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Published: December 28th 2008
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Hi everyone.
Right now I'm sitting in a dark internet cafe listening to a huge thunderstorm outside. We arrived in Sydney this morning after a long day of driving from Byron Bay. We are both tired but our two room mates seem nice (Germans) and we are looking forward to staying in the same place for the next week. We will be seeing in the new year by Sydney harbour.
We seem to have done loads in the past two weeks and we are both having difficulty remembering where we were and when. We spent my birthday in a place in the mountains called Eungella. It was beautiful in the hills and a bit cooler than the coast. We made our way to the Broken River at night and spotted a Platypus in a pool just as the sun was setting. He was a lot smaller than we imagined but we were very pleased all the same. He just swam around his pool occasionally coming up to the surface to say hello (or to possibly breathe!)
A huge drive the next day saw us making our way down to Bundaberg. Gemma's Christmas CD was becoming tiresome and
we played endless games of I-spy. You can only do that for so long before the obvious options are quickly exhausted. Amongst the favourites, we had words such as: road, trees, sand, sky, white lines etc. When Gem fell asleep I came up with an interesting game whereby I had to see how long I could drive for without touching the steering wheel. Finding a long straight road was easy and I think the record was just under a minute; needless to say Gem was none to pleased when she discovered that game.
We'd come to Bundaberg to see the Turtles on Mon Repos beach. Every night the females crawl up the beach to lay about 120 eggs in a hole they dig with their flippers. The turtle we followed was a 30 year old female loggerhead. She was quite young for a mature female and it was her first time so our guide measured and tagged her. It was a pretty amazing thing to watch and suprisingly the turtle didn't seem to be bothered by the 40 people standing around and watching her; she just got on with it.
We continued our trek down the coast stopping
at Airlie beach and the Whitsundays and Hervey bay and Fraser Island. Gem did tours of both but I missed it out as I'd done both last time I was here. I had a good climb / scramble up Tibrogargan in the Glass House mountains and admired the view whilst sweating bucket loads: it was seriously hot!
Chrsitmas antipodean style is nothing like it Christmas should be. No prawn cocktails / turkey / cold / wet etc. I'll let Gem explain.
Gemma:
I am so glad Christmas is over!
Having the festive season thousands of miles away from friends and family is not all it's cracked up to be! What I really wanted was some kind of time machine/teleporter to whisk me home for Christmas and then to whizz me straight back to Sydney in time for New Year's Eve!!
Christmas Day itself was a very nice day, just not very Christmassy. We stayed in a very nice guest house in Byron Bay. We went out for a few drinks on Christmas Eve so I wasn't really up for drinking all day Christmas day - which made me in the minority judging by the number
of drunk people in the sea and the people being sick by 4pm!!!
My Christmas list was small this year as we were on a tight budget - just $20 (less than 10 quid) but Santa did very well - he remembered my shampoo and conditioner and a trashy magazine and also treated me to a boomerang and a hairband! Thank you Santa/Allan! I managed to get Al some board shorts within budget, not quite as exciting as my presents but v nice.
We went for a stroll along the beach after breakfast...or so I thought. My little trip to the beach in my flip flops turned into a 10km trek through beach, rainforest and town!!! I started the trip in high spirits, singing carols and Christmas tunes at the top of my voice - it wasn't a busy beach! However, about 3 minutes into the uphill rainforest trek to the lighthouse all I had in my head was the Pogues. I'm not sure Allan like being called a scumbag, a maggot, a cheap lousy faggot etc but everyone knows you never take me trekking in flip flops on Christmas Day!!
The trip to the lighthouse was
worth it in the end though - we saw turtles, sharks and a dolphin.
After our festive lunch of tuna sandwiches and a mince pie we continued. On about our 4th beach of the day we came across the coolest thing - a snowman made of sand!!!! With sticks for arms and everything! I was very impressed and couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it myself! We went for a swim and then came home for a feast of pasta and sauce with sausages!!! As I said, we're on a budget!
On Boxing Day we had a looooong drive south to Newcastle, where we stayed for a night before coming to Sydney today. We are here for a week then onto Tasmania for a week on the 3rd Jan.
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