! After bumping into a few tour operators we decided to spend $45 dollars each to do a tour. Some tour guides were about $100 including lunch! We were a bit apprehensive to spend that kind of money, but we were slightly sloshed at the time, so what the hell! The tour turned out to be fantastic. We went to four wineries, an olive/chutney tasting shop, a cheese tasting place, a liqueur tasting place and a brewery. The tour guide even took some people out to see some kangaroos. The tour company was called WINE ROVERS, so if anyone (and we so recommend people going) goes to Hunters Valley, you must use this tour company. Others do not take you to the cheese tasting places or the liqueur places etc. We could have stayed longer but heard to the waters were residing, so decided to risk the drive to Brisbane.
We went wine tasting
Then went a little psycho
A vine yard
Will trying a liquor called Dragon Breath.
PORT MACQUARIE:
We stopped here as it was recommended to us and also to bide our time so that the floods would subside more. To be honest, the campsite was nice but not really much to do here, so can not really write too much about it. Weather still really hot!
COFFS
HARBOUR:We drove through!
BYRON BAY:We drove through and stopped in a couple of the shops. very hippy town, not really our scene to be honest, although the beaches were amazing.
SURFERS PARADISE - GOLD COAST:It seemed like we were back in a mini Rio or a mini Miami! the beach was amazing! Long stretches of white sand and surf waters. the few sky scraper buildings in the background ruined the view slightly we thought.
After checking our bank accounts, we did not do the things here that we wanted to do! We missed out on Dracula's and Sea World. I think we were panicking too much about money to be honest. Understandably so at this point when we have been in Australia now for a month and the exchange rate is 1.6! In future, if coming here again, we would purchase a $99 dollar ticket to get into Sea World, Movie World and Water World. Considering Sea World alone was $75 dollars, it would be well worth the money.
BRISBANE:We decided to stay outside of Brisbane at the Glass House Mountains. These mountains have a fantastic Aboriginal story to them and in short, the son neglected his pregnant mother in a flood, so his father broke his neck and abandoned him. The mountains are named after the mother, father and all the children including the disowned son who points away from the others! It was so hot when we arrived here, after a lot of changing minds, we decided to rent a cabin for a couple of days. It had air conditioning!! yay! brilliant! We needed the break from the van and the following day is chucked it down, so well worth it!
AUSTRALIA ZOO! Awesome! Only about 5km away from our site. A fantastic place to visit. Steve Irwin's wife and family were hosting the Crocodile show and his daughter, 'Bindy' (named after a Croc) also had a show of her own!! The bird show was also spectacular. There were lots of tributes to Steve Irwin and it seems like they are still carrying on his purpose.
One of the Glass House mountains
At the Glass House mountains we hired a cabin and ordered pizza
An Otter
A Komodo Dragon
Bindi!
A Jabiru Austraila's only stork.
Robert Irwin rocks out to ACDC
The Irwin family
This is obviously not the real Steve Irwin, that would be a little sick.
BUNDERBURG
:If travelling up the East Coast, this is a must place to stop. It didn't look like much when we got there, but we found out that it was turtle season! Only $10 dollars each and we got to go and see the turtles at night coming up on to shore and laying their eggs. It was amazing! We have to wait around for quite a bit and we got a bit wet, but to see them coming out of the water and finding a place to dig and lay their eggs was a fantastic experience. The turtles were about 2 weeks late, so usually we would have seen the hatch lings as well, but we were a bit too early for that experience.
Another great place to go to in Bunderburg was the Rum Distillery! We did a self tour which got you 2 free drinks at the end. I won the argument on who was driving! The rum was fantastic! hic!
We halled arse to Airlie Beach after Bunderburg and stopped in McKay for the night (nothing to report here).
Some Kangaroos hopping around someones lawn.
A loggerhead turtle laying eggs
Then returning to the sea
AIRLIE
BEACH:Wow! We have never seen turquoise sea before and was hoping we would soon. beautiful! Although bit of a bummer that we could not run and jump into the amazing waters as it is 'stinger season!' No paddling, no swimming, no nothing! The water is just there to tease you.
I think this is where we have noticed the humidity the most. It is so hot and sticky. Staying in a camper van is really not advised for this time of the year in Queensland folks! We rented a lovely apartment (Searene apartments) on top of Arile beach. We had a studio a jacuzzi so lived life in airconditioned luxury for 3 nights! it was bliss. We decided to book our trips to the Reef and the Whitsundays after our apartment experience, wrong! It is also Cyclone season here in Queensland, so all trips cancelled! We waited out Cyclone Anthony a category 2 cyclone in the campsite! We moved the van between some cabins when the trees started falling down. The next Cyclone was Cyclone Yasi. This was going to be a category 5 cyclone, so we fled back to our apartments! this time we rented an executive one bedroom with a bbq instead of a jacuzzi! The cyclone hit on Wednesday night. Half of Airlie beach had no power for 36 hours. We did! Yay! After cooking meet balls that would last us for 3 nights, buying candles and lots of wine, we still had television and air conditioning. We even got the flat for an extra night free of charge. Fantastic!
Finally after waiting for the cyclones to pass we managed to book our Reef Trip. This was with a company called Fantasea. We even managed to save $50 each as our tour operator got us backpacker cards for free. They took us to the Reef passing through the Whitsunday passage and loads of the Islands. We stopped at a huge reef World floating raft that had everything on it, including the dreaded 'Stinger Suits' I have left out the full picture of myself in my Telly-Tubby suit as it was too disturbing to the human eye. I have saved it for the fridge for when we get back home!! The trip was amazing. We saw so many brightly coloured fish including the famous Nemo (Clown Fish). We even managed to spot a turtle. The waters were so clear you could see everything from the coral and even a rare giant clam. We took some underwater pictures, which hopefully have come out. If they have you will see them. After seeing the hundreds of jellyfish in the underwater boat, we are very glad we put on our suits!
The view from our appertment in Airlie Beach
Will in the jacuzzi
and then in the pool
The night before Cyclone Anthony came through our van was parked here. Lucky we moved it!
The appartment we stayed in while Cyclone Yasi came through
The raft we went to out on the reef. The photos of the reef haven't come out too well, must get a waterproof case for my camera.
TOWNSVILLE:
We stopped off in Townsville before making our way up to Cairns. Apparently this is where the film Australia was made. To be honest, we did not hang around.
ATHERTON
:The rain has started! We are in Monsoon season here in North Queensland and you can defiantly tell! We have never seen so much rain. We decided to travel up to Cairns the inland route as there were a few things to do. We went to the Peanut place, coffee world and the golden Drop Winery where they made wine from Mangoes. We then decided to drive to Port Douglas. We had to take a different route as the road had become a river!
The coffee pot beauty pageant
A frog that spent the night on our van window
PORT DOUGLAS:KURANDA:Kuranda is an Aboriginal town. A lovely village in the middle of all the rain forests. Loads of markets to walk around. We went to the rain forest station, this is where we went on the Army Duck Tour, the Pamagirri Aboriginal Dance Troupe and Dreamtime Walk. We watched a dance show and learnt to throw the boomerang. Will was brilliant, I was rubbish, so we bought one to practice with when we get back. The Skyrail cable car was just far too much money for us at this stage. We managed to go and see the Baron Waterfalls though. Jo nearly didnt make it as there was a huge spider waiting for us on the railings!
CAIRNS:Our final destination! Cairns is a very pleasant town. The campsite we stayed at was lovely. free internet and a nice cabin for the final night. At this point we had run out of money and probably done most the sights around here anyway, So we chillaxed for a few days enjoying the last part of Australia.
A few facts about Australia:The Australians are a lovely, friendly bunch of people until they get into their cars!
There must have been a radioactive leak somewhere around this country to preduce the many huge insects and bugs!
Chilli pickled onions! Fantastic!
The weather is mad. Cyclones, humid, rain, cold, windy, you name it, they have it!
Expensive!
It is very difficult to order a double shot of a spirit.
Lots of silly and interesting animals and birds.
Library's have free internet, so dont waste your money in Internet cafes.
All in all we loved Australia. We will definitely come back and see more.
We have travelled 7,003km on our journey in Oz! Wow! (about 4,400 miles)
