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Published: April 6th 2007
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Hello everyone…Happy Easter!
Hope your all ok… we have been having some lovely weather here, and have heard that the snow has gone in the UK and now its up to 17 degrees in the North East!!! That makes our temperature of 35 degrees yesterday look crap! Haha.
So we are still in Woolgoolga and have had a reasonably busy week… Ant has been working hard, with John, to pass his Scuba Qualification. I don’t know if the news traveled so far as home but there was a huge earthquake in The Solomon Islands (north of Oz) and the whole east coast of Australia was put on Tsunami Alert… all the beaches were closed…even Bondi! Which was a bit dodgy but as far as we know there was no change in the water!
…We have a big tip for any future visitors to Oz…we understand when your in Sydney you want to go to the famous Bondi Beach… we strongly recommend you just stay in the city and visit it for the day! There is no need to be as silly as us and go and stay there for 4 nights! Now we have left Sydney and seen
how amazing, empty the beaches are and there are no rip off prices in sight. We do wonder why we wasted 4 days there? oh well...
…Another very useful tip we have learnt since we have been out here is for travellers to Australia who will be here more than a couple of weeks... You may have heard that there is a reciprocal arrangement between UK/Australia for free medical assistance. And that’s great, you can just take you passport into a hospital and get treated…but if you want to go to a doctors/skin clinic/get prescriptions you will be paying full price. So what I did was go to a Medicare Office (there are loads in the major cities in shopping centres etc) take your passport and NHS card/E111 card and Bobs your Uncle! They give you a free Medicare Card which you can take to Doctors etc and pay nothing or a much reduced rate!
This came in very helpful when I needed to go to a skin clinic the other day… it seemed I had been chucking myself into the waves a bit too much and must have scraped one of my moles on the body-board and it
went a bit sore. So I got all my moles checked out and I’m ok… but the appointment would have cost $90 and with my Medicare Card it cost $0!
Anyway... we had a lovely day out with Steph on Tuesday, as John was working. She took us to a really nice place called Red Rock Creek first where Ant had fun trying to swim against the current and then Steph joined him as they both floated down river. We then went round to the beach which was extremely busy and crowded…not (see pics) we had a lush picnic, went for a swim in the sea AND I even went into a big deep rock pool up to my neck where I could see there were fish!!!! But it was as warm as a bath so I couldn’t resist!
Ant has been doing really well with his Scuba Diving, and he is absolutely loving it! He has done 4 Dives so far and passed his coarse yesterday… I could tell when he came in with a huge smile and announced he was a Qualified Scuba Diver!! He had a bit of trouble popping his ears the first time
he went down but after that he was fine! He said when your down there it’s the most amazing experience, and even though he got a bit sea sick in between dives he still had a great time. Yesterday he saw loads of fish like Lion Fish, Scorpion Fish and even Nemo! John said they saw thousands of fish and about 200 different species! Plus as an extra bonus on the way back they saw about 15 Dolphins swimming by the side of the boat!
On Good Friday we had a very interesting experience at a totally in the middle of nowhere in the mountains... totally uncommercialised gold mine! we were greeted at a falling down wooden hut by a cute dog, a woman and her dad. she made us sausage sarnies on an open fire and then her dad took us on a tour of the mine and surrounding area where they sorted the gold out of the rocks. he was by far the most Australian person we have met so far... is accent or dialect was so strong and he spoke so fast none of us could pick up what he was saying apart from the odd
word! he would be brilliant to use as a speech n language study!!lol
On Saturday we went on a walk from the local Aboriginal centre with an Indigenous ma called Milton... we could understand what he was saying and he took us through the bush telling us all about the different plants and trees and what you can eat, use to cure colds, headaches or as antiseptic. it was very interesting. he also told us about the top 5 poisonous snakes that all lived in the area (tiger snakes, king browns, red belly, death adders plus pythons)... how lovely!
On Saturday afternoon, me John n Ant went to an International Women's Footy match... Australia V Hong Kong. It was only a small stadium in Coffs Harbour with attendence of 1,500 people but it was only about 6quid each and Ant rekons The Aussie Women's team are better then England's Mens squad! It was a canny game with a great Aussie atmosphere and Australia won 15-0!!! Hong Kong were beyond rubbish and never even had a shot... bless them!
Well that’s about it for now… we are still having an amazing time, and will be going to Byron Bay
further up the coast on Tomorrow morning. Happy Easter everyone! Don’t get too full on Chocolate! Have a great weekend.
Chow for now! xxx
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John and Steph
John and Steph
John is really thrilled that you published such a flattering photograph of him without his permission!We will get our own back on our blog site. Enjoy the rest of your trip and don't forget to put the insect repellant on now that you're camping...... Love Steph and John