In a bid to step off the east coast backpacker travellator for a few days I hired a car and headed south from Airlie in a little blue speed mobile, down to places where neither Greyhound nor Oz Experience buses go ;0) First stop was Cape Hillsborough and in keeping with my backpacker free plan I upgraded to a cabin.... en-suite bathroom, my own kitchenette, sole control of the TV remote and only me sleeping in the room... pure heaven! There are a couple of short walks to do here - the best took @ 2hours and saw me walking out to Andrews Point. A couple of view points along the way gave great views back along the beach and out to Wedge Island, but the highlight was definitely the butterflies - for most of the ... read more

Having read almost every brochure about trips to the Great Barrier reef whilst I was in Cairns I felt just about ready to open my own travel shop..... to compete with the other 5000000 of them that seem to line the streets of Cairns. There are heaps of reef trips on offer here to suit all budgets and schedules - in the end I opted to do one from Port Douglas with a company called Haba who were great. The day started at about 6.45am with a drive up to Port Douglas, this time in the sunshine and with a bit of Kangaroo spotting on the way! A couple of American's were on the bus too along with another young English guy, David, that I ended up hanging out with for the rest of the day.... ... read more

The first stop on my whirlwind east coast road trip was Cairns... and as I stepped of the plane to blue sky and sunshine I found life already felt a world away from work and Sydney. I had an afternoon to pass in the 'city' before hitting the road and spent most of it just wondering around. With a population of just 140,000 or so I'd hesitate to call Cairns a 'city', indeed walking round the city centre seemed to take all of about 20mins.... assuming of course you didn't get lured into one of the 3 zillion travel agents that occupy the centre... each offering the same tours as the next but with an occasional added twist to what freebies they might throw in. Having done the loop a couple of times I headed off ... read more

I'd had various plans to go away over the Easter break, four days off work seeming to be the perfect excuse to jump on a plane and escape the city, but somehow things happened, time eluded me and I never quite got round to booking a ticket. So Easter in Sydney it was! As it turned out most of my flatmates were around too and with none of us being overly enthralled about the idea of four days in town we hired a car and went off on a couple of day trips out together. Our first one took us a few hours west to the Blue Mountains, a range named after the bluish tinge it takes on when viewed from a distance and which results from the volatile oils released by the Eucalyptus forests. I've ... read more

With the exception of my Xmas trip up to Port Stephens I'd managed to spend 4 months in Sydney without ever going past the city limits ... in fact it was unusual for me to venture out of the centre. All a rather sorry state of affairs so I figured it was definitely time for another mini road trip. As it happened Pam was up for an adventure too so we planned to hire a car and head south... somewhere. We opted for the 'winging it' method as far as accommodation went, partly because we were to busy at work to sort anything out and partly because that's too much planning for me, but Pam booked the car and as we'd both organised to bunk off work early the idea was to meet at the car ... read more