Merry Christmas from Melbourne!!

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We know it’s been a while but here is the latest blog since Hervey Bay, Australia! We left Hervey Bay for Brisbane on a very wet and miserable day, our intentions were to find a place in the city but we came across a ‘minor’ obstacle, our beloved Toyato Yaris!

Unfortunately, looking at the way we are travelling around Australia we think we have chosen wrongly. We are limited in the cities as most of the campsites are in the suburban areas! Sleeping in the car was frustrating for the pair of us due to the lack of sleep we were getting as the car is one of the smallest on the market! We drove straight through Brisbane and out the other side, only getting a glimpse of some of the sights that the city has to offer. Our main reason for this was because parking was so expensive and again there were no campsites around the landmarks. We stopped at a showgrounds in a place near Beerwah which was minutes down the road from the Australian Zoo, famously known as the home of the crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin! The Zoo was fantastic with plenty of opportunities to get up close to all the animals and see creatures you wouldn’t get to see anywhere else (and some you wished you would never get close to in the outback).

The highlights of the Zoo were the Kangaroos, where we got up close with them as they roamed freely within a park! The croc show was fascinating as well, with the trainers showing us how powerful and lightening quick the crocodiles can be! The show also featured tropical birds and elephants, who also flaunted their skills they had adapted! The koalas were great to see, although they did remind us of lazy old men as they just seemed to sleep all the time. Of course with it being the home of the crocodile hunter, a huge memorial statue was created in his honour entirely dedicated to the work he had done with the animals.

Once finished at the zoo we headed off towards the Gold Coast, in the hope it would give us the opportunity to pitch camp and let us explore our location. Our first night started to become a disaster as it was heading towards us sleeping in our car again UNTIL we gave in and coughed up for a nice motel room for the night! Chris spoke with his parents, who provided the parental advice that we both needed and also told us to sit down and get a plan of action sorted, which is exactly what we did! We now feel much better and we book places before we set off. We were so used to turning up to hotels in Asia and getting a decent room for the night but you definitely need to book in advance in Oz. In the morning, we went to a campsite called Treasure Island for five nights, which was very family oriented but gave us chance to top up our tans by the pools and recharge our empty batteries!

The number one reason for coming to the Gold Coast was to fulfil a childhood dream that Natalie (and secretly Chris) had wanted to do which was swimming with Dolphins! Sea World was a short drive away and our time in the pool with them was unforgettable, we loved every minute of it! They swam up close to us, posed for a picture and we even had a water fight with them! They’re fantastic animals to watch and have plenty of tricks up there fins! We had a DVD sent home of our time here so some of you may have seen how uncontrollably giddy Natalie became! Once we had finished with the Dolphins we decided we wanted to see some more so we ran over to the dolphin show (which we watched twice) and enjoyed them some more!

Also at Sea World was a theme park and the largest aquarium either of us have seen, full of familiar faces from the Great Barrier Reef and a few big sharks too!

Fully recharged we headed to Sydney, this consisted of a sleep in the car at the side of a road in between but this was impossible to avoid with Australia being such a massive country!

Sydney is actually a very nice city, we stayed just outside and got the train into the city everyday. We saw the two iconic symbols of Sydney, the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House and both were spectacular! They were so spectacular that we spent a sunny day on the Royal Botanic Gardens with these as the backdrop as we sipped a bottle of rose wine!

The weather was very cold for the week we spent in Sydney and it was apparently the coldest December in 80 years….great timing on our behalf. We bought a souvenir jacket each to keep our bodies warm during the night but someone had cold feet as well! $135 later Natalie had a new pair of Ugg boots with her reason being that “You can’t come to Australia and not buy a pair of Uggs”.

After we had achieved keeping warm we had the problem of keeping dry! Our tent poles had snapped right in the middle and it went from looking like a three man tent to a T pee!

We headed to Melbourne looking forward to a comfy bed at the Victoria Hotel which was a Christmas present from Natalie’s parents, until that day we had 10 hours of driving and a night in a deserted field with an Australian hippy! He was harmless but very strange and could talk for Australia! Once the hippy had finished rambling on about his travels around Europe we drove to our hotel ready for Christmas! We checked in and then looked around Melbourne, including the Cricket ground where the India vs. Australia test match is taking place today (Boxing Day). At the ground we saw the India side training outside, which would have been AWESOME…..if we knew who any of them were! Christmas Eve night we spent sat at Federation Square with the locals watching what seemed to be the traditional Christmas Eve TV Programme where we were live on Australian TV as a HUMAN CHRISTMAS TREE! Not just us but we were involved! Christmas Day was spent Skyping the family and also dodging tennis ball sized hail stones that were flying through the skies of Melbourne (many windows were smashed). Today we have done some shopping in the sales and tomorrow we will be setting off for Adelaide with another horrible stop over in between!



We hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and has a great new year!

We are sad that we can’t be with our families this year but we will be home before you know it and making up for the Christmas dinner that we didn’t have!



Pictures to come when we have a faster computer

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