After 5 months on the road we arrived in New Zealand! After getting through scary airport security (thought at one point we were going to be refused entry for having a bag of pasta in our luggage) we set off for our hostel in Christchurch, and midnight snack from McDonalds on the way. Next day was a day of organising, with the majority of the day spent finding a campervan and starting to plan a route around New Zealand. With the van booked and a plan in our heads we rewarded ourselves with few pints in an irish bar (all the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in Melbourne after our trip to the outback looking like a pair of tramps. We had slept outside in swag bags the night before and had not had time to get showered and changed before the flight to Melbourne, so we arrived into the airport covered in red dust and looking filthy. Attracting one or two strange looks on the way.... We set off for our hostel to get a shower, some clean clothes and then try to get the red dust out of all our possessions, bit of a losing battle! Our hostel was really nice and [View Full Entry]

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After one of the best drives ever along the great ocean road, and up to the grampians, we were then faced with a five hour drive to adelaide to drop off our car and meet our tour bus. It was the most boring drive ever! There was one stretch of road that was 10km and we didn't have to turn the steering wheel once! Mad. Anyway, we made it to adelaide and dropped the car off on time (yay). Next morning we were up at 5 to meet our tour bus to take us to the outback. Despite the early start, [View Full Entry]

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After a looooonnnnggggg bus ride to Melbourne, complete with the strangest bus driver (and probably the strangest man) I have ever come across (lots of sneezing, burping, and many received phone calls announced by "Dancing Queen" at full blast) we made it to Melbourne. It was late when we arrived so didn't really see much of the city. Next day we had a day of organising, and ended up arranging to go out on the Great Ocean Road the very next day. How exciting! We were up early to collect our hire car, and after pottering around Melbourne for an hour [View Full Entry]

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After almost four months travelling we have reached Sydney! Kind of a milestone in our trip, and one of the places we were most looking forward to seeing. We arrived at 6am in the morning, not much was open at that time so we dumped our rucksacks at the hostel we were staying at in Kings Cross as it was too early to check in. Then we headed off to go and see the harbour bridge and opera house. It was really exciting to finally see the famous landmarks so we sat and stared at them with a coffee in hand [View Full Entry]

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Our first stop in New South Wales as Byron Bay. It was a fantastic little town with a very very laid back atmosphere. We were staying in a hostel right by the beach and on our first day spent the morning catching some sunshine and watching the surfers. In the afternoon we set off to walk around the coast to get to the famous lighthouse, the most easterly point of Australia!! We were told that the walk was easy and well signposted, however that did not turn out to be the case and we spent quite a while going round in [View Full Entry]

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It was strange getting off the bus in a city! Haven't seen a skyscraper or any building bigger than two storeys since arriving in Oz a month ago. We were both very excited about spending some time in Brisbane. We'd arranged to stay with my cousin linda and her family, which was brilliant. They had a bar, pool table, three great kids and the cutest puppy. We were happy! We spent our first day exploring Brisbane city centre, starting with a walk along the south bank of the river through some lovely park areas, before moving into the shopping area! After [View Full Entry]

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After the excitement of Fraser Island it was definitely time to chill out, so we headed for a tiny little town called Tiaro, population approximately 1500, including my Uncle Roger and his wife Rose (and their cat Saffi). We had a brilliant and very relaxing couple of days staying with them in their lovely house, complete with swimming pool and massive back garden, which is suprisingly still intact even after uncle roger let rich loose with a tractor.... We basically spent a couple of days chatting, swimming, catching up with the family, drinking and eating more prawns than is probably good [View Full Entry]

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After our brilliant whistundays trip, we headed down to Hervey Bay for the next big activity - Fraser Island! It was raining when we arrived, so we decided to hang around in Hervey Bay for a few days in the hope that the weather would improve before we headed over to Fraser Island. There's absolutely loads to do here, and it's a lovely place too. On our first day we hired some bikes from our hostel and cycled all along the esplanade, following the coast right round until the track went no further, turned out we'd cycled about 15km out of [View Full Entry]

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We made it to airlie beach, the departure point for the whitsundays. It's a really nice little town, with a gorgeous beach! On our first afternoon there we headed straight to a travel agent to sort out a sailing trip around the whitsundays. After a very convincing sales pitch by the travel agent we somehow ended up booking to go on a luxury catamaran sailing boat, slightly different to the backpacker boat we had gone in to book. We did however get the boat half price as it was leaving the next day. Got to love a bargain. We set off [View Full Entry]

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