Well, I am exhausted! On leaving Byron Bay I went on to "Surf Camp," where I attempted to surf, I didn't get very far though, everytime I tried to kneel (standing was going to be far too difficult!) I would succeed for a short while but as soon as I got confident I would fall off into the water, not overly pleasant! No worries though, the next day we did the massive drive to Sydney. On arrival I checked in quickly, found my friend Anna and went to walk the Harbour Bridge. It gave us a nice view of the city. It wasn't too difficult but we were still very tired afterwards! Today we attempted to "do" the rest of Syndey and I feel we managed it! First thing we got the bus to Bondi Beach ... read more

After seeing the sunrise I caught my bus to Brisbane. I pottered around for a bit then caught a train back up north to a town called Caboolture to see Kelli, who I met when I was in Canada. I found her hard at work and waited a couple of minutes for her to finish. We set out to drive even further up north to Caloundra (all this going down and up was the best option I promise!) to where Kelli was house sitting. During the drive I said that I wanted to see more kangeroos in the wild, so she drove me to some! There were about 20+ just hanging out on the grass by the sea. I got so excited but Kelli was convinced they would attack us with their sharp claws. We were ... read more

After the slight anticlimax of an afternoon doing washing after seeing the Whitsundays, I went out with some of the passengers and crew from "Whitsunday Magic". We sat by the lagoon in Airlie Beach and a good time was had by all. I didn't stay too late though as I had a big day of travelling ahead of me... We left Airlie Beach around 7am and didn't arrive into Kroombit Cattle Station until the early evening, what a drive! We did manage to play lawn balls and see a few kangeroos on the way though. On arrival we painted our faces and sprayed our hair bright colours purely for the fun of it, it seemed. We sat down to a cooked meal - always welcome, and spent most of the evening trying out the mechanical bull. ... read more

I arrived in Cairns on Thursday morning. To give you an idea of the weather please imagine being in a really hot and humid green house, I didn't realise how tropical it would be! At first I spent some time hopping from air conditioned place to air conditioned place! The thing I found most exciting about Cairns were the bats, although perhaps not everyone's favourite. I was walking into the main part of town from my hostel when I heard what I thought were noisy birds. On closer inspection it turned out that several enormous trees were full of hundreds of bats who were all quite happily hanging upside down in the sunshine! In the evening it started bucketing it down with rain, I thought Australia was in a drought but apparently not in the north, ... read more

This is written still from Birmingham I'm afraid, I'm just working out how to use this blog site! I set off for Australia on Monday night, it's not really set in yet, but I'm sure it will when I get on the plane :-)... read more