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Published: January 17th 2009
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Well, here we are in Townsville on our day before last in Australia and we have to admit that we are actually really looking forward to our flight out of here...! We are flying tonight from Townsville to Brisbane and tomorrow lunch time we will be flying to Singapore. We should probably start from the beginning: we arrived in Sydney on the 28th December and were looking forward to spending New Year there and to see for ourselves what the fuss is all about regarding the fireworks display. We got to Sydney having not even thought about the fact that the choice of accommodation may be limited due to the holidays and ended up having to stay 15 km out of the city in a suburban town called Brighton-le-Sand. So we worked out how to use the transports system and had a few days to explore the city. We saw the usual Sydney sights i.e. the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the bay, etc.. and went on one or two ferries to some other parts of the city. We didn't go in the sea however as the local beaches seem to be an all-you-can-eat buffet for sharks at this time of
the year! We were also scared of sitting in parks and benches as Sydney is well-known for the deadly funnel-web and red-back spiders... The city was nevertheless rather pleasant but Jim wasn't madly impressed with it all and remembers Sydney mainly for one thing: the fruit bats hanging upside down (as you would expect!) in the trees of the botanical garden. Then came the night of New Year's Eve, apparently something like 2 million people were expected in the city centre for the much awaited fireworks so we knew it was going to be busy but we still thought it was funny how the information centre was advising people to not try to get to the Circular Quay/Opera House area unless you were planning on camping there the night before but to consider alternative viewing points probably to prevent people getting trampled. So how was THE night? Well, it was ok, the fireworks were really good but to be honest you would hope they were as they apparently take 15 months planning and preparation and cost God knows how many millions. We managed to find a spot that wasn't too crowded and found the people around us quite entertaining, some
were getting very excited and emotional to the point that we thought they were about to wet themselves... maybe it was just too much champagne! The way back to our suburb went ok considering there were millions of people trying to get home at the same time as we were, the streets of Sydney were transformed into rivers of people.
On January 1st, we took a train to Brisbane as it seemed like a good way to travel and was actually cheaper than the Greyhound bus. We later found out why: first, the train trip is no quicker than the bus and second the bus is fairly comfortable, clean, safe and quiet! Yes, we had embarked on the train journey from hell: our carriage filled up with a family of about 8 kids and their can't-be-bothered mothers (as long as they were bothering somebody else they were happy!). Needless to say that the 14 hours felt really long and after a sleepless night we arrived in Brisbane at 5.00am and seriously thought about going straight to the airport and begging to get onto the next plane to Singapore or anywhere else. That was probably a bit extreme but we had
been encountered so many chavs (l'equivalent d'un 'chav' en francais serait quelque chose entre beauf et racaille) since we had arrived in Sydney that we thought we couldn't take anymore. But after a cup of coffee we decided that it would be silly to leave before we had even seen a duck-billed platypus (ornithorynque en francais) ! We spent a few days in Brisbane and went to a few wildlife parks including the famous Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin's place. We got to see some cute koalas, some jumpy kangaroos and some scary snakes and crocodiles. From Brisbane we then took a cheap flight to Townsville and went to the nearby island, Magnetic Island, well it wasn't magnetic enough to make us want to stay but it was alright for 2 days. After that we took a bus to Mission Beach and stayed in what originally appeared to be a rather charming jungle lodge very appropriately called The Treehouse... That was possibly the worst night of my life! A massive tarantula-type spider fell from the ceiling onto a glass less than a metre away from us, it was horrible with its big fury legs! A German guy who was working there
managed to catch it and took it downstairs... but our room was downstairs! I asked him where he had put the spider and he said that he had put it somewhere in the plants. That was it for me, I was convinced that the place was now infested with these creatures and that they could fall on my head at any time. We saw another two smaller ones around the place that night and needless to say I had a sleepless night even after Jim had secured the room as best he could with our towels blocking the gaps in the door. Anyway, I got over it and we went rafting the next day down the Tully river in the rainforest, rated the best rafting experience in Australia. It was quite good fun until our guide decided to make us go down a rapid all piled on top of each other and Jim got badly crushed by one of our Irish raft mates who was a nice but rather large lady, well, at least it made our guide laugh!
From there we went to Cairns where we were until this morning. We got there just in time for cyclone Charlotte
and were therefore forced to play Scrabble in our hotel room for 2 days waiting for the torrential downpours to stop before we could visit the reef. We took a boat trip yesterday to go diving and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef at spots called Saxon and Hastings. It was good but sadly not as impressive as it could be, whether it was due to the latest storm or whether we were not at the best site, we're not sure but still it was an enjoyable day and the one and only time we went into the sea as it is Box jelly fish season and you need to wear a full suit to go in the water.
So Australia was nice enough but we would not want to come back now we have seen it (I know we only saw a small part but it was enough for us!) and we are definitely ready for the next part of our trip: Asia, here we come!
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