The Mieran s

This year along with Brianna’s best fiend Grace and our new caravan “Winnie”, we decided to take an extended Easter break and see some of Central Western Queensland. The first day saw us leaving home at 5am to do the longest leg of the trip, from home to Charleville a total of 620km. We had planned on getting to Charleville to visit the Cosmos centre to go star gazing, but because of the rain, that was cancelled. The next morning we woke to a cold and showery morning. As we couldn’t go star gazing the night before we visited the Cosmos Centre this morning. The centre is well worth a visit with interactive displays and an informative movie and talk about our solar system, Sophie loved that she got to hold several different types of ... read more

By midday we had finished seeing everything we had wanted to see in Katherine and started the long 5 hour trip to Kununurra. Kununurra is situated just over the border into WA and is the East Kimberley district. The scenery is pretty boring until about 10km before Victoria River, at this point the landscape changes from flat to tall red escarpments everywhere, at this stage the scenery is similar to what you would have seen in the movie ‘Australia”. When crossing into Western Australia, there is a quarantine site on the border, we could not take any fresh fruits, vegetable, potatoes, soil, plants flowers and about a dozen other things, due to the possibility of new diseases and fruit fly getting introduced to WA, as we had just stocked up on fruit and vegies in Katherine, ... read more

We picked up the motor home this morning, it was a bit bigger than we thought it would be. There was an instructional video to watch to show you where all of the important things were. The first thing they showed was the driver saying in Australia the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and we drive on the left hand side of the road. We had a bit of a laugh at that. With all of the paper work sorted out we set off to Kakadu. As often happens with us and caravans, 10 k’s down the road, something fell off, nothing major, just one of the rear panels of the motor home, but we did have to turn around and go back to Britz for a repair. 10 mins and ... read more

Today we decided to take a wetlands cruise and a jumping croc show. The wetlands cruise we did at Corroboree Billabong. This Billabong is part of the Mary River wetlands which is full of birdlife and has the largest concentration of Saltwater crocodiles in the world. We had already purchased our tickets and were onboard the boat before we found this out. This cruise was in the lower budget price range at $90 for a family which we thought was pretty good. It was a very beautiful spot and the commentary was very informative. They also gave a safety warning regarding behaviour on the boat and the fact that falling in the water would almost certainly end in tragedy within a few seconds. This was very timely as a croc surfaced only metres from the boat. ... read more

We caught an Easy Jet flight out of Venice bound for London, arriving at Gatwick airport 2 hours later. To get to our Hotel in Notting Hill, we had the choice of rail or road as the mode of transport. Option 1 was train … cost, approx 17 pounds each. Option 2 was 2 brand new Mercedes Benz and drivers … cost, 15 pounds each. It wasn’t long before 2 new Mercedes Benz pulled up at the hotel with us inside. The accommodation we had chosen in London was named “Hotel Blue Bells”. Ahhh, bluebell covered rolling hills and blue sky……not quite….. We had read lots and lots of bad reviews about this hotel, mainly that it is situated above Notting Hill subway line, and that the building shakes during the subway hours. We are confirming ... read more