All reunited and together again, the mood was positive and all were looking forward to the next adventure. For Lisa, Em and myself it meant a flight from Brisbane up the coast to Airlie Beach to catch our boat around the Whitsunday Islands. For Dunc it meant choosing which position in the garden he was to resume, trying to catch the most amount of rays. It was very extreme of him, but in end he chose the face down, park the bike option. Which the next door neighbour was very happy about as it gave him a new place to put [View Full Entry]

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After our decision to split the group for a couple of days it was left to Dunc and I to experience a beautiful weekend of sport. Splitting the group was similar to when the Fellowship of the Ring had to go their separate ways. The only difference is that Lisa is a couple of inches shorter than the dwarf, my hair is curlier than Frodo, Em’s has more wisdom than Gandalf and Dunc looks like an Ork. It took an hour up the motorway to drop off the girls at Brisbane station, we said our goodbyes and then back to Southport. [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so we were on our own and on an adventure. The boys were doing boy things. We had booked ourselves onto a 3 day, 2 night, Fraser Island self drive camping trip. It was organised through a backpackers hostel called ‘Palace’. Now, I was a little sceptical about the whole hostel thing. So far, we used them out of necessity only, now we were arranging a whole trip through them. I had visions of us being surrounded by 18 yr old gap year students with no idea, just on a mission to get as wasted as possible - well maybe [View Full Entry]

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So we left the campsite the next morning after realising that the motor home rental company had no intention of fixing our lights on a Sunday, and it was Mother’s Day for them, and it’s any excuse to hit the beers early. So we accepted that we would stop at a repair shop in Ballina the next morning. In the meantime, the sun was shining and we could still get light if we had hook up, so we booked into Broken Head campsite. It was actually a beautiful little place, on the edge of the nature reserve, and also right on [View Full Entry]

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We had to head off in the morning as Dunc had managed to get some Stereophonics concert tickets. They were playing in Brisbane and we had managed to secure four. The Phonics are favourites of ours…… and Lisa came along too. She is into that “Boom, Boom” rubbish, and mixed with a dodgy educational past means that she can tell a story or two. The concert didn’t start well, not only were the doors opened one and a half hours late but during the wait ‘Wheaters’ managed to pull a ‘whitey’. The explanation was that she had consumed a dodgy Vegg [View Full Entry]

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Well that’s not what they thought at the Emirates check in desk when they saw him….. Anyway Lisa and Duncan had made it all the way over to Brisbane, after 3 flights and 24 hours of travelling and we were over 1 hour late picking them up! We managed to get stuck in traffic not unlike the M25 on a Monday morning, as we headed the 100km up the M1 to Brisbane airport in the early hours. Despite Duncan’s 2 day hangover they were in good spirits and it was great to see them. The sun was shining and they were [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so now we had the van and we were truckin’. What a feeling….wind in your hair… moaning in your ears. We had just 7 days to get to Brisbane in order to meet Duncan and Lisa at the airport. That was nearly 1000km to cover, but to try and enjoying exploring the coastline too. We left Penrith on Monday afternoon stopping for supplies at Woolworths - yes, it’s kind of like Asda over here, only the bread is not as good and everything is the same price or more expensive than home. Oh, and of course, they don’t sell alcohol [View Full Entry]

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It was a 5 hour flight to Sydney on Jetstar (Qantas’s budget airline). It was an easy flight as we had seats either side of us free, but you know how it is with night flights, decent sleep rarely comes, after dinner and a film there was little time left anyway. But it was definitely one of the flights where you wake up and you have dribbled on your own shoulder. Besides that, we had a rather late one the night before, thanks to Bali Hai and a Balinese Elvis impersonator. So we arrived in Sydney around 7am feeling tired. We [View Full Entry]

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Lombok, what can I say? Just the name of it conjures up mystery and mystique. We had built up an idea of the place before we arrived from fellow travellers; we were given the impression that as the country was strictly Muslim the atmosphere would be repressive and less accepting of tourists. Well it must have been national friendly week as we found it to be the opposite. The people were friendly, helpful and far more understanding than some of the people we had met over the pond in Bali. Even the street sellers took the first no for an [View Full Entry]

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So once again we were back in Kuta and back in room 4 of the Bendesa. It was just a quick stop over on our way to Lombok. Lombok is an island that is in fact larger than Bali lying to its east, but is still relatively untouched by tourism. It is strictly Muslim, rather than Hindu, as in Bali. We had heard it was very beautiful and definitely worth the effort of getting there, but also to be on careful as it could be a bit more dangerous for the naïve Westerner. We could get there the expensive way by [View Full Entry]

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