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Published: August 8th 2007
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Koala
This one is real! We’ve been slowly making our way down the East coast since our last blog. We spent the week over Easter in a place called Noosa. Everyone we met had been saying that we shouldn’t miss it and it was lovely..it was just that it was also the most un-Australian place that we had been in. Very European, with lots of art galleries, cafes and boutique shops. We had a “lazy” week, generally feeling like we were lottery winners - having late breakfasts, swimming in the pool and eating out in the nice restaurants in the evening, not bad at all!
We saw our first Koalas in a conservation centre just outside Brisbane. Unfortunately we only saw the ones that had been bred in captivity. We walked right past the real ones at first thinking they were stuffed animals that had been placed in the trees as they didn’t move at all and have a really vacant look in their eyes - we then spent 5 minutes looking at one that actually was a stuffed toy - very embarrassing! There isn’t much to do in Brisbane itself so we joined the Aussies in the shopping malls. This coast is a lot
Bluetongue Lizard
He didn't want to show us his tongue though more Americanised than we have seen so far, lots of high-rise apartment buildings, out of town shopping malls are everywhere, as is fast food. There has been so much development that many areas now have petitions to stop what has happened in places like Surfers Paradise happening in their area.
We crossed back into New South Wales and had a few nights in Byron Bay. We walked out to Cape Byron, the most easterly part of Oz. It’s quite a trendy town with lots of surfer shops cool bars, many of the shop owners here have obviously been on holiday to Thailand as a lot of the clothes are from the markets in Bangkok but with about a 700% mark up!
A really nice drive was the route called “The Waterfall Way”. Passing through really nice small towns like Bellingen, which has lots of arts and crafts shops. With an area called the “promised land”, we weren’t sure if they were exaggerating (as that tends to happen here!), but it really was very beautiful, a sort of mixture between Scotland and England, with rolling hills and typically English countryside of old oak trees. We walked in the Dorrigo
Spider in Brisbane
Apparently this one is harmless, but I'm still not going anywhere near it! National Park, passing over and behind waterfalls and through sub tropical rainforest. As the name suggests the rest of the drive also passes by many waterfalls including the Ebor Falls, which are one of the highest in Australia. The trees are also starting to turn their autumn colours with lots of reds, yellows and orange emerging.
The further south in NSW we have come things have started to become a lot drier looking more like what we saw when we first arrived. We stopped in at Hunter Valley another wine region to taste the local delights of wine, beer and cheese. We cheated for a night and checked into a guest house, as it was raining and the night before was freezing. The van has been great but not much fun in the rain. It was nice to have our own bathroom and a proper bed, also a TV which was put to good use including getting up at 4.30 am to watch the Man Utd v AC Milan match, lucky me.
And now we are back in Sydney where we started 11 weeks ago and where Wendy had 12,500 less km’s on her clock. Over all I
Sam
Tracing his roots in the town of Maclean, well, the other way round really think we have enjoyed the Sydney to Adelaide part of the trip the best, more varied things to do and see. Lots of great beaches, just as nice as the East coast but also some lovely National Parks and of course it includes the great cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. You really don’t get the feeling that you are in a place of any significant size outside of these three and it was nice to be amongst the hustle and bustle occasionally, as things can get pretty quiet otherwise - understatement of the year!
So, we’re off to New Zealand on the 1st - hopefully we are doing the right thing. When we first planned this we thought we’d enjoy a good winter but over the last week when the temperature has been cooling down here, we are not so sure. Months of sunshine seem to have turned us soft as we are currently wearing our winter clothes just now, even though the Aussies are still going round in shorts and t-shirts!
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Roddy
non-member comment
a long long time ago!
Well, it seems like ages since we were together, I'm chuffed you enjoyed the part that we were together the best!!!! I start a 63 day tour round South America next Saturday so staying in Quito until then, maybe do the Galapagos in the meantime. Missing you guys! xxx