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Published: November 10th 2007
I arrive in Australia exactly half a year after leaving the UK. I fly into Sydney to stay with a couple of old friends from London, Tim and Emma, who’ve been living here for the last few years. Like New Zealand, Australia feels very familiar and similar to the UK, except for the far superior climate, long beaches, and good food. My first weekend in Australia is very comfortable, finally swapping dorm rooms for a room in my friend’s house and meeting lots of their friends at a barbecue by the beach (Yes, Aussies really do have BBQs all the time!)
I spend a few days exploring Sydney, and I especially like the impressive Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and taking the ferry across the harbour to Manly. I also meet up with some other old friends - Sharon and Sally, former work colleagues from Manchester, and an old neighbour, John, who I haven’t seen for 20 years, all of whom have lived in Sydney now for a few years.
Tim has some rare time off work, and so we plan to head up the East coast together for a couple of weeks. Like travelling
with Hywel in Malaysia, travelling with Tim in Australia is easy and fun because we already know each other. Tim has some friends who live on the Gold Coast at Burleigh Heads, so that is our first stop. They’ve just bought a huge new house with its own pool. We spend the day at the beach and the evening at the house and have a BBQ dinner.
Next morning we set off as true backpackers. I’m low on cash by this point in my trip and want to save as much money as possible. Tim agrees to do the backpacker thing, and we get a cheap bus up the coast. But Aussies never travel by bus; they usually fly or drive or take the train. So the bus experience is nothing authentic like it may have been in India or Indonesia, it is just time spent with other travellers. After a long day on the bus, we reach our destination, Hervey Bay, and book ourselves onto a Fraser Island self-drive trip.
The trip starts early the next day, as we are allocated a group for the event. Tim and I will join another 30-something
English guy, Dave, and eight 20-year-old girls, an unsurprising mix of English, Irish and Dutch. The 11 of us will share a four wheel drive for the next 3 days and take turns in driving. We load up our 4WD with tents, gas stoves, food, drink and alcohol and head for the boat over to Fraser Island. The boat takes about an hour, and then we begin driving across the world’s largest sand island to its eastern coast. As we reach the east coast beach, I take over the driving, not mentioning to the others that it’s the first time I’ve driven for a few years. My reintroduction to driving is fairly smooth, driving on the left as I’m used to, but down a beach which I’m not used to and my first traffic to negotiate is an aeroplane which flies in to my right and lands just ahead of me, which is a totally new experience!
We spend the afternoon at the beautiful Lake Mackenzie and the group start to gel. The English girls are already drinking beer, which doesn’t surprise us. We meet up with 2 other 4WD groups that set off with us, and
we all camp in the same area. We have a BBQ dinner. There’s a lot of drinking games, as seems customary for backpackers in Australia, and then some wandering around down by the sea in the moonlight.
Day 2 on Fraser begins with a visit to Eli Creek, the largest stream on the island, and the huge shipwreck of the Maheno. We continue north up the island to Indian Head for great views all the way back down the island and this is where we spot an eagle ray out to sea (or possibly a drifting black bin bag). We also see whales, and we are more sure of this, as we can see them spraying at regular intervals. We attempt to reach the champagne pools, but the sand tracks are bad and we get stuck behind several stranded vehicles. We give up after some arguing, find a place to camp for the night, and spend a relaxing afternoon playing football by the sea and cooking dinner as it goes dark. We seem to be safe from dingoes here, but still have to be careful not to leave any food around to attract them.
On our last day on Fraser we finally make it to the beautiful champagne rock pools and then stop at the stunning Lake Wabby on the way back to the island port. And then it is all over and we return by boat to the mainland.
We’re on a tight schedule, so Tim and I are immediately on an uncomfortable overnight bus to Airlie Beach. Once there, we enjoy a day in the town and book another 3 day trip, this time on a tall ship around the Whitsunday Islands. We decide not to go for a party boat, having had enough of “youngsters” on Fraser, and we choose something more relaxed. Unfortunately, we end up with 4 honeymoon couples and a retired couple. There’s just 2 other single people on the boat, Johnnie and Johannes, so the 4 of us end up hanging out for the 3 days. The ship, the Derwent Hunter, is a beautiful boat and, when there is enough wind to actually sail, a few of us get to help put up the sails. Tim has done this before many times but its all new to me. It’s a lovely experience to sail
amongst these beautiful islands in a tall ship with it’s huge sails billowing in the wind. We stop at a white sand beach for the afternoon and have a quick swim. But we have to wear stinger suits to protect ourselves from the box jellyfish and we look ridiculous! In the evening, the skipper gives us a guide to the southern hemisphere night sky, and we can see Jupiter and we learn to recognise Scorpio and Sagittarius.
The following day is my 34th birthday and I have a lovely, relaxing day. We spend the morning on the boat sailing, lunchtime on the silicon white sands of Whitehaven Beach, and the afternoon snorkelling at Mackerel Bay, at what is the most colourful and most diverse coral I have seen on the whole trip.
Back on the boat, the on-board cook has made me a birthday cake and we all eat cake and cream as the sails go up again and we head to the south of Hook Island. After dinner the deckhand gives us a talk on fish and then as most of the passengers head to bed, Tim, Johnnie, Johannes and I have a
few beers on deck to celebrate my birthday. It is not a big, crazy celebration though, and we’re in bed by 11pm. I guess I’m getting old.
Tim and I are woken next morning by cockroaches dropping on our heads. Nice. We get up and watch the sunrise. The crew are still sleeping. As the day gets going, we have breakfast and then go for another snorkel, again in our lovely stinger suits. And then it is time for lunch and the trip is over and we sail back to Airlie Beach. Tim has fully had enough of being a backpacker and flies back to Sydney that evening to his wife and normality, while I take a bus next morning up to Cairns.
Cairns is not a very special city and is full of English and Irish. And some Koreans. There don’t appear to be too many Australians. The reason I’m here, though, is not for the town but to go out to the Great Barrier Reef. I go with the Silver Swift boat out to the outer edge of the reef and have a fantastic day. I see 3 turtles, loads of massive
Maori Wrasse, 2m long angel fish, giant clams and even a reef shark! Being under water is such a soothing, peaceful way to pass time, just listening and watching. Unbeatable.
But I’m tired now. After so many months of travelling, and seeing so many things, I have lost enthusiasm to do any more. So I don’t do any more of the “must-see” trips from Cairns. I spend a few quiet days in Cairns sunbathing by the lagoon, learning about Japan and Japanese and about hiragana and katakana and kanji from a very nice Japanese lady called Fumie, and then I fly down to Melbourne to see some more friends.
I go to stay with Cristiano, a guy I met trekking in Nepal. He’s really kind and gives me my own room and lets me stay a few days. Cristiano lives near St Kilda's beach, which is a cool part of town. I cycle everywhere in Melbourne, and also meet up with James, my first travelling companion from Goa, and with Sham, a friend I met in Vietnam. At the weekend I move to Hywel’s place, and we go out Friday night in the city
to celebrate his birthday and he shows some cool little bars and we drink Staropramen for old times sake. It certainly is cooler than Sydney, a lot more European and much friendlier. But somehow, it feels just too much like Manchester for me to want to live there right now!
On Saturday morning we hire a car, and drive down the Great Ocean Road, one of the most scenic drives in the world. It feels good to be driving again, and another step back towards normality. We stop for tea and scones (how very British) by a lighthouse and then continue on to our destination, Hywel's girlfriend's parent's holiday home. It's a really nice place, with a big veranda over looking the sea. From there we head into the forest and I see lots of wild koalas and kangaroos!!!
We spend Sunday walking near Lorne, get a bit lost, but find a great little place in the hills called Swallow Cave with a gentle waterfall alongside it. It's great weather too, bright and sunny, and we head up to the Castle Rock viewpoint overlooking the coast, and then drop back down through the woods and as we loop back to the car I'm extremely lucky to spot an echidna hiding in the bushes. Back at the house we put on the TV and see that England lost the rugby final. Disappointing but hardly a surprise. Then we drive back to Melbourne.
And the following day I fly back to Sydney to stay with Tim again.... And, despite having had other plans originally, I'm still here!!
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eva from lysa nad labem
non-member comment
jezis marja
ahoj paule, paaaani, to mas pekny dobrodruzstvi. jak to tak tady posloucham, tak dost anglicanu se sebere a jede se nekam vyvencit kolem sveta.lol.no aspon ze na to mate.ja usetrim tak akorat na dovolenou v chorvatsku.lol. tak kdy planujes navrat?ze by ses za mnou zaskocil mrknout do scarborough, to je taky dobrodruzstvi, ver mi.lol.je to krasny mesto a docela sem si tu uz zvykla. i kdyz nektery veci me na anglicanech a anglii jeste furt dostavaj. lol. a staropramen tu maj taky, ale neda se to s nasim staropramenem vubec srovnat. chybi mi gambrinus za 20 korun a poradny jidlo. snazim se tu varit cesky jidla a pect, ale vetsinou to ztroskota na tom, ze nesezenu to, co na to potrebuju. mela bych tu byt do cervna nejmene, asi jeste zustanu pracovat pres leto, abych vydelala nejaky penize zpatky, co sem do toho vrazila.takze doufam, ze to stihnes se za mnou prijet podivat. mej se krasne a uzivej cestovani. ja bych chtela pres leto procestovat anglii a scotsko. mej se, evca