Australia

---

We landed in Sydney and headed straight to our hostel. The first evening we spent wandering around the vicinity of the hostel and enjoying some glorious Thai snap at a lovely little place called Spice I am next door. The next morning Jake and Craig headed off in their own direction and decided to explore Sydney at their own pace. The next few days Jake stayed in Kings cross...a charming area of Sydney most famous for drugs and vice! Allegedly...one in five people walking around Kings Cross are undercover police officers...yes it is that bad! But this also makes it one of the safest areas of Sydney! Jake met Lucy and Richard in Sydney and spent a couple of days and nights with them. They went to the Blue Mountains on the first day...it rained for most of the day, but a spectacular view made up for that, especially the famous three sisters! They also climbed Sydney harbour Bridge together...which although a little tame after the bungee jumping etc was very good. The views were amazing and the guide provided some hilarious anecdotes along the way! Apart from this...Jake and Craig did pretty much the same whilst in Sydney..including...

Obviously the harbour bridge and Sydney Opera House..both spectacular from Mrs Macguaries Chair. Darling Harbour is a really nice part of the city, a little expensive...but very picturesque in an urban sort of way! The famous Bondi Beach was also visited, which was a short train then bus ride from the centre. Bondi is nice, but nothing special...we think it is held highly simply because of its close proximity to such a huge city. We walked around the coast and visited a few more beaches along the way, where we encountered a few characters..including one guy wearing the green leotard made famous by Borat! The pictures of all the above are so much better than trying to explain...1000 words n all!

We also went out a few times in Sydney, mainly to 'Side' bar. It was a backpackers spot next to another hostel. One night we were entertained by two young fellows playing covers of rock hits on the guitars, followed by cheesy pop. Nights out in Australia can begin in two different ways in accordance with our budget. The first is to drink goon, a sort of fake wine drink made of all sorts, which you can tell from the taste. The second is with passion pop, the genuine name of a drink i can best describe as tropical lambrini, and packaged even more gayly. Both are foul but do as is intended. Beggars can't be choosers. Apart from that it's Tooheys which is a rather nice drop!

Sydney is a very nice city, with people from everywhere in the world there. It was strange to be back in a hostel and meeting people much more constantly than with the van. It was nice to lounge about at nights again and even during the day occasionally. The weather was on and off the entire time we were there. Trouble booking hostels and the price of some locations led us to one, familiar action. Get a camper van. We couldn't get a camper in Sydney in the time frame we required, so booked a bus to Brisbane to pick one up from there. From here we headed straight back down to New South Wales again and into Byron Bay.

We arrived in Byron Bay had a wander round, but there is not that much to do there except for the beaches...it was all a little too costa brava!! Just too many tourists getting drunk and burnt! We settled down for the night on a campsite just outside the main area. The next day we went to Nimbin, a strange little place. Since a festival in 1973 it has become a 'hippy haven'. The locals are a site, but the town not much. The beauty of a camper came in handy already. We had a wander round, had a swim in the local pool and headed back to Byron for a night out. The Dutch girls and everyone else who had been here tells stories of a place called 'cheeky monkeys'. People do stupid stunts for free things and then everyone dances on the tables. We had a good night...but cheeky monkeys certainly did not live up to expectations!

Surfers paradise was our next destination. And a surfers paradise it is not, named purely for the tourists. There wasn't much to do here except for the beach life again...so we decided to go to the local waterpark, allegedly the best in Australia! The day started like many others had in, with rain. Ten years of drought were apparently at an end this summer! The rain did have an upside though, as the park was not busy at all!. Good laugh so it was.

After the beaches it was time to head back to a city, namely Brisbane. After the drive we spent the evening at the dogs! We had a couple of bets and were close to making a bit of money, unfortunately not tho...but it was a nice change! The second day we headed into town for some site seeing. We headed up the tower at the town hall. The site showed how much Brisbane has advanced since it was built. Originally, all of the city below could be seen, but now huge buildings block much of the view, although you can see long into the distance at some points. From Brisbane we headed up to Noosa. Nossa is a popular surfing spot and dominated by a national park. People walk for up to an hour, board in hand to find their own little spot to surf alone. We followed the walking track along the beaches, and then back through the forest as we (Craig) took a wrong turn. After this we headed up to Hervey Bay.

Hervey Bay is the main place used to get to Fraser Island. This Island is made entirely of sand, and it the largest of its kind in the world. We headed out to the island on the boat. We would have taken the van across but this is not allowed. The van struggles on a road, so sand would definitely have been too much for her. Arriving on the island we were introduced to our tour guide, Hayden, and the rest of our 15 strong group. This included a couple from Rotherham, 5 Canadians, 3 Germans and the nuttiest Spanish guy that must have ever been born, and a couple of other quiet ones! Haydens brother came along for the trip too, sitting up front with him and resulting in much banter over the microphone. Anyway... the first day we took a walk along a creek before heading to lunch, after which we drove up the main highway (also known as the beach) to the Maheno Shipwreck. Long story short, it crashed there ages ago. We carried on up the east coast to Indian head and then further still up to the Champagne Pools. Indian head is a lookout point, while the champagne pools are a natural rock pool where waves crash over the rocks, creating a froth on top of the water and aiding the namers of the place somewhat. After this we headed back to our resort for our dinner, followed by some drinks in the bar with our entire group.

The next day was all about the lakes. We first went to Lake Wabby, and to Lake McKenzie. Both are purely filled by rainwater so are ideal for swimming without the taste of salt. This also makes them puddles rather than lakes in my eyes, but i wasn't going to argue with Hayden, who had the most indepth knowledge of his job we have ever come across. Each time we drove somewhere he had a story or some information for us. We think most of it was even true! Back to the lakes though, and McKenzie was superb and definitely the highlight of the trip. We spent around two hours in the water, engulfed in both sunshine and rain. The sand is so pure in the lake it can be used to clean silver jewelery, and makes your skin and hair incredibly soft when rubbed in and rinsed away. It also gives your teeth a good clean, although the taste of sand isn't really worth it to be honest! We left the lake and the island and returned to Hervey Bay. We went out for a couple of drinks in the area with the rest of our group and left the next day for the Whitsunday Islands.

The Whitsundays were a good few miles away from Fraser island, so on the way up we stopped in a couple of small places, namely seventeen seventy and Rockhampton. We did little in these places but have a quick look round and left. As we traveled up the coast we were staying in the layby's on the side of the main road most nights to save money on campsites. After these we made it to Airlie Beach, the access point for the Whitsunday islands. The Whitsundays Islands are a group of 72 islands, named after the time of year they were discovered. This time we decided on a one day trip. As we sat on the boat heading out to the islands we met a kiwi who supported Sheffield Wednesday. You don't hear of it do you?! We spent all day with him and his 'partner!!' and had a really good laugh. Our first activity was snorkeling around the reef. We spent around an hour in the water, swimming with thousands of fishes turtles and even stingrays and jellyfish, although we avoided getting too close them. After this we went up to a lookout point on a different island, had some lunch and spent he afternoon on a beach playing football, cricket and swimming.

After we returned to dry land we made our way further north to Townsville. I don't want to shock anyone here, but this is the base used for people travelling to yet another island. On our approach to Townsville we stopped in at the information centre to be told by a couple of old dears that roads north of the city were flooded and we could be there for a few days, due to 700cm's of rain in 2 days! Not the best news we had heard and certainly not what we wanted. We made a trip across to magnetic island, named by Captain Cook because his compass seemed to be affected by it. Here we took the bus to the north of the island and sat on the beach, and went for a walk up to the Fort, up a bloody great big hill, the views were amazing! We headed back onto the mainland and found out that the roads were clear. Excellent news, as we had to hand the van in in a couple of days and we still had a couple of hundred miles to cover. We drove to mission beach, which was just a beach, so carried on again up to our final destination, Cairns.

On arriving in Cairns we headed to the airport to sort out our future flights, then settled into a caravan park for our last night in the van. Although it is excellent for the freedom it offers, a good nights sleep is an almost impossible thing to achieve. Cairns is a city on the coast, but the nearest beaches are around 10miles away. We gave these a miss though as we were beached out. While in Cairns we headed for a night out, where the main attraction in the bar was goldfish racing. This was the sign for us to start drinking a little quicker and in larger quantities, which we paid for the next day! The next day Craig left for Queenstown and Jake went on a scuba dive to the Great Barrier Reef...which was great! The average age on the boast was around 25, but Jake managed to make friends with a lovely old couple called Rob and Barbara from Lancashire, who didn't even last for 2 minutes just snorkeling...it was too rough for them, and i quote: "I like it warm...but not this warm!" Many stories and laughs later it was time to return! Again the photos do more justice than any amount of rambling, i got some really good photos from the on board photographer!

And that was Australia, or at least the east coast. Ten years previous to our visit the country has been in drought conditions, so it was pretty obvious it was going to rain while we were here. That said, the heat here is unbelievable so it was a relief most of the time.

This is the last blog that will go on from Jake and Craig together. Craig has decided to return to Queenstown in NZ to work for an unknown amount of time, while Jake is carrying on through to Bali as planned.

Photos of the scuba diving will be put on soon

If anyone wants to contact Craig, my email is [e-mail]

---