02/12/06 - 03/12/06 Magnetic Island The Lonely Planet guide’s description of Magnetic Island is that of a beautiful landscape of granite boulders and ferns, and being the largest national koala sanctuary in Australia, “spotting grey fuzzy bums in trees is a mandatory pastime” - we decided to go check it out. Be booked in at the Townsville ferry terminal and had about 50 minutes to kill. Amazingly the Imax cinema just 5 minutes away was just starting a 40-minute under sea life film so we were able to watch it all and then leg it back to the ferry as soon [View Full Entry]

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30/11/06 - 01/12/06 Mission Beach We picked up a hire car (Toyota Avalon GSX Mk III, no less) and headed south. The guidebook says 2634 km Cairns to Sydney, for which we’d allowed 21 days. Our last night in Cairns we hot-footed it to Johno’s Blues Bar for some live music and although the headline act was far from blues, we did get chatty with a lady by the bar who told us that we absolutely must stop at the Sanctuary at Mission beach for a couple of days if we had time. Did we have time?... of course! What an [View Full Entry]

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25/11/06 - 28/11/06 Diving the Great Barrier Reef The dive trip that we booked was a 4-day trip on board a Catamaran M/V Nimrod out of Cooktown, to the Cod hole and Ribbon Reefs. This meant that the trip included low-level flights each way between Cairns and Cooktown. The plane flies at under 1000 ft/ 350 meters to enable us to make 2 dives in the morning and then fly the same day and was a real bonus to the dive trip looking down over the rain forest and the reefs and cays of the coast. The pilot announced a “Real [View Full Entry]

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23/11/06 - 24/11/06 Cape Tribulation We headed North from Cairns for an overnight stay in the rainforest of Cape Tribulation. Their tourist motto is “Where the rainforest meets the reef” and it’s certainly true, with the forest coming right down to the beaches and even into the water. Our first stop en route was at the Daintree Wildlife Centre where we both held a baby Roo/Wallaby (I can’t actually remember what it was, but it was incredibly cute!) and I found myself with a parrot on my head. We also spied green tree frogs, salt-water crocodiles and those unusuall [View Full Entry]

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15/11/06 - 21/11/06 After 3 days chilling out in Darwin, admiring the 80’s fashions, shopping and drinking cocktails in the Novotel Jabiru cocktail bar, we headed down south on a Quantas flight to Alice Springs. Back to our grueling touring schedule, we grabbed a 3 day tour heading out to Uluru, leaving the next morning at 06:30. Although Alice Springs is the major town in central Australia, it’s still over 450km from Uluru (Ayres Rock). We left Alice and immediately saw a rare sighting of 2 Wedgies, Australian for Wedge-tailed eagles - Australia’s biggest bird of p [View Full Entry]

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4/11/06 - 11/11/06 Broome to Darwin Day 1 06:30 AM. Our new guide, Leigh rocked up in the 21 Seater 4x4 coach. All our tucker (food), Grog (beer!) and water was loaded onto the bus. Fully loaded we were about 17 tonnes (mostly the beer). With swags, sleeping bags and all our gear, we could survive off the bus for 8 days. The last tour coming down from Darwin had hit a lot of rain and almost got stuck. Leigh’s opening speech was pretty much as follows; “Firstly, throw away your itinerary for this trip. We can’t get to most of [View Full Entry]

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23/10/06 - 3/11/06 Perth - Broom Day 1 06:45 pick up from Perth and heading north. Our first place of interest was the Pinnacles Desert, Nambung National Park, an absolutely spectacular scene of huge Limestone pillars standing against Yellow sand dunes and clear blue skies. Some smooth and some jagged and sharp, the rocks have been created by a long process of wind blown shells, lime rich sand, acidic layers of soil and plenty of weathering. However it happened, it looks great! We hunted for the most phallic one we could find and I hugged it for a Photo moment. (No [View Full Entry]

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20/10/06 - 22/10/06 We flew around the South West corner of Oz in a 3 day tour; Perth - Albany - Denmark - Pemberton - Margaret River - Busselton - Perth. Traveling from Perth our first stop was at Fox River Winery - Hurrah!! We slurped (literally) the Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Chenin Blanc, sucking in the oaky flavours. After a lot of swallowing and not much spitting we followed the highway through the Porongurups and climbed Castle Rock. The hike was well worth the effort for the rewarding views, after clambering across boulders and up a steep metal ladder to [View Full Entry]

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17/10/06 - 20/10/06 Perth Most of our first 2 days spent in Perth was traveler admin, so we didn’t hit the beaches, Freemantle or cruise up the Swan River. We wandered up and down William Street between our Northbridge accommodation and town, sampling the multitude of Italian and Asian restaurants on our way home, and the Brass monkey pub. After hours in a travel agent booking flights and in the Air New Zealand office changing our flights (shame on you Air New Zealand for charging us a fee to change our dates, when Singapore airlines had been so accommodating) we walked [View Full Entry]

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01106 - 03106 Kathmandu, Nepal The first thing that you have to realize in flying from Bhutan to Nepal is that the time zone changes by 15 minutes. I didn’t believe it! I didn’t know any such time zone changes existed. I mean, I know that somewhere in Oz there’s an odd half an hour, which I thought was a bit odd, but 15 minutes!! Come on! When the pilot gave the local time, descending over Khatmandu, I thought that a) My watch must be a little bit fast and b) His watch must be a little bit slow, and c) [View Full Entry]

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