East vs West!

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oooh ok I realise that I have not written in this thing for ages but as I have a bit of time on my hands at work (yes its a taxing job) I thought its about time i filled you all in, and confirm the fact that yes i am still alive out here!!

So...rewind back to mid feb and here goes. So, craig flew out on feb 17th, the day that i left sydney and flew up to meet him in Brisbane. all was good, i packed up my bags at the hostel and left in a rush for the airport with a cracking hangover...got on the train and sat back thinking how id just made it...only to realise id left my passport at the hostel!! Anyway I did in fact make it to brisbane on time (thank you glenda) and booked into the apartment. Met Craig at the airport (cue the slo-mo running scene!!) which was FAB and we headed back to the apartment which was a little bit of luxury for the first 2 nights.

So the Wicked vans that we rented on both the East and West coasts were well...wicked!! Double mattress in the back, small area for food and a sink in the boot part and storage under the mattress. The first van was called the bitch (all vans are named-see pics!)it was ace and we had an absolute ball driving around exploring. making the bed each night was ok, made harder after a few beers but i totally loved it and although i hadnt realised how much like camping it would really be we soon got used to it and were complete happy campers!! gas burner and all!! we covered a massive distance during this time and were on the go all the time.

We had 13 nights on the East coast from Brisbane to Cairns, unfortunately for us it did pour with rain for the most part!! yes...didnt actually realise that wet season meant it pours all the time non stop! We stayed the frist couple of nights with Craigs family who live at paradise beach near nambour. they are in their 80's (stan and ida) but were the kindest loveliest people! ida even gave me some clothes she thought would suit me! (a very fetching dress i must say!) We had a lovely time just sorting the van out, getting provisions and planning our route. The one day that it was totally dry was the day we went to the barrier reef! it was amazing!! snorkelling with clown fish and massive groper fish. The best highlight for me was going up in a helicopter to get aerial views of the reef - the heart reef was spectacular. The most beautiful thing i have ever seen, and i could see hammer head sharks and turtles as i was looking down on the reef which was massive. (check out the pics). So along the east coast we stopped off at loads of places...rainbow beach, tincan bay, rockhampton, mackay, innisfail, airlie beach, townsville, mission beach, magentic island, whitsundays....just stopping off when we felt like it to find a camp site or get food. we met some great people along the way and spent our nights drinking beer and trying to fend off the rain!! happy days.. we arrived early in cairns due to a cyclone warning...so we decided the most sensible thing to do would be to rent a chalet with a jacuzzi...i mean we didnt want to get blown away by the cyclone did we?!?!

It was with much anticipation when we flew from cairns to perth...we were so excited! we arrived late at night and went to the YHA for the night to get up early to get the ferry to Rottnest Island...which was awesome! we loved this place!! the island has no cars, bikes only (sore bums!!) and is inhabited by quokka's- cute little mini kangaroo/rat like creatures that hop around and are really friendly and all come out at night. we booked for 2 nights into the youth hostel which was pretty decent and enjoyed the gorgeous heat (in fact it was boiling!) and loevly jetty front restaurants (3 in all). we spent our days there hiring bikes and cycling to remote beaches and snorkelling - there were few people here and it was just amazing, very quiet and unspoilt...although we did meet some great people at the quokka arms to get drunk with! we went out one day on a snorkelling tour of a ship wreck which was good although i was a little nervous as it was deep and choppy water!! but i got to hold some jellyfish which was cool and made it back alive and in one piece!

So after a coupke of days on Rottnest we got the ferry back to collect our second van - called Astro boy. We were really eager to get on the road and get to the fab outback and beaches so off we went to kalbarri...a fair distnace of about 600km. easy we thought! until it started to get dark...i mean there really is nothing about when you drive through WA...very few cars let alone townships/petrol stations so we were slightly worried that there were MASSIVE kangaroos jumping for our headlights for about 2 hours of us driving about 30mph....it took us ages to get to Kalbarri by which time our nerves were completly frazzled so we headed striaght to the pub!! Anyway what impressed me about WA is the sheer size and remoteness of the place. About 5 places dotted up the coastline to stop at and that is it!! And each place was very small and basic amenities. Kalbarri was gorgeous rugged scenery, red earth and stunning views. It was BOILING hot here....49 degrees-their hottest day for 60 years when we arrived! needless to say we melted in that van!! the first day there we went canoeing..in that heat it was hard work! but we went early morning and were rewarded with a bushmans fried brekky halfway through. however mental note not to canoe in a dried up river ever again!!! the secodn day we were just so hot it was untrue! never been in heat like that before...off we went to a rare bird sanctuary (again a little place really on th edge of kalbarri in the desert) and walked thourhg amazing avaries full of rare parrots, they were really beautiful and if we stood really still they flew close to us.

After that we headed to Monkey Mia...an extremely remote resort where we got to see dolphins being fed at sunrise for 2 days, an amazing place and met some lovely people here and had a great time chilling out (the resort was literally the only thing at monkey mia) and swimming, walking on remote beaches and drinking more beer! after that we headed onto coral bay- our favorite place by far!! Pure heaven!!! population of 240, 2 caravan parks, 2 restaurants and an amazing white sand beach, clear blue sea, and the most sealife i have ever seen. the reef was literally 100m from the shore which made for fantastic snorkelling everday we were there and we paddled with reef sharks and blue spotted rays, manta rays and shovel nose rays. an amazing experience and one that i highly recommend!! and it was all free!! we were like big kids there as we were so amazed that we were seeing it all. One day we went on a boat trip to swim with manta rays. they are 6m wide and staggeringly massive creatures, there were groups of 10 people at a time who when signalled had to jump in the sea off the boat and snorkel out to where they were. they were beneath us and were amazing to be swimming above in the wild. we also did a quad bike tour on the sand dunes which was wicked...total speed demons!! we got to see turtles-hundreds of them!-and see the most amazing turquoise waters whilst hooning around the dunes.

We were there a few days and felt like locals by the end of it, its such a small place that we got to knwo everyone quickly. so off we headed to exmouth and up to vlamingh lighthouse point. a campsite literallly in the middle of nowhere with a few people on it and us!! saw the sunset at the lighthouse point and decided the next day to go back to coral bay as we loved it so much! again we felt like locals as we were welcomed back onto the campsite and enjoyed beers with everyone and really had such a good time there. we had another quad bike trip, this tie just us and the guide who took us to the highest dunes and let us go crazy on them!!we stayed another 5 days and decided it was time to head back to perth, not before stopping at little lagoon (actually in aussie terms that means massive!) and shell beach-a beach made up of millions of tiny white shells, only people on the beach and it was gorgeous. we also stopped at the blowholes, a place where the sea is forced up through holes in the cliffs and looks like its errupting.oh we also saw stromatolites...the oldest living organism on earth that created oxygen. they are basically big rocks that look like coarl reef. we couldnt get over the fact that we were the only people there and this place was marked by a few small signs...if it was the uk we wouldve had to have paid money to see this and here we were just wandering round on our own!!

We saw a massive amount in WA and drove some huge distances, some days driving all day for 8/9 hours to cover about 1000km(600 miles) just to get to another place but we loved it. WA was the most amazing place by far, unlike queensland and the east coast WA is remote and unspoilt, almost like it has been trapped in a time warp as it is so untouched and undevelopped. The roads we drove along were long and tiring so we had the trusty ipod to liven things up! Along the way we saw kangaroos and emus all the time, to the point where we didnt even bat an eyelild when we saw them as there are so many.

We were sad to drive back to Perth as i fell in love with WA and the remoteness of it all, will be going back one day soon again!! it is hard to describe just how great it is over there, how barron it is and how staggering the scenery is. We arrived back in Perth tired after a long old drive and were lucky enough to stay with Matt, rachel and their 2 cute kids jensen and fraser (matt is craigs best mates bro)....so we enjoyed home cooking and a real bed! although wouldve swapped for the camper van anyday as we had a wicked time. Perth is a big clean cosmopolitan city, great shops and bars, and fantatsic beaches. white sand which goes on forever. So we had a good couple of days exploring perth and wandering about seeing the beaches before we had to hand the van back in.

So off we flew back to Brisbane and booked into a hostel in the west end, a bit of deflated feeling after all the excitement of WA but with resolve to go back again soon! We had 2 days before Craig was due to fly home so we just chilled out and managed to make our pennies last down to the very last beer!! So off Craig went after an amazing 6 1/2 weeks together of exploring oz with me back to the UK, with a camera full of pictures and a bag full of sand - it gets everywhere you know!!

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