From the Cameron Highlands we got back to our original route to Pulau Pangkor, an island just off the west coast town of Lumut. After a bus-bus-ferry-taxi ride taking nearly the whole day we pulled up in Pangkor along with a million other Malay & Chinese holidaymakers and were surprised to see a million also leaving the island presumably after just coming for a day trip. We'd planned this part of our trip quite badly in our eagerness to come here and had arrived on Chinese New Year Day, not a good time to go anywhere it seems. As soon as we'd got dumped by one of the cool pink minibuses in Teluk Nipan, the main town on the island, our first attempts at finding a room where in vain. Everywhere seemed either full or those ... read more

Our flight from Melbourne went without a hitch.. well almost, if you don't count the lady in front of us on the escalator to the plane getting her sari stuck in the mechanics, falling over then causing a backlog as everyone else on the escalator behind her (including us) fell on top of each other in a heap at the bottom.. quite funny and thankfully noone was hurt! The flight was probably our best yet, we enjoyed great views of Australia as we flew over it, a beautiful sunset and Quantas have to be the top airline for their service and what you get .... at the beginning of the flight we all got a little card which listed the timetable of events during the flight plus the food we would receive for our 2 meals! ... read more

Sophie had last been to Bundaberg on her previous visit to Australia in 2004 when Debbie & Rich had just moved into their new house. Since then Debbie (Sophie's friend from the UK) had been keeping Sophie up to date with the 'rennos' on the house and we were both looking forward to seeing what had been done, catching up with the new family member and swimming in that pool that had been promised to be in situ for the next visit! Debbie picked us up from the coach station on the 23rd December after our 16 hour journey from Mission Beach and we were very excited at the prospect of spending a few weeks in the luxury of a 'proper' house. From the moment we got into the house we were made to feel right ... read more

We arrived in Alice Springs and were a bit disappointed that we'd left Sydney in glorious sunshine and arrived in the Red Centre where it was pouring down with rain.. we thought it wasn't supposed to rain in the desert! We had our 3 day Uluru trip booked for the following day so spent the afternoon sheltering from the rain, exploring Alice Springs town centre (not really that much to explore) and preparing ourselves for a very early start of 5am the next day. We got up with no problem the next morning and were very excited to be going to explore the centre of Australia along with the other 22 people in our group and Mark our guide. Off we headed to Kings Canyon, the first stop for our journey into the red desert. On ... read more

Keen to do some more walking after our experiences in Abel Tasman we headed from the very West of the South Island at Greymouth then to the centre and Arthurs Pass National Park. The drive there yet again was a very scenic one especially when you travel through the actual pass itself and the enormous viaduct that was built to make access across the island much easier. At the viewpoint overlooking the viaduct we had our first Kea experience, these are large parrots that live in the snowy higher ground around the South Island. They are very inquisitive and cheeky and as soon as you turn your back on them they will be on your car trying to pull over whatever they can lay their beaks on... aerials, window rubber surrounds, windscreen wipers etc so you ... read more