East Coast by van

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Australia - Victoria and Queensland - Melbourne to Carins
New Zealand had already been a complete culture shock from South America, but it was in Sydney that I realised it the most. I treated myself to a massage, a pedicure, Sushi, and millions of hot showers.

After a few days re-climatizing in Sydney I headed down to Melbourne to meet Danielle! I was there a day early and, thank the lord, was in time for Neighbours night where I met the one and only Karl Kennedy. I even got a hug and a photo :O)

The next day Dan arrived at the airport and our Australian adventure was about to begin. We crammed a lot into a few weeks so I'll give you the overview!

Melbourne

Here we started with the Neighbours tour, seeing Karl Kennedy's car, house as well as the rest of Ramsay street. We froze waiting for trams after getting on the wrong one a number of times. We visited Immigration museums, old prisons, the Salvador Dali expedition and saw our first Australian beach in St. Kilda.

From Melbourne we flew to Sydney


In Sydney we did the right tourist things, starting with the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. As we were halfway across the world we decided to go full out and see a show at the Opera House. It was a little bit rudey for a pair of prudes but it did feel good wearing flip flops to the Opera House.

We also met up with an old school friend, Shara, who is living in Sydney by Bondi Beach so after a night of catching up over a few drinks, we spent a leisurely Sunday eating breakfast by the beach and walking across the coast.

We visited the aquarium, China Town and the PowerHouse museum as well as taking a boat to a nearby weekend market where we bought our very important sunglasses for the trip

Sydney to Brisbane

We took another flight and stayed at my cousin Stefan's house for two nights before renting our one and only Black Sabbath van.

We picked him / her ( it changed genders a few times) up early in the morning and set off for our first adventure. The van was huge and probably the largest thing we'll ever drive. But luckily for Australia the roads are empty and there wasn't too much that could go wrong.

We made our way up the coast over the next few weeks; travelling 2000km, seeing 24 beaches (yes, we did count them), stopping at Fraser Island for two nights of camping on the beach, getting a flat tyre in the North of Fraser Island, surviving an amazing 2 day boat trip on the Whit Sundays, dressing up in homemade plastic costumes, coming third in the dressing up competition (oh yeah!) seeing kangaroos and koalas in Port Douglas, getting attacked by kangaroos, partying in Cairns, eating a lot of ice cream, enduring the same CD of 90' hits in the van for the same three weeks, taking our van through McDonalds drive thru just because we could and playing the most randomnest name game to keep us awake on some of our long drives.

There's too much to tell that I'll leave the photos to it - until I get back and bore you all. Overall, it was a once in a lifetime experience and definitely a holiday to recover from.

Enjoy!

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