Australia

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Rather than say thanks and name names that don't mean much to the rest of you or doesn't make the blog an easy read, we would like to say up front - thank you to all of our lovely friends and family for looking after us and putting us up. It really made our time in Australia special! You know who you are ... xxxx
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Melbourne ... we arrived in Australia and immediately set off to a family do in Ballarat that happened to time with our arrival so it was a great opportunity to meet all the relies and catch up on the years since Ben's last visit to see them when he was a mere 18! How time flies!

Our arrival this time was somewhat in contrast to Ben's last visit - when he got off the plane to be met by almost every australian member of his family. He said he'd felt like royalty! This time we got off and couldn't see a sole. Our train didn't arrive quite at the time we'd said so we presumed they'd gone home for the timebeing. After a while we managed to find Chelle's number (Ben's cousin) and gave her a call to see if she was coming to collect us.

After our long flight that got into Melbourne in the early hours of the morning, we'd dragged our tired arses out of bed and onto the 8am train to head to Ballarat for Chelle' & Rowdy's youngest son's naming ceremony ... only to find we'd managed to arrive 1 day earlier than expected!

“Hi, we're at Ballarat train station”
“What the hell are you doing there, you're a day early!”

It continued with the proper Aussie greetings - “ah, you look like a couple of poms”, a series of enormously loud “hi, how are yas”, swiftly followed by the offer of a tinnie for boys and a white wine for the girls ... and so it continued in the form of making up for all the missed drinks over the last 15 years!! As you may imagine, Ben and I took to this like a duck to water and felt immediately at ease!

Our time in Australia was fairly jam packed as we had a fair few friends and family to catch up with, and we wanted to look into the job opportunities and how we go about getting the necessary visas ... and of course we wanted to fit in a bit of of sightseeing so we set off after a lovely weekend to collect our campervan and for a week driving along the Great Ocean Road.

Great Ocean Road
We went to Geelong (where my dad's family lived), Torquay & Bells Beach and Lorne on day 1. We loved it from the off and the scenery just got better and better as we went along. What we loved most though was having our home with us and being able to unpack, be able to cook for ourselves with ingredients we recognised! We tucked into Ben's lovely spag bol and a decent bottle of red with a toast “I think we're going to like it here”.

Over the next couple of days we went to Loch Ard Gorge, Apollo Bay the 12 Apostles and London Bridge and ended up in a desolate yet adorable little back water called Port Fairy, before a slow drove back the same route to enjoy it all over again. We were also lucky enough to see Koala bears on the road side at we drove out down the country road to Cape Otway.

Melbourne
Our first impression was that Melbourne was much nicer than we'd expected. It had a great atmosphere, and was like a mini London but with everything within walking distance. Hmm, I could live here.

Each day of the week that we spent in Melbourne we caught up with different friends - Australian friends who used to live in England, English friends who have moved to Australia and a couple of stragglers we'd met in our travels ;-) We were really looked after and invited to parties, nights out and we even got taken out sailing on Port Philip Bay which was just fabulous!

We went to some good eateries in and around Chapel Street and out in Brighton, enjoyed coffee and cake on Brunswick Street and came across a few outlet shops that we tried our best not to going shopping in and took a visit to the hippie beach town of St Kilda! We walked along the river and enjoyed a beer in the sun whilst we soaked up the very chilled yet lively atmosphere of Melbourne. Whatever day of the week there was a lot going on in Melbourne - live music in bars, sporting events, concerts. We felt spoilt for choice ...

Sydney
Next stop Sydney ... Emma & Jo who'd returned home after living in England very kindly put us up in Surry Hills for the whole week.

We had a few hours to wait until Emma finished work so got the train from the airport to Circular Quay. Ben surprised me as I had no idea we could get the train directly to the water and the harbour. I was so excited when we walked out and there it was in front of us! “Wow, it's even more impressive than I expected”. What a way to begin.

By the time we'd gotten to Sydney we were rather missing some time to just us, so we spent our days lazing on the beaches of Bondi and Manly and playing in the excessively strong waves as we tried to surf them as we swam. The waves mostly got the upper hand! Our evenings were mostly catching up with friends and trying to work out how on earth to get home from where we'd gone out for the day!!

A visit to Syndey would not be complete for me and Ben as sailors without a trip on the water. Trent not only took us out, he picked us up from the jetty right next to the Opera House, we sailed around the harbour up to the beautiful bay of xxx, and then sailed back under Sydney Harbour bridge as the sun was setting and continued on to moor up at xxx under the stars. What a treat. It was very cool and I haven't stopped smiling since! Hmm, I could live here too.

We climbed the tower of Sydney Harbour Bridge and visited the small museum at the top. It's a significantly cheaper alternative ($7 vs $250) to the walk over the top of the bridge, and the view from the top is great. I guess you don't get the experience of the climb over it, but we'd had a pretty good fix from sailing under it. :-)

The bridge itself really is quite an incredible piece of infrastructure. Like most bridges it looks a bit ugly close up but when you can see it from the ferry on the water it looks stunning. The museum about how it was built, the history, the methods and the safety is worth a visit. I'm just amazed there were not many lives lost.

I couldn't quite leave Sydney without a little shopping trip though so we went to a couple of little markets by the beaches and Ben bought me a ring (I promise not to lose or break this one!!). Emma took me to her local Sea Folly. I don't suppose that means much to you boys but I was quite excited about getting some sexy new beach wear and the promise of a $5 discount bin got me passed Ben's doubting eye and back with a credit card bill, two new bikinis, some beach shorts and a lovely dress! Oops!



Sunshine Coast
We'd been incredibly lucky with the weather since we'd arrived with just a few showers one day along the Great Ocean Road, and otherwise perfect blue sky days after the morning mist, mid 20 to early 30 degrees and a lovely refreshing breeze. That is, until we reached the 'Sunshine Coast'!!

Ben's aunt and uncle put us up for a couple of days and we got to catch up a little more with them, plus his cousin and nephews. Not only that we were cooked some amazing food including steaks, oysters, crawfish, prawns and lots of yummy salad that we've not been able to eat freely since we left home for fear of getting ill (again).

From here we headed down to Surfers Paradise. The beach itself is paradise! It's an endless stretch of wide white sand, backed by dunes and trees and only has a scattering a people, a few surfers and surf guards gently coercing swimmers to stay between the flags to avoid the strong rips. We watched a couple of girls enter the water outside the flags and get swept with the rip so that they couldn neither get back to the shore or inside the flagged area. They were still standing up so it wasn't so bad, but it was quite amusing to watch on of the surfers walk over to them, and walk them one handed into the safe area. 'My hero'!

The surf was up so we headed to Burleigh Heads to watch the experts handle 20 foot waves with ease, whilst the less competent surfers stood looking on with us, and talking it up. It was very impressive to see up close. Take a look at our pics.

Next it was down to Byron Bay for our turn to do some surfing. But the weather wasn't all that. It rained like a monsoon, all week bar one day! Ugh. Thankfully we'd gotten lucky with the place we'd booked and had the run of a lovely big house, the kind you would want to buy yourself. We had sofas to lay out on, a covered balcony, library and a stereo so we got to sit at home, cook for ourselves and just chill out - which we miss, a lot!

There was one sunny day and a break in the excessively strong waves so we finally got to have our surfing lesson without it being cancelled. That was great fun. We managed to stand up and surf pretty quickly so were really impressed with ourselves! Our second day surfing, in the rain (!) we managed to stand up without any assistance and cope with the waves breaking without it throwing us head first ... so we've deemed ourselves to be naturals!! Okay, so we're not quite surfing the tube off the 30ft wave, and the surfing lingo needs a little work, but there's skill there, natural skill to be harnessed!! ;-)

Toowoomba
From Byron Bay we drove to Toowoomba, to meet Hils' Great Auntie Elsie and family for the first time. Apparently we did meet when I was a wee bairn too. It was lovely to meet them all and we were totally looked after, wined and dined, again. We must have done something right somewhere in our lives! :-)

Hervey Bay and Fraser Island
We booked ourselves on a 3 day adventure driving and camping around Fraser Island. We were two of a group of 20 odd people that had booked on this trip, 7 of whom would be in our four wheel drive van for the next few days. We got a great group of people- all girls mind, so Ben was enjoying his hareem until the evenings when he had a few fellow men around, to his quiet relief. One of the girls was hilarious. If only we were able to recount her visit to a ping pong, trumpet blowing show she'd seen in Thailand.

We really enjoyed our few days speeding along the sand beach, alongside small planes landing and taking off and over the rocks where the sand has been swept. We had a daily itinerary that told us some routes we could take and where to camp so we just took turns in driving.

My favourite moment has to be when one of the more nervous drivers approached the beach 'road' a little too fast and realised that there was a bus hurtling down the beach and approaching us very quickly. Rather than hit the breaks, she hit the accelerator and we went straight into the sea. Rule No 1 is no going in the sea or all the members in the van lose the rather large deposit. Realising this, she then did a high speed 90 degree turn back onto the beach and somehow managed to keep the van on 4 wheels!

Maroochydore & Brisbane
On our trip back from Hervey Bay we called in to see Ben's Grandad in Maroochydore. He's doing pretty well for a old boy of 94 years and we had a good chat, took him outd for Easter lunch, visited Ben's Grandma in hospital and heard some great stories about the family history.

And finally a few days in Brisbane and the surrounding area. We drove out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. We´d seen kangaroos at a distant in the fields but not any close up, so a trip to the zoo was in order. At the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary we got to hug a koala, stroke and feed kangaroos and wallabies and see various other reptiles and birds of Australia. I was really surprised how tame the kangaroos were, we just walked in a large field with them and they seemed to quite enjoy the attention.

Brisbane city was much smaller than I'd thought it might be and much less commercial. We sat by the river when the sun was out and soaked up the rays and when it wasn't we went to the cinema and watched some local bands perform in the pubs. We were actually fairly shattered by the end of our time in Australia so quite enjoyed a slow pace for a few days.


Part 2 of our adventure will continue from Los Angeles, down through Central America and into South America.

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