G'day from Australia!

---

G’day folks! This is our blog entry for Australia, and just to get started, we should probably dispel some popular (English) rumours about the Aussies:

- We didn’t hear anyone saying “Strewth, you rippa!”
- At no point was Oriana referred to as a “Sheila”
- We were not once asked for help in tying a kangaroo down, sport.

Our time in Australia was awesome, but very different from our experiences in Asia, as you might expect. Highlights include South Molle Island, Mon Repos Turtle Sanctuary (Bundaberg), Fraser Island, surfing in Byron Bay, Lamington National Park and Sydney – check it out!

Happy reading, and as always, drop us a line and let us know how you’re doing back home! We miss you all lots!

QUEENSLAND

Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands

We arrived in Cairns after a whirlwind six weeks in South East Asia. Given how much we’d been running around in the previous weeks, we spent almost a week in Cairns to relax a bit, sort ourselves out, and figure out what we were going to see in Australia!

Cairns itself was mega hot and so we spent a couple of afternoons in the lagoon in the town centre - basically a really nice outdoor swimming pool which is always packed with people paddling around and barbecuing meat (Australia’s favourite past-time!) which makes for a great atmosphere.

Whilst in Cairns, we hired a car for the day to see the nearby Atherton Tablelands – the name given to a massive stretch of land which is home to some awesome sights – rainforests, mountains, waterfalls – and some beautiful wildlife too. We visited (amongst other things) Josephine falls, which has a great natural waterslide down the smooth rocks; Milla Milla falls, where Peter Andre filmed the video for whoa-ooah-ooah Mysterious Girl, and where they filmed ‘the’ Timotei ad from years ago; Lake Eachem, where we went on an awesome rainforest walk; and the Cathedral Fig Tree. It might seem strange to go out of your way to see a tree but this was simply amazing – it was more than 800 years old! These types of fig trees actually grow off another ‘host’ tree using vines that wrap around the host and strangle it; eventually the host tree dies living a network on vines and roots that reach down the floor.

We also went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef whilst in Cairns. It’s a pretty expensive hobby but you can’t go that close to the Reef without having a dive! Oriana had been diving before (many years ago) and was already PADI certified, whereas this was my first time trying it out. And this is where I have to confess that I am a big wuss…basically I never got further down than a couple of metres before I started panicking and sucking and blowing on my mouth-piece like some crazy, asthmatic, fear-ridden freak! For anyone else who, like me, isn’t the strongest swimmer, you’ll probably understand that it feels pretty weird to be a couple of metres under water and that once you start panicking, there’s only one direction that you want to head - towards the surface. So that’s what I did…a few times. The instructor fella was very patient and nice about it, but there was nothing I could do to control my irrational reaction and so he had to leave me on the surface so that he could carry on guiding the other beginners who managed to stay down under water without freaking out. Shame on me!

Luckily though, they had snorkelling gear on the boat as well, so I was able to have a look at the Reef’s sights without going too deep – and what wonderful sights they were! We saw tons of colourful tropical fish, turtles, rays, and Oriana was lucky enough to even see a shark! Yes, that’s right, a bloomin’ shark!

To top off that awesome day, our hostel was putting on a barbecue on that evening – the opportunity to have our first taste of kangaroo (not bad at all), emu (probably the best) and crocodile (chicken-fish). Yummy!

The Jucy adventure begins…

After a week of bumming around in Cairns, we finally hit the road in our Jucy campervan! The Jucy was pretty awesome it has to be said. It had everything we needed – a bed, a stove, a fridge, even a mini-DVD player! The main downfall though was its appearance – bright, garish purple and green, with massive ‘Jucy’ logos all over it. It might as well have had “I’m a tourist!” written all over it. But hey, small complaints really!

We spent our first night in Mission Beach where it pretty much rained all night! We hadn’t realised before we got to Oz that January is actually the rainy season in the North of the country! We were lucky enough not to have too much rain whilst we were in Cairns but that was not the case during the first few days on the road! Rain, rain and more rain... And when you think there can’t possibly be any more water in those clouds, it’d rain some more! So, many of our first few days in the campervan were spent driving South to try to get out of the rainy tropics and down towards the middle of the East coast where it rains a bit less.

On our second night (in Alligator Creek, near Townsville), we learnt a valuable lesson – don’t sleep in a campervan in the rainforest with the doors wide open…because you will get munched to pieces by insects! We even had to have a couple of ‘killing sessions’ during the night – we’d close all the windows and doors, switch on the light to attract all the bugs to one place, and then take GREAT pleasure in splatting them all to pieces, leaving stains of our blood all over the place! Honestly, that was one of the worst night’s sleep of both of our lives!

During a brief break in the torrential storms, we visited Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary, near Townsville. Here we hand-fed kangaroos; cuddled a wombat; stroked a koala; watched a guide feed a ma-hoosive, terrifying croc; and saw the elusive cassowary. The cassowary is a huge, odd-looking bird related to the emu and there are only a couple of thousand of them left surviving in the wild. They are freaky – purple in colour, with weird backwards-looking legs, a big rubbery plate on the top of their heads, and they swallow fruit whole by just chucking it back down their gullet!

South Molle Island

Our next stop was Airlie beach, the gateway to the famous Whitsunday islands. The most visited beach on the Whitsundays is Whitehaven, which is meant to be “the most beautiful beach in the world” (so the Aussie tourism board say). Well…whatever! It’s far too pricey to get there, plus as far as we’re concerned the most beautiful beach is not full of tourists! Instead we found a small business in Airlie beach, called Scamper, who organised a boat trip to South Molle island, another of the Whitsundays. They also rent camping equipment and so we decided to go and camp there for a couple of nights. It was so beautiful, and there were only 6 of us in the campsite, it was pretty much our own island for those two nights! We were lucky with the weather too – blazing sunshine for pretty much the whole time!

On South Molle, we went snorkelling (you have to wear a stinger suit or you get munched by jelly fish!). We also embarked on a couple of bushwalks across the island (to a resort on the other side of the island, and to Spion Kop for an awesome lookout across the island and surrounding ocean). On our bushwalks we met a few locals: the Kookaburra (a bird that makes howling sounds like a monkey!), the cockatoo (very rude! It screeches at the top of its voice as soon as it sees you!), the pheasant coucal (“whoop whoop”) and the green tree ants which glue leaves together to make their nest in the tree! Pretty exotic stuff!

Back in Airlie beach after three memorable days on South Molle island, we treated ourselves with a shower (which proved to be a rare amenity in Aussie campsites!) and relaxed by the lagoon. We then drove to Eungella National Park, and stopped by a river to try and spot a platypus. We got lucky – there was one swimming right in front of us! Platypus are actually really small (only about 30cm long), they’re cute and look so prehistoric!

The bad weather is back…

In Eungella National Park, we set up camp in the middle of the clouds. The bad weather was back! The next morning, it was very cloudy again – you couldn’t see more than 20m - so instead of going for a walk in the rainforest as we had originally planned, we decided to head south once again. On our way, we stopped at a local artist’s house, played some didgeridoos and chatted about aboriginal art and the symbols they use in their paintings to depict water holes, fire places, and people. We then drove further down to Rockhampton and spent the night in a free campsite (Calliope Rest area) by a river. But the next day it was pissing it down again! We rushed out of the campsite, afraid to get stuck in there because of the rain chewing up the dirt roads. By that time, needless to say we were getting pretty fed up with the shitty weather!

Turtle nestling in Bundaberg

On our way to Bundaberg, we drove past lots of sugar cane and fruit tree fields. As we approached the little town, we found thousands of fruit bats hanging on the trees by the river, quite a sight! In the evening, we had a pretty amazing experience. We booked a tour at Mon Repos Turtle Sanctuary to watch turtles laying eggs (or ‘nestling’ as they call it) on the beach. We got extremely lucky, as turtles were abundant on that night and we didn't have to wait for very long before we were called to go out onto the beach! How exciting!

When we got there, the turtle had already dug a hole in the sand. She was lying there, ready to lay her eggs. We sat a couple of meters away from her, and watched her dropping her eggs in the hole. She seemed so focused and determined, the guide told us that even though she was aware she had some guests that evening, nothing could possibly disturb her from her task of nestling.

Turtles are pretty amazing creatures. The females spend three or four months mating with any male turtle they can find, store the sperm in their body and then head to a beach close to where they were born (apparently they have a kind of inner GPS which enable them to find a location nearby their birth place, despite travelling thousands of miles through the ocean over the years!) and lay their 100+ eggs, from a number of different fathers. Also pretty crazy – the temperature of the sand determines the sex of the hatchings.

Once she finished laying her eggs, our turtle used her back flippers to cover the hole. She must have spent about 20 minutes, flipping sand in the hole, making sure it was completely covered and safe from predators. We were gobsmacked to witness this. It's crazy to think that all these moves are imprinted in their minds from birth. I mean it might be the first time ever they lay eggs, and still they have this motherly instinct to reproduce exactly the same moves that their ancestors have been for millennia. Pretty cool stuff - nature is really well conceived isn't it?

When this process was finished, the turtle headed back to the sea. As for us, we helped the guide relocate the eggs. They do this when the turtle lays her eggs a bit too close to the sea, which means that the eggs might be at risk of being washed out at high tide. Our guide extracted 111 eggs from the hole and gave each of us a few to carry up to a hole that a member of staff had dug a few meters higher up the dune. The eggs were the size of ping pong balls and you could even poke their external membrane slightly out of shape. It was pretty cool to hold the eggs and realise that the ‘ingredients’ for a turtle are packed in these tiny little ping pong balls - awesome stuff!

As if we didn’t have enough watching the first turtle, we stayed for another hour or two to watch another one!

Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island

Our next stop was Rainbow beach, where we booked a three day tour to the magnificent Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. On the way to Rainbow, we witnessed some pretty crazy effects of the weather – the road was pretty much flooded which caused a massive traffic jam. Apparently there were pretty bad floods nearby, so we were lucky to escape the worst of it!

For our Fraser Island tour, we set off in a group of 16 in two 4x4’s, ready to tackle the sand, and we were even allowed to drive ourselves! Driving on sand is great fun! There’s not much traffic so you can happily slip and slide around. It was the first time either of us had driven such a beast of a car as well, which made it even more fun!

On the first day – surprise, surprise – it was pissing it down! That kind of made the driving a lot more fun, but everyone in our group was just hoping for it to stop at some point during our three days! Anyway, even in the pouring rain we had a great first day – we went on a bushwalk through the rainforest (passing the biggest frog we’d ever seen in our lives – about the size of a melon!), and over some sand dunes and then saw the gorgeous Lake Wabby at the bottom of the hill. We didn’t hesitate in legging it down the dunes at breakneck speed and plunging into the water – rain or no rain, it was still great fun! In the evening we sat around chatting with the rest of the guys from our group and drinking goon into the early hours.

We should probably explain what goon is…basically, booze is an absolute rip off in Australia – about £10 for six small bottles – so the most cost-effective way of getting merry is drinking this nasty wine they call goon – only £10 for about four litres! Pretty filthy really but that’s what everyone drinks over there!

On our second day – shock, horror – the sun was blazing! All day long! Get in! We visited Lake Allom (a bizarre lake, with orangey-green water full of tea-tree and eucalyptus oils, and where we were able to pick up and hold some little turtles!); Eli Creek (a freezing cold stream, next to which we played a mammoth game of footy); Maheno Shipwreck (an abandoned, rusted ship that’s been laying on the shore for decades); Champagne Pools (the only place on the island where you can safely swim in salt water, as there are too many sharks and jellyfish in the main beaches!); and Indian Head (a gorgeous viewpoint where you can look far out into the ocean and down the beach either side). In the evening, as there was no rain, we were able to have a fire…and drink some more delicious goon!

Our third day was dominated by our visit to Lake MacKenzie – a pristine, crystal blue lake surrounded by clear white sand. Lake MacKenzie, as with all the lakes on the island, isn’t actually created from rainfall. It is formed by the surrounding sea water forcing its way up through the sand, during which all of the salt is filtered out, leaving some of the purest water that can be. So pure you can even drink it straight out of the lake!

But then it was time to leave the island. We’d had an awesome few days, seen some great sights, and had some great laughs with some cool people.

Back in Rainbow Beach, before hitting the road again, we visited Carlow’s Sandblow, which was basically a huge sand dune with multi-coloured sands – white, red, orange, yellow, even black sand – so this is where Rainbow Beach gets its name from! We also had a gorgeous view from up there, down onto the beach and along the bay as far as the eye could see, so we just sat there for a good while soaking it all in.

Noosa and around

We arrived in Noosa in the evening and went for a lie on the main beach and a barbecue in a park nearby. The next day, we went for a walk in Noosa National Park. We combined the Tanglewood Track with the Coastal Track to get a mix of rainforest and beach settings. The walk was so scenic - in the rainforest, we saw several goannas (massive lizards) which was pretty cool. Then we got to Alexandria Bay, a beautiful beach where we stopped for lunch, slowly realising that it was actually a nudist beach! We then had a few stops along the coastal track: Hell’s Gate, Dolphin Point, and Tea Tree Bay where we stayed for a while to admire the surfers gliding on the waves.

In the evening, we decided to set off. Noosa is a nice town but it’s pretty flashy. In the evening, we looked for a campsite near Eumundi, in vain. In the end, a guy working in a petrol station told us we could probably get away with parking at Stumer’s Creek in Coolum Beach, just down the road. We were rewarded with an amazing camping spot with a view on the beach and a few drinks to enjoy under a starry night sky. Not bad at all!

Early morning, we got woken up by the sound of locals walking their dogs on the beach. We set off early to the Eumundi craft market, followed by a scenic drive to Mapleton falls and Kondalilla falls (where we had a swim and a few jumps in the rock pool), Gerrard lookout, Gardener’s falls, and Mary Cairncross lookout where we saw the Glasshouse Mountains for the first time. These volcanic mountains make quite an unusual landscape actually, standing alone on the horizon and exhibiting pretty intriguing shapes. We climbed one of them the next day (Mt Ngungun) and were rewarded with a gorgeous view over the Rainbow region.

Brisbane

It was quite a stressful experience to find ourselves in Brisbane after a couple of weeks far from civilisation! For the first time in our campervan, we had to navigate through heavy traffic, one way systems, without much idea of where we were actually heading! I had planned to go skating with Brisbane City Rollers in the evening so we set off to the suburb of Ipswich where they were training. We actually found a camping spot in the showground, just 2 minutes walk from their venue, which was pretty handy. I was over the moon, so excited you wouldn’t believe it! I hadn’t skated for four months; every rollergirl would understand how painful that is! BCR were really a lovely bunch of girls and they made me feel at home. They lent me some gear, which fitted pretty nicely and off you go, start practice with 3 x 5 minute laps…not an easy thing when you’ve spent the last 4 months drinking and smoking! But I was glad to see I haven’t completely lost it…needless to say I will have to work hard on my fitness when I’m back in England!

The next day we drove back to Brisbane and we were happily surprised with the city (in fact we were pretty impressed with all the Australian cities we visited on the east coast). Brisbane is especially pretty in its effort to keep a natural environment within the city: the South bank is a green oasis, habitat to a variety of wildlife (particularly lizards!) with a beautiful lagoon overlooking the city’s skyscrapers on the other side of the river. We wandered on the South Bank for a while, walked through a mini rainforest and ended up in the Art museum where we hoped we would get the chance to appreciate some aboriginal art - although it’s fair to say that the exhibition wasn’t really up to our expectations.

In the evening, we met up with Mel (a British girl we had met in Tonsai, Thailand) and a friend of hers for a few drinks. It was great to see a familiar face and exchange stories of our adventures since we'd last seen her. The next day we drove to Mount Coot-Tha lookout where we had the chance to admire the city in its entirety. Then we wandered in Brisbane’s botanical gardens, where we discovered an impressive variety of flora from all around the world.

Lamington National Park

By the time we got to Lamington, we'd spent plenty of time in Australia's National Parks, but we'd heard that Lamington was one of the most impressive - and we weren't disappointed. Following a lengthy drive up a winding mountain road, we reached our campsite, set in a lovely opening amidst the surrounding rainforest, and heavily populated with wallabies wandering around the site grazing on the grass. After a pretty relaxed first night, we set off the next day on a 17.4km walk - this turned out to be one of the nicest bushwalks of our time in Oz. Some of the bushwalks we'd been on were full of people, with a nice comfy tarmac track throughout, but this one was nothing like that at all. We had to fight our way through the vegetation, crossing rivers and streams, discovering some beautiful secluded waterfalls throughout. We also saw some amazing wildlife - in particular a baby frog-mouthed owl, and a freshwater cray (a gorgeous blue crustacean that lives in the streams in the area). After such a lengthy walk we were knackered and so snook into the posh resort next to our campsite to steal some time in their hot tub and sauna, overlooking the valley below! What a day!

NEW SOUTH WALES

Nimbin and Byron Bay

On our way to Byron Bay, we thought we should check out Nimbin, a crazy hippie town. It used to be a sleepy village until in the 70’s some students chose it as a venue for a ‘new age’ festival of alternative lifestyles…and even to this day those same hippies are still there, most of them still mashed off their tits!

To give you an idea of what the place was all about, the two most popular places in town are Bringabong, and Starbuds coffee shop! It was all pretty funny really, but some of these ageing hippies were pretty depressing – completely minced by 10 in the morning, dead behind the eyes!

In Byron Bay, we stayed in an awesome hostel called the Arts Factory. It was a cool place, with its own swimming pool and loads of stuff going on each day - like the 'bushtucker' walk during the day, where they teach you how to find food and water in the Aussie wild; and the open mic nights and gigs in the evenings in the bar just across the car park. We had an awesome first night there, drinking and getting messy with some of the other tourists until the small hours. There was just one problem though - everyone in Byron Bay was so young! It might make us sound like a pair of old farts saying that, but basically the majority of tourists between Brisbane and Sydney are 18-20 years old (mostly German and French), and all they do is stay in the same place for weeks at a time getting pissed, getting up with a hangover, then start getting pissed again, and so on...without ever going and seeing or doing anything. So while we had fun on the first night, we were a bit fed up of the hostel by the time we left.

Whilst in Byron Bay we tried out surfing, which was awesome fun! It was pissing it down with rain, but that was all good - we were always going to get wet anyway! Surfing's not actually that hard - or at least, it's not actually that hard to stand up on the board (I'm sure it is hard to actually be good at it!). I (Lee) even managed to catch a few waves myself (rather than be pushed onto them by the instructor guy) - what a rush! Although, having said it's not that hard, I must say my shoulder was still killing for over two weeks afterwards...maybe we are old after all!

Coffs Harbour

And so onto stop number 2 on our roller derby tour of the East coast - this time with Coffs Coast Derby Dolls. It was an awesome scrimmaging session, but then Mother Nature decided to cut the practice short by sending a huge violent hailstorm over the venue - so violent that the roof started leaking and there was a power cut! Never mind - that just meant we could go to the pub sooner as we went for a drink with a few of the roller girls and then onto one of their houses to sleep in our campervan in her garden. It's got to be said, they have a pretty sweet life out there. This roller girl and her fella (who both used to live in Brum funnily enough!) live in a house in the middle of the bush, really isolated, with 5 acres of land all to themselves, to do whatever they like with! And it's not as if they're minted or anything - it's basically the equivalent of having a half-decent house back home, except out in Australia you get so much more bang for your buck! They've even got a gorgeous creek just down the road where we went for a swim the next morning - what a way to start the day!

Myall Lakes National Park

Following a night’s stay at the beautiful Swan’s Crossing campsite en route, we made our way to Myall Lakes, a myriad of lakes just inland from the coast. We stayed at Yagon’s campsite, which was just by the sea (it was like having our own personal beach – once again!) and populated by loads of massive goannas.

Blue Mountains

Our first night around the Blue Mountains was deep in the middle of nowhere, in the old mining settlement of Newnes. The town itself has been dead for about 80 years – all that remains is the hotel and a campsite, surrounded by impressive cliffs all around. This was our base for exploring the nearby Glow-Worm Tunnel the next day. The tunnel was part of the old railway line that used to run to and from the mines, but has long been abandoned and is now the perfect habitat for thousands of glow worms. The trek up to the tunnel took a few hours and once we arrived we were treated to what seemed like a starry night sky – in a pitch black tunnel, the only specks of light that could be seen were due to these tiny little creatures, each emitting their own light to attract their food. It was an awesome sight to behold.

The next day – as if we weren’t isolated enough from civilisation – we drove down the Megalong valley (yes, it is mega long), crossing some farmlands on the way, to get to Dunphy’s campsite – probably the most beautiful campsite we’ve stayed in so far. It was just us, and tons of kangaroos, up on the hilltop looking down over the valley.

We set off the next morning to the famous Three Sisters lookout in Katoomba – a really touristic site, but for good reason. The view stretched for miles and miles, where we could see several valleys lined with dense rainforest, and just next to the viewpoint stood the three sisters themselves – three tall pillars, reaching out of the ground towards the sky. They were formed from the cliffs which are common in this area but have been eroded into these pillar shapes over thousands of years.

That evening, Ori went for a speed skating class with Blue Mountains Roller Girls – stop number three on our Roller-COASTer tour of Oz.

Sydney

We both really liked Sydney - what a beautiful city and full of life! We spent our first night in the Asylum in King’s Cross, a pretty chilled out hostel. And it felt good to see some people again after our escapade to the Blue Mountains!

The next day, we got rid of our campervan - thank God, we couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore, and didn’t even get done for the damage Lee did to the boot! Woohoo, time to party! And so we made our way back to the hostel, stopping en route at the Paddington art and craft market. In the evening, we treated ourselves with a rump steak and chips at a local pub, the best meal we’d had for weeks! Later, we went clubbing but I (Ori) didn’t have any shoes, except for flip flops and trekking shoes! Fortunately I found a pair of heels in our dorm, only problem being that they belonged to a guy (King’s Cross is a bit of a gay/ladyboy hotspot!) and were about five sizes too big! But hey, they’d have to do the trick and so we set off with a few other guys from the hostel. In the club, the bouncers told me off because I was dancing bare feet so I spent the rest of the night with toilet paper stuffed in my shoes! It was a good laugh!

The following day, Lee and I walked past the beautiful St Mary’s cathedral, to Hyde Park with its stunning Archibald fountain (built by a French architect of course!) on our way to take the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly Beach to watch the Australian Open of Surfing finals! On the ferry, we cruised past the iconic Sydney Opera House – it is a really nice building, but from certain angles looks a bit ugly, and the lower half of it (which you don’t really see from afar) is nasty old grey concrete! Still an awesome sight though, especially opposite the equally impressive Harbour Bridge, arching across the river.

The ferry ride over to Manly Beach was gorgeous – the sun was blazing and from the deck, we could see lots of sailing boats, yachts and jet skis, with distant beaches in the background.

At the surf competition, we found a spot on the packed beach and watched the pro’s in action. There were thousands of people there to watch, with some of the world’s best surfers on show.

IN A NUTSHELL…

It’s all about the great outdoors

The first few days in Oz were pretty strange. We missed Asia, it has to be said. In Asia, everything’s different – every time you walk down the street you see things and people you’d never see back home. You have to struggle with the language, the culture, the money – everything’s exotic, everything’s unknown, it’s challenging. And then you arrive in a country where there’s little history or culture, everyone speaks English, the food’s the same as back home, it’s quite commercial…

But after a while we got used to these differences and realised that Oz is all about the great outdoors – the bush, the wildlife and the beaches.

It is awesome to see the amount of effort made to protect and conserve the biodiversity of the country. We saw some amazing creatures here (platypus, wombats, cassowaries…) and walking in the rainforests amongst giant trees with roots spreading across dozens of meters was amazing - even though it does also make you feel pretty small and insignificant!

Helloooo...is anybody there?

Another thing about Australia is that it’s massive and the density of the population is one of the smallest in the world! So we sometimes felt pretty isolated, especially as we were travelling in a campervan, staying in remote spots. Most of the campsites we stayed at were almost empty and so the local kangooroos, wallabies, scrub turkeys and wombats became our friends! Although it is a good feeling, you do miss people after a while! Having said that, you don’t want to get drunk with 18 year-old tourists all the time either - it kind of makes you feel old!

Aboriginal culture

We had hoped that we would get more in touch with the aboriginal culture whilst in Oz, but unfortunately indigenous people seem to be a bit marginalised. We found it quite surprising that indigenous culture was not a bit more promoted throughout the country and certainly felt a bit of a rupture between both communities – and many of the Aussies we spoke to had pretty hard line views on the aboriginals.

Living there

Australia was very expensive for us as backpackers, especially after travelling in Asia! It felt at times that we were living like tramps - when we were free camping by quiet beaches, eating instant noodles and not showering for a 2 or 3 days! But for people who work and live here, what a life! They haven’t been too badly affected by the economic crisis here, jobs are abundant and the money is good - many backpackers stay here a few months to load up on money before setting off to travel elsewhere.

Also we found the cities on the east coast absolutely beautiful, especially Sydney and Brisbane. We could definitely imagine living there; except it’s on the opposite side of the world to everybody we love and miss!

---