Mon 21st /Tues 22nd Jan The campsites here are very well provisioned. They all have washing machines, dryers and washing lines, good showers, BBQ areas and sinks and often have toasters, microwaves and toasters too. It can be sociable cooking in a communal kitchen and it's a hell of a lot easier than stifling in the van which has a tiny preparation area. Most of the sites cost between 15$ and 30$ though the one at Brisbane was 38$. At the Rockhampton site there was table tennis and Kev threatened to thrash me - he beat me twice at 21 - 19 and beat me more decisively in the third game, but I won the next two games. The sixth game ended inconclusively when the ball flew out of the window and onto the roof of ... read more

Friday 18th we drove 340 kms up to Bundaberg (home of the Australian rum) and visited a few places - a Botanical Gardens which was fairly meagre but held the sugar museum and a small track railway with an old sugar cane train doing two circuits of the gardens. There was also the house of Bert Hinkley (an early pioneer aviator), which had been transported brick by brick from Southampton. It looked incongruous - brick and pebble dashing set amongst palm tress and rosellas. I wondered what the residents of number 37 and 41 thought when it was being dismantled. Travelling on towards Gin Gin (I love Australian place names) we stopped at 27 unexplained craters discovered under farmland in 1971. They have foxed geologists ever since- volcanoes, geysers, meteors have all been ruled out and ... read more

Wed 16th / Thurs 17th. We stayed in Hervey Bay for a few days hoping the wethaer will improve further north so we can go up there. It's better here now, been dry for two days and I sat on a beach for the first time since Coogee Beach a month ago. Thursday we went on a day trip to Fraser Island - the world's largest sand island. Fiftenn minutes into driving along the sandy track through the thick woods the coach splashed through a puddle, there was a hot smell and the driver's PA sounded as if he'd dunked it in a bowl of water. He stopped the coach and then it wouldn't start again. The jeep behind stopped to help and there was talk over walkie talkies of alternators, solonoids and batteries. Some of ... read more

This blog failed to publsh for some reason so I'm trying again. We're travelling slowly up the east coast trying to find some sun. Coff's Harbour was wet most of the time so we didn't see the best of it and went to the cinema and bowling to pas the time. I was as useless at bowling as I normally am; got one strike only, although twice I did manage to get all skittles down on the second ball having sent the first ball down the side channel. Kev beat me once, thrashed me twice and I beat him in the last game. On Sunday we moved onto Byron Bay via Grafton, a sleepy mainly 19th century town with an art gallery housing a pleasant restaurant. The rain held off till the afternoon so after setting ... read more

Thursday 10th January From Nimbin we drove through Mount Warning National Park and along the valley round the central plug of the extinct volcano, with the rim high above us. Wooded thickly with eucalypts and bush, with few houses dotted around - we passed only one car. Two fords were just passable now, as we have had no heavy rain for three days, and the bridges only just cleared the water. As we swished across one wooden bridge a turtle scuttled in front of us on his way downstream. Further on, a small red kangaroo went across the road and down the slope at the side. It was the first one Kev had seen and he was beginning to think that kangaroos didn't actually exist. We drove through Tweed Heads, on the border of New South ... read more

2nd January. Kev and I are now on the second leg of our trip. We picked up the campervan yesterday and a fairly tatty heap of metal it looks too. We counted the dents, scratches and windscreen chips, marked them on a sheet and hope not to increase them or we'll lose AU$ 500. We couldn't collect it until early afternoon, so I had time to say a quick hello and goodbye to a few Ozbus mates before we left. They'd had a good Orphan's Christmas and stupendous fireworks on New Year's eve, while i was being poorly in the UK. Kev and I drove only 180 kms up the Pacific Highway to Raymon Terrace, after taking a wrong turning before we even hit the highway south of Sydney. At the campsite i asked the owner ... read more

It is unseasonably chilly here and often rainy. Perhaps a busload of English and Irish travellers arriving here made God decide to make us feel at home. One of the Irish guys said he'd phoned home and told his brother that it was overcast here and only 18 degrees, and his brother said, (Insert strong Irish accent here), 'Never mind your overcast and only 18 degrees, I'm freezing my feckin' bollocks off here.' Apart from the weather I'm enjoying city life - seeing sights and relaxing with Ozbussers spread between Manly and Coogee Beach. Kev and i have a twin room with ensuite bathroom in a cheap newly-refurbished hotel near central Station. It's absolute bliis to empty out my sponge bag and have clothes in a wardrobe. Ozbus 2 cam in on Sunday and a few ... read more

Day 82,83 Melbourne Had breakfast with one group from Ozbus and was about to se off for siteseeing when I got waylaid by another Ozbusser going to lunch in a different cafe with another group. Most sociable and enjoyable, but I didn't want to spend the whole afternoon drinking, so after a pleasant alfresco lunch and wine, I went to the Botanical Gardens, very pleasant but notenough time to do it justice before I went out to Flinders Station (what a beautiful building) to meet a friend who lives south east of Melbourne (*Dave, Ollie and Judith - Kendra sends her love). A lovely (wine-filled) evning followed by a cab back to the hostel. Talking to cab drivers is more interesting now ('Where are you from? India. (Indonesia) Which town? Oh, I've just been there.') Once ... read more

Day 75 to 78 Alice Springs, Kings Canyon, Uluru The evening in Alice we spent eating, drinking and watching a reptile show, the following morning in the laundry, internet cafe and coffee shop. On the drive to Kings Canyon we stopped at a camel place and a few of us had a ride round the paddock on a camel. I went up with 19 year old Adam, who was gungho and wanted to go as fast as possible. Trotting on a horse at Mount Bromo was bad enough, but three metres up on a camel was infinitely worse. I'm glad the paddock wasn't very big. Kings Canyon was fantastic - we walked up and round the rim and down into the canyon where the miniature rain forest, called the garden of Eden, provided shade and water. ... read more

I never did manage to get to the beach, but swam in the hotel pool, and collected the personalised bangles and t-shirts. Three of us had the Ozbus 1 design (by Richard) on the front and 'I went all the way' on the back. Most of the group already had embroidered t-shirts from their extended stay in Katmandu. Roxy also had a trip to the doctors and wanted an addendum to my list of medical concerns. She had an irritating rash, apparently an allergy to something, for which she received a steroid injection in her nether regions. The rash, though still there, is no longer itching. The whole party (39 + 2) flew from Bali to Darwin, arriving at the hostel at 3am, not quite in time to get into the local late-night bar. Day 72, ... read more