It's been a while, so we thought we'd let you know what we'v been upto since we left hervey bay!! We made it upto airlie beach and arrived at 6am so we spent the day umming and arring whether or not to fork out the money and go on one of the sailing trips. The next day we were sat at the harbour waiting to board a classic sailing schooner with another 12 people for a 2day/2night trip around the whitsundays. It turned out to be an interesting trip as it was the first time the skipper & deckhand had worked together, and the deckhand seemingly spoke not so fluent english and had little sailing experience!!! which at times proved quite funny,especially when he nearly went overboard trying to catch the mooring :-) The weather wasn't ... read more

We arrived in Sydney around lunch time on the saturday (7th) and after getting some info of what was going on in the city we tried find uot how to get to Gorden the suburb in which the family who had so kindly offered us a place to stay lived! The trains weren't running on the north shore line so we had to swap to a bus but it all made sense eventually and we made it to gorden where we had a friendly welcome from Johnson family (sue, mark,2kids, 3 terriers, 1 great dane, 2 ferrets, 1 mouse and 2 horses, all friendly and welcoming maybe bar the ferrets who loved to bite your ankles!!!) Our first day in sydney was a soggy one but we had a wonder around the city and took in ... read more

After a long bus journey from adelaide we arrived into ballarat and caught another bus out to the Ballarat grammar school. upon our arrival we were greeted by our host "Peter" and shown around our lodgings. From our previous conversations with peter we'd figured he was a nice guy but the warmth and welcome we received from him and the entire school was amazing, for the duration of our stay we had a small flat to ourselves which gave us the chance to settle down with a few home comforts. In our first few days at ballarat we were introduced to the class we'd be taking on camp and sat in on a few of their lessons which helped us get to know them and pick up a few names,we were also introduced to so many ... read more

Well we are now finally in Oz, the journey here sounded pretty simple. We were due to leave yogya at 8am for our flight to jakarta, so we caught a bus to the airport around 6 only to find out once we'd checked in that our flight was now not leaving till 10.20am. things were not looking good for arriving into singapore around midday as we'd hoped! We did leave around half ten and the flight to jakarta took about 1 and a half hrs. however our (9.30am) flight to batam now had four guys underneath it weilding a big spanner!! We were told it wouldn't be leaving until 1pm. At 12.50 there was a big crowd around the check in desk and we managed to work out that we now wouldn,t be leaving till 3pm. ... read more

So our travels through indonesia continue!! Our trip from Flores to lombok was an interesting one! it took us 33hours! we left flores at 9am by ferry for the 8 hour trip to sape on Sumbawa from where we got on a bus for 2 hours to bima where we then had to wait and hour for the next bus, an overnight affair which should have taken us to Mataram in west Lombok for 8am however all started to go wrong about 1am!! the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere for over an hour with lots of tools going underneath. at bout 2 am we were woken by everyone getting off the bus and all that was shouted at us when i went to see what was happening was Sir yes sir or indonesian we ... read more