Bula, a word used by every person, regardless of where they originate, workers along the waterfront, hotel guests and screaming school children. Meaning hello, it's the main Fijian word used where most people's mother tongue is English. And boy did we hear it hundreds of times daily. Despite the fact we went nowhere! Our flight from Auckland was a good one, fairly good breakfast on the early morning three hour flight where although we advanced, we went back in time an hour (Fiji do not have spring daylight saving for its always sunny*.) We were greeted by a man wearing a skirt (completely normal) playing a banjo singing in Fijian folk (even more normal), we got through customs fine and although many staff wanted us to take a taxi we got the public bus, success. Although ... read more

This is a hard entry to write; to encapsulate the sheer beauty of this stunning island as we travel around in our camper van, awe inspired to the scenery backdrop we are enticed with. To call what we have seen so far as beautiful is such an understatement. We heard on the tourism radio, that people will scour the dictionary for dramatic superlatives to describe the views and it's no wonder. However, dictionary aside please allow us to do our best. The main viewpoint we would like to get across is; despite the obvious landscape being very easy on the eye, it's the geology and geography behind this. The view one easily becomes accustomed to reminds us of what was present hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. Up until recent history this land, roughly ... read more

The overnight journey was event less and we arrived at Airlie in the morning, allowing plenty of time to check in the boat, leave our packs at our hostel and grab some alcohol before boarding our catamaran just after lunch. We were introduced to our fellow ten travellers and two crew. We hadn't known what to expect really, whitsundays is on every backpackers list but also on most Australian's to do list, we chose a non party boat, of which there were not many. So we expected a group of older people and only bought alcohol so we had something of a distraction, but we were pleasantly surprised to be amongst our own, all twelve of us were early twenties and either backpacking or working with the one year visa. We hadn't afforded the private room ... read more

It was a short trip up the coast by our recent length of travel's standards arriving a mere two hours later. We were welcomed to a laid back part of town, the Sunshine Beach. We didn't have to much of an introduction as sunset was almost upon us, we dropped our things at the hostel and went to the supermarket for some bits for dinner. Walking back we got a bit lost having previously been in the shuttle bus but it helped us become orientated and meant we saw a lovely sunset over the beach. An early night ensued, you are shocked right?! We had good reason this time though, we decided to watch the sunrise on the beach at 5.30am and needed some beauty sleep and luckily the other two people on our dorm may ... read more

We had a great introduction to Byron Bay, a hippie town near the border of New South Wales and Queensland. It was another beautiful, blue sky day and our driver who collected us from the bus stop kindly drove us around town and to the beach before taking us to our home for the next two nights. We debated getting our heads down as we hadn't really slept the previous night on the coach but decided on a shower to fully revive us instead. Our dorm seemed ok, we were on one bunk of four in a fairly big room, but it smelt of boys and alcohol! We set out and walked through the bush straight onto the beach, although the sand was cold between our toes it was lush and thick and golden. Definitely one ... read more