I am 25. It blows. OK, well it is not that bad, but really feeling like I will be as old as my dad soon (sorry pops) and would so much rather be 18 again. The day started off fairly badly. It is the first time ever that I thought I would be guaranteed sunshine on my birthday - I am in bloody Queensland for gods sake. Wrong. I woke up to thundering rain on the window. Great. This was not made any easier by mum ringing with tales of 36 degree heatwaves for weeks on end in London. Not fair. [View Full Entry]

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The furthest North you can travel in a conventional vehicle up the East coast of Australia is Cape Tribulation. North of here is 4 days of rugged 4WD track to Cape York - the very tip of Queensland. Cape Trib' is unique in that it is the only place on Earth where two World Heritage sites meet - the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Jungle to coral in one stride. This is also the wettest area in Australia, perhaps even the world some years. Last week they had the annual UK rainfall in just a couple of days causing [View Full Entry]

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It was time to get rugged and outdoorsy again. So, we went bush. I have never ridden a horse before, always being more of a GI Joe kind of a little girl than a My Little Pony one. Time for a change though. I am nearly 25 and it is time to grow up. Riding a horse is a right of passage for all those having two X chromosomes. Everyone has ridden a horse, therefore so shall I.... Myella Farmstay here we come! BIG mistake. After catching bedbugs in quite possibly THE worst hostel yet we found ourselves in Rockhampton, the [View Full Entry]

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Sailing the Whitsundays is on every backpackers itinery. The Whitsunday Islands are a group of about 90 islands lieing off the coast. The blue green waterways surrounding these islands are marine park and fall within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. The boats leave from Airlie Beach which is kind of like Magaluf of Australia. Wet T-shirt competitions, naked jello wrestling and enough puking on the street to make us feel like old age fogies. We were not disappointed in the grottiness of our hostel either. After arriving from the greyhound at 3am we rocked up to rest our wiery [View Full Entry]

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Here we are in 1770, the only town to have a name that's a number...FACT! The town derives its name from being the place where Captain James Cook first came ashore in 1770 (after Botany Bay in Sydney) in what is now the state of Queensland. Pretty cool eh? And its also a great opportunity for some HILARIOUS conversations. Observe.. 'I went surfing in 1770' 'Crikey, that's a long time ago. You should try it again sometime' It is definitely mine and Lara's favourite place on the East coast to date. A lot more sedate than Noosa or Byron, with the [View Full Entry]

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Sharks again? Nope..this is the main rule when dealing with Dingo Safety. We have made it to Fraser Island, home to Australia's most purebred dingo's. So far the East coast has kind of left us lacking in excitement. The surf is always good but it is just same same in every town. Crawling with all the flashpackers (our new word for fancy backbackers who bring heels and other fancy things) it is a bit uninteresting. So, we hopped over to Fraser in hope of an adventure. It is the first of our last 3 big ticket items in this trip and [View Full Entry]

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You cannot come to the land downunder without learning to surf, can you? According to Andrew, yes. Lara says nope but a few days later Lara was surprised by Andrew booking us on a 5 day Surf Camp. After getting a bit of a taste in Broome it was only right to do it properly. So, on our final leg up the coast we rocked up at Crescent Head, one of Australia's top longboard surf breaks, and enrolled in Surf camp. Out in the middle of nowhere this is a purpose built surf shack full of surfer dudes living the bohemian [View Full Entry]

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Could it be that we are nearly up to date with the blogs...surely not. We are in Sydney right now and are writing about something which happened only a matter of days ago. Miracle. We cop a lot of flack for not updating our blogs but there are reasons..we are travelling you numpties. To write we have to do stuff. If we are doing stuff we can't always be writing. You get me? That and the fact that every blog you read can take up to 10 hours to produce so less of the whining dudes.... So, what brings us to [View Full Entry]

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Just a few more pictures of our road trip. [View Full Entry]

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Another day, another camper. This is the big one though. A whole state to cover, all the way from Perth to Broome. No worries! Western Australia was never part of the plan but with things not panning out how we had thought they would do we decided why not. Andrew was desperate to see the West Coast and with more hours of sunshine than any other place in Australia (they all say that though), and precious little rain (erm....right.....see later!) Lara thought why not too. WA makes up nearly a third of the continent. Occupying 2.5 million square kilometres it is [View Full Entry]

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