What are the chances that we would decide to rock on up to Sydney in the worst possible week of the last ten years. Seriously, our timing could not have been more disastrous if we tried. After Byron we did our last stretch of driving, staying overnight in a place called Forster (nothing to report there) and we set off early the next morning to get Madge back in Sydney before our 3pm deadline. Only problem was, the APEC conference was getting under way, and APEC is seems, stand for SHUTDOWN Bush style. Actually it stands for Asia Pacific Really Important [View Full Entry]

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God, I am so far behind. I realise I have been neglecting the blog for quite some time. Shockin, shockin behaviour altogether. You'd swear I'd run off with Jason Donovan or something. So, where were we? Hmmmmm. Brisbane last stop I think.....well after Brisbane we just had a few more stops to make before hitting Sydney - and more to the point we only had a limited amount of time to get Madge back to Travellers Auto Shack or whatever it's called. So the next major stop was Surfer's Paradise. The legendary Margaret Meade has been known to say that Dunleer [View Full Entry]

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I had thought, in my ignorance, that due to the fact that ourselves and Madge were sticking strictly to the coast from here on in, there would actually be things to see along the way. Apparently not. After leaving Airlie Beach we passed through ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for two whole days. And I mean N-AH-THING. No towns or even petrol stations for hours, and when we did stop for fuel, you'd swear we were the first outsiders the locals had seen since the dawn of the new millenium. Strange, very strange. We stopped in Rockhampton for a night along the way, which [View Full Entry]

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When you say you're going to be sailing around the Whitsunday Islands for a few days, it all sounds rather grand doesn't it? Images of lounging around on deck with the sun bouncing off your shoulders, and a boat made of varnished wood spring to mind. You can imagine our surprise then, when we were shown to our sleeping quarters onboard our "Yacht" - quarters is probably a bit of an exaggeration, and you certainly couldn't have called it a cabin. No no. And our hopes had been so high when the woman who booked the trip nodded encouragingly when we [View Full Entry]

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Right then, time for some serious sightseeing. Enough of all that socialising in Cairns and the rainforest and what not, it's time to put Madge to the test and cover some serious Queensland kilometres...that's the plan anyway. Cairns proved to be yet another difficult location to say goodbye to, although I was beginning to get the feeling that the same people could start popping up where you least want them - it's a small place, and a lot of backpackers seem to get trapped in the Cairns timewarp! So armed with a number of maps (oh can't you imagine how much [View Full Entry]

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We've got ourselves a set of wheels!! For the next three and a half weeks Madge (the station wagon) is going to get us all the way down the East coast to Sydney. She's not the most beautiful vehicle I have ever seen, but we love her none the less. She's kinda, eh, oversized. Not BIG or anything, just broad. And long. AND WE LOVE HER. She doesn't come cheap, mind you, but we're hoping she's going to get us a long way. We had to go for a bit of a jaunt (on foot) to meet Madge for the first [View Full Entry]

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"Touchdown in the land of the Kanga-roos", so goes Sibby's song, which means - we're here!! Australia, we have arrived. The second leg has officially started. You would think that we had done enough hard travelling in Asia, and to be honest I thought by arriving in Singapore I would have said goodbye to that for a while, but oooooooh no, not a hope matey. We were supposed to be flying with Quantas, direct to Cairns. But when we arrived in the airport we were told the not-so-happy news that we were flying with Jetstar (Aussie answer to Ryanair) VIA Darwin. [View Full Entry]

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Well it's safe to say Phuket lived up to ALL of our expectations - it is a dirty, rotten, nasty place. There is surely a limit to how many times one should have to see a 70 year old man (generally balding, with a substantial paunch) with a little Thai girl young enough to be his great grandaughter. We saw a bit of it on the islands, but Phuket is clearly the sex tourism capital of South East Asia (actually apparently Pattaya in mainland Thailand is worse, so I can only imagine how stomach churning it must be). The thing that [View Full Entry]

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AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! Someone from above is trying to sabotage my blog! So no, I haven't been slacking off......the entire travelblog website went into some sort of meltdown there for a week or so and I wasn't able to access anything - I can now, but I've lost a couple of my blog entries and some photos. Not as bad as I was expecting, but still very annoying. For now it's back up and running, so hopefully there'll be no more problems...would a day of mourning for what's been lost seem excessive???? [View Full Entry]

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So there I was, trying for the third time to ring my mammy from an Internet cafe on Ko Phi Phi, when I noticed there was some sort of siren going off from the direction of the port. There was an annoucement in Thai being repeated again and again, but being the sort of person who ignores smoke alarms until I actually see some flames, I didn't think anything of it. That was until I noticed some locals running - yes running - by outside. There was only one other person in the cafe - the owner - and I looked [View Full Entry]

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