Australia

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G'day cobbers!

Before I forget... Craig forgot to put our little Japan fact in the last blog... when a person dies they cremate the body except the bones and then the family can pick a bone out to keep with their chopsticks! nice.

Well back to Australia again and it was strange to be back after 8 years. I thought it would feel like only yesterday but oddly everything was a bit hazy - must be old age! Craig soon realised that all the Oz stereotypes are true as the first bloke we met said "G´day, my name´s Bruce". We headed up to Cairns for a week of campervanning in "Beryl" which was excellent. It was a wee van but ideal for the two of us. We drove around the coastal and tableland areas, which was a mixture of great beaches (and of course snorkelling on the Barrier reef) and lush countryside full of waterfalls - and mozzies, which for some reason quite liked the taste of me instead of Craig! : ( Also the Daintree for the Croc cruise, and although Craig was scared, we only saw 2 and they could well have been plastic ones planted there, so weren´t that scary! It was fab just to tour around and have the freedom of stopping where we liked.

Up in Port Douglas, (which was very fancy so good job we were in our van!) there was feeding of "George the Groper" a humungous fish which gobbled some slightly smaller dead fish. Fortunately George was behaved and just ate the fish rather than grope the ladies- ha ha. We had a big bucket prawns and a glass fo vino to watch the sunset- perfect!

Another day we went on a boulder walk where we found a load of cute wallabies and fed them some bread- they were really cute!! The woman at the start of the walk hadn´t told us it was huge boulders, so in my Primark flip flops, I wasn't well equipped!! However, after manouvering in bare feet, we just about made it when Craig being cocky in his fancy trainers, took a dive : ) oh how we laughed.

We flew down to Sydney and picked up "Bruce" our second wee van for a 5 day stint. Seeing the Harbour Bridge and Opera House was cool as well as popping along to Manly to see an old school friend of mine, and of course going to Bondi just to show Craig it really (manly is nicer!). Craig dragged me kicking and screaming to the rugby league (OZ vs NZ) but it was a bit pants as it was very one sided in Australia's favour. It was good to see something different though. We drove into the Blue Mountains, which had picturesque views despite being a bit chilly. Then onto the Hunter Valley for a day of wine, cheese and chocolate tasting- yum yum! Our final highlight was going to "Summer Bay" although there was no filming so no walk on part as a British backpacker!

And so that was really it for our Oz adventure. We both had a great time in our vans and were sad to leave. We are now in Santiago and are off to Puerto Montt tomorrow to then go to Pucon for our language course so will have to get our brains in gear!

Hope you´re all well

Helen & Craigx

p.s. Can´t think of any Oz facts.. answers on a postcard please!

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Comments

[Bet]

Answer!
The worlds fastest growing tree is the Australian Ecalyptus tree... FACT!!! YESSS i aspire to be a gardening geek!!!

[Bet]

Bruce looks cool!
really!

[Weaves]

Bruce!
Was very cool indeed! And thanks for the fact, gardening geek!