I come from a land down under

---

We flew into Brisbane after a long and sleepless night flight from Singapore and proceeded to wait for several hours for our free pickup from the backpackers that we had booked into. Asking around at the airport we discovered that this was not uncommon with the backpackers we were staying in.
Moreton bay was a lovely little sailing spot just outside Brisbane. Linz took advantage of the free 'sailing' on offer the afternoon of our arrival. This really entailed sitting on a 52 foot yaught and drinking all afternoon. It also gave her her first look at the Australian bottle shop. Surely these are an alcoholics dream and they even have drive through alcohol shops (which seems a bit of a dangerous thing to me).
To cater for the laziest of drinkers you can buy pretty much any spirit you like pre-mixed with coke or lemonade (cutting down on valuable drinking time). Bundy (bundaberg rum and coke) is horribly drinkable.
Most of the rest of our time in Brisbane was spent looking at vans for sale. Backpackers really don't know anything about vehicles, that is for sure. We saw so many wrecks it was quite depressing (we were even asked by one set of would be sellers why we were getting under the vehicle to check the exhaust!). Eventually we settled on a less-than-perfect-but-better-than-everything-else 1991 Nissan Nomad. Its actually a mini-bus but the seats go flat(ish) to sleep on. Once precuring our transportation we high-tailed it down to Byron Bay.
Byron was nice enough but too cold this time of year to do any surfing. We stuck around for a bit and cleaned the van up, bought up some camping necessities and met our first grey haired nomad. For those that don't know these are fourty-odd year old plus chaps that tour around the camp-sites of Australia in large camper vans. They are always keen to impart their knowledge on all things Australian.
After a few nights we headed south to the even colder climes of Sydney, staying in the free campsites detailed in the Camps 4 book.
A whistle stop view of Sydney (we'll be back there later in the year) to see the opera house and the harbour bridge was followed by a trip down to, the much under-rated, Canberra.
Whilst in Canberra we took the obligatory tour around the parliament building and a trip to the war memorial. The latter was more of a huge war museum (all be it a free one) including sections detailing Australia's involvement in the second world war and vietnam. Most chilling for us was the tale of the Sandakan death marches (where the Japanese forced vastly under-nourished Aussie prisoners of war to march across Borneo, shooting any that collapsed, only six prisoners surviving in the end). This was most resonant as we were there a month or two ago.
We left Canberra and headed still further south to the snowy mountains for a few days.
Staying in Jindabyne, which is a feeder town for the ski resorts of Thredbo and Perisher Blue, we awaited the start of the ski season. There wasn't a lot of snow but we had a good day at Thredbo on our 20 pound snow boards (it was cheaper to buy than to rent!).
With both our bodies still intact (a major worry for me given last year's pain in the back) we headed over to Victoria and Mount Hotham, which had loads more snow. We spent a day boarding on the few runs they had open in a near blizzard. Luckily we had found some snow chains in Jindabyne (for $10!!) so we were able to drive in and out of the national park. Putting the things on and getting them off was an education to be sure.
Next up we'll be heading West towards Melbourne (where we've been invited to stay by a lady we met on the truck in Africa) before finally finding a bit more warmth in the north.

Take care everyone and we'll blog once we find affordable internet again (could be some time).

Linz and Bri

---