It seems so strange that we are actually going home and it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening! The two months we were here seemed to go so fast, yet places like Airlie Beach seemed like such a long time ago.

Looking back I think I have to say that Airlie Beach, The Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Byron Bay, Darling Harbour and The Rocks were my favourite places. It seems like so many but we did visit over 30 places so in a way it’s not.

I am looking forward to coming home though, despite the fact that it means leaving the summer temperatures for winter. I’m looking forward to the small things like being able to get a cold drink without it turning warm in 5 minutes and NO FLIES. I never mentioned the flies or mosquitoes but they are extremely annoying. At one point in the holiday it looked like I had chicken pox or something because I had been bitten everywhere and it was so unbearably itchy.

Anyway, I guess this is it for my blogs now, so I will see everyone at home soon!

Today we left and went to return our van a day early, although it was shut, so we checked into our hotel early and had a few excited moments of jumping on the bed and running around a bit. It really was exciting, just because we had so much room!

We then headed to The Rocks to the weekend market which was amazing. Every stall was so nice, mainly jewellery and some unusal bits. We spent ages there and then back to the hotel where we have done a bit more wondering and last minute christmas shopping.

Tomorrow will be the same and we will return the van tomorrow..

Only two nights left and then we fly home on tuesday our time at about 6pm. Not so sure i’m looking forward to the flight home but I am looking forward to seeing everyone and christmas!

We then headed to the Rocks, which is described as very old, with cobbled streets and vintage shops and pubs. I enjoyed it here, although there were mostly very pricey souvenir and jewellery shops. Nevertheless there were indeed cobbled streets and old pubs and we spent a lot of our time in a small book shop. Since a couple of weeks ago we have become slightly obsessed with bookshops. Even Sean and everytime we see one we spend ages in it. I’m not really sure why..

So we then headed back to where the boats were and took a cruise around the harbour on a large catamaran. The cruise was an hours tour of some of Sydney’s sights like the Harbour bridge and the Opera house… We saw some very very nice houses during our time on the boat. They were right on the waters edge and if you stepped two steps out your back door you would be in the water. Some had huge glass windows at the whole of the back of the house and many also had private jettys.

We then caught the train back to Town Hall and have nothing planned for this evening. Tomorrow we’re not sure what we will do either, we may go up Sydney tower..

The next day we headed straight off into Sydney. It was a rather stressful time, with the traffic, the stormy weather and my terrible map reading. Anyhow we did manage to find Sydney Harbour bridge and cross it, however we then took a wrong road and crossed it again…the wrong way. So we ended up going a little north of the centre and finding an extremely expensive campsite, where we stopped for the night.

Thankfully the next morning gave us sunshine and we headed back accross the bridge with a little more ease. I managed to guide us through Sydney to the Southwhere we found our next stopping place, for the next week or so. mmm, this campsite is not quite the clean tidy campsite we are used too. It’s more like we are in the middle of a gypsy park, everyone apart from a couple of people have permanent caravans there and there seem to be quite some characters. For example, bird lady who literally has hundreds of birds in cages, everywhere. They are pretty noisy too. The showers dribble water and there seems to be no difference between the cold and hot tap. Oh well, the hotel is going to seem like extreme luxury on the last two nights!

So the first day we were in this campsite we caught a train to Sydney Central. The train station is about a 20 minute walk away, which feels like forever in the intense heat. We spent the day walking around Paddys market, in some underground bit, which kinda makes you feel like you’re not in Australia but somewhere like China..and then headed to Darling Harbour. Ahhhhhh. I love it there. I have decided its my favourite place in Sydney so far and I don’t think anywhere will beat it. Everything is so clean and theres water features everywhere which little kids run or swim in. It’s a place only for pedestrains or little trains etc and has street entertainers and stuff like that. There is also a large shopping centre called Harbourside and an imax and other stuff like the aquarium and wildlife centre.

We spent ages here and then headed back to the campsite..The next day (today) we caught the train to Bondi Junction and then the bus to Bondi beach. Sean hired a surfboard while I sunbathed for a couple of hours. Bondi is nice, with lots of little cafes and surf shops here and there. We then caught the train back but got off at Town Hall and walked to Darling Harbour again! We went to the imax which is a 3D cinema with the biggest screen in the world. Now when I say big I mean big! Words can’t describe the size of this beast. We watched an underwater film which lasted about 50 minutes. To be honest it was pretty much all about sardines but it was very impressive and I closed my eyes a couple of times when the sharks came so close to your face.

Well thats everything for now, but plenty more to come as we still have the blue mountains and maybe a cruise around the harbour and Sydney tower.

Until then…

Well, I can’t even remember where I last spoke about but nothing too exciting has happened I dont think. We have mostly been revisiting places such as Port Macquarie and Tea Gardens which is where we are now.

The next day at Byron we did hire a surfboard, which Sean spent the whole time on. For me there were far too many surfers and I wasn’t really up for learning in front of them, but I did catch a wave lying on it which was fun enough for me.

The next morning we went round Byrons monthly market which happened to be right outside our campsite, which was quite cool, but it then decided to rain so we ran back to the van and headed back down the coast to our next stopping point, which was Moonee Beach where we had previously stayed. We did a bit of shopping here but not much else, it was a nice campsite so we were quite happy just sitting around.

I can’t really remember what came next but it was probably South West Rocks which was new to us. It said in the travel guide that it was Byron Bays twin, although I didn’t really see it. The town was small and mainly packed with cafes, but the beach looked nice. Unfortunately the weather didn’t quite hold out and we were stuck in our campervan for most of the time, apart from the time we went to the tv room, which was a novelty for us!

Next we moved on to Port Macquarie and now we are in Tea Gardens. I’m not going to mention anything because I wrote it all last time we were here.

The plan now is to stay around here for a night then spend a night a little bit further down, maybe on a beach called The Entrance and then the next day to go to Sydney! Where we may spend one night in a campsite and the next day go inland a little bit to the Blue Mountains.

We didn’t really do a great deal in Noosa and the next day we moved on early to Australia Zoo a.k.a Steve Irwins Zoo. We got there fairly early so we could spend the whole day there and it really was an enjoyable day out.

There were sooo many crocs there and we watched a good show in a huge stadium/arena type thing with an enclosure in the middle. The show consisted of snakes, loads of birds and crocs. Throughout the show people would walk around with snakes or birds or baby crocs. They also set loads of birds free around the arena like parrots and stuff so they would fly really close to you.

The best bit was probably the croc at the end, where there were two men in the pen with it. Inside the pen was a large pool of water, so once the croc entered the pen it went into the water until the men tried to disturb it with vibrations. They would make the croc come out of the water and chase the men for food. It was quite exciting cos it’s the kind of thing you would see Steve Irwin do on TV. I guess he used to do the shows himself if he was ever around at the zoo.

There were so many memorials for Steve at the zoo as well, there was an area full of boards with khaki t-shirts with loads of messages on and another section full of letters and pictures, drawings etc for his family in glass cabinets.

I don’t really know what else to say about the zoo apart from we saw some cool animals like tigers and we got to feed loads of kangaroos in kangaroo heaven and stroke a koala. Oh yeah, there was a kids section with loads of little farm yard animals and there were some really cute piglets in a pen. They were really playful and would fight each other. I think Sean liked them best and he’s decided he wants one to house train.

From the zoo we headed down to Brisbane although we didn’t actually end up going into the CBD and went straight to Southbank, which is the southern bit of Brisbane in the Inner City. I really liked it here even though we only stopped for an hour before our parking ticket ran out. Everything was extremely clean and new and it was right on Brisbane river. It also had a big lagoon a bit like in Airlie, but we didn’t have time to swim in it. Unfortunately there were no campsites anywhere near Southbank so we had what would have been a 20 minute drive south of Brisbane had it not been for very bad rush hour traffic.

The campsite office was shut when we got there, but there were still people in it because we were about 3 minutes late so they opened up for us.

There was nothing to do around the campsite and we left for Surfers the next morning. Again we drove through the cbd because it’s so built up and hectic to drive through and we headed down a bit from there to Tweed Heads. Again we did nothing exciting here, just went late night shopping in a mall..

This morning we left Tweed Heads and headed to Nimbin which is a hippy town a little bit west of Byron Bay.

The town is literally full of hippys everywhere just chilling out in the few shops or cafes there are. We didn’t stay for long, as there’s not loads to do there. We walked round the shops and it took us about 10 minutes to walk around the town about twice. We went into a little funny museum too and then headed to Byron Bay which is where we are now. For some reason whenever we have been in Bryon it has rained which is so annoying because there is a nice beach here. We are going to stay here a couple of days and hopefully rent out a surfboard if the weather gets a little nicer.

The next morning we headed straight to Rainbow Beach, where we checked into our hostel that was complimentary with our Fraser trip. The hostel was full of backpackers..obviously and everyone that was going on the Fraser trip were all there. That night was so nice, we had a dorm to ourselves and had a powerful air con which we left on all day. We also had a briefing the day before our trip to tell us all the details etc which was good cos you got to meet everyone going on the trip with you before you actually left. There were 21 people, so there were two 4×4 cars going out. We got split into our two groups and had to go shopping together to buy all our food for the trip. That was quite boring to be honest, everyone wanted different things so I just hung around in the background waiting for them all to decide.

So the day of the trip we had a free breakfast in the morning and all had to be ready by 9am. We were taken out to the cars, which were in a garage at the back of the hostel. We had more talks and had to check EVERYTHING. We loaded up the car and off we went. We had a short drive to the ferry which took us over to the Island. We were given a strict itinerary which we had to stick to otherwise we wouldn’t be covered by insurance.

Our first stop was the famous Lake Mackenzie, which I was most looking forward to seeing. We had to drive over some extremely bumpy roads which wasn’t very fun. Most of the time we couldn’t exceed 20km because it would damage the car.. Well we arrived at Lake Mackenzie, which was so amazing. It was like Silica beach in the Whitsundays. The sand was so white it looked like snow and the water was so clear. The lake itself was pretty big and a few people from the group swam really far out. The water was pretty cold, although once you were in it was ok.

I should say before we left for Fraser we were given lots of warnings..

1. watch out for dingoes (they are like dogs and foxes)..if we saw one (which we would they said) we had to cross our arms in front of our chest.

2. if you saw snakes stay still and stamp your feet…

3. do not go in the sea

4. lots and lots of rules about the car and if we did ANY of them we would be fined..

Well..

1. we saw dingoes and they looked prettyyy harmless. They would run away from you most of the time or just roll about in the sand.

2. We didn’t see snakes, but spiders…yes. They gave us no warning on them…big big spiders and goannas.

3. Most people went in the sea, we did see sting rays but they were further out..

4. Our car was fine in the end and we had no charges, although it seems lots of people do get fined for things like saltwater damage to the engine etc..so i guess we were sensible or something.

We saw our first dingo at Lake Mackenzie. People from other tours had obviously had the same warnings about them and everyone stopped and started shouting DINGO! and pointing. It was quite funny really cos there was just this little dog like animal walking around the beach, and everyone is waiting for it to attack someone. Well it didnt, it just ran off.

From Lake Mackenzie we went to a National Park, which is where we were staying for the night, although on arrival we found out it was shut because of danger of falling trees or something. So we had to drive all the way back to a little town called Eurong which had a few little shops and a pay phone. Sean called the organisers and they told us to camp on the nearest stretch of beach we could. So we did exactly this and set our 8 tents up in a circle, had supper and just generally chatted to other people etc..

The next day we couldn’t drive until 12 because of the tide. Oh I forgot to say Fraser Island is a sand Island, therefore the roads are the beaches, which can get tricky at times. The sand by the sea is harder and therefore much easier to drive on, although you can’t actually go near the water in case of saltwater damage and if you drive on the soft sand you can easily get stuck or ‘bogged’ then everyone has to get out and push and move sand etc..Luckily we had two good drivers and we only got stuck once. Although we saw so many other cars get stuck, including the other group with us who got stuck quite a few times.

So we spent the morning on the beach, sunbathing and Sean skim boarded for most of the morning.

Next we went back to Eurong to get supplies and more ice and then headed off to Eli Creek, which was so nice. It’s a longish freshwater river with quite a strong current. We walked along a boardwalk thing to the top of the river and got in and let the current take us back. The water was so cold but it was really fun, it reminded me a bit of a lazy river.

We then headed to Indian Head which was as far up the East side of the Island as we were allowed, although on the way we stopped off at the shipwreck Mohino. That was really cool, although it’s wearing away really quickly because of tourists climbing on it and stuff.

So off to Indian Head, where we had a steep walk up a hill to a lookout point which consisted of a steep cliff edge with lots of rocks and stuff. It is supposed to be a good lookout for sharks and whales etc although we only saw turtles and stingrays.

Next we headed back to our campsite which was called k’gari aboriginal camp, which is run by aboriginals. They had a large shelter which we all set up tents under and slept there with thick mattresses! This campsite was really cool, although it had hugeee spiders and bats. We had a nice campfire, which had benches around the outside and all sat out under the stars which were extremely bright.

The next day we couldn’t leave till 12.30 although because we had to be at the ferry back by 3.30 we left at 12 and headed to Lake Wabby. We parked outside a walking track and were told it took half an hour to walk to the lake. Sean and I lead the way and made it after 35 tiring minutes. The Lake was emerald green and was surrounded by a massive sand dune. We had a quick swim but couldn’t hang around because we had to catch our ferry. Lots of people from our group didn’t bother to go because they didn’t think they would make it back in time. Anyway we did and we just made it to the ferry port at 3.25 to watch it leave. However, we caught it 20 minutes later.

On arrival back to our hostel the car was checked over and everything was fine, we spent another complimentary night in the hostel and today headed over to Noosa Heads. Loads of people from the trip caught the greyhound bus over here and are staying in a hostel the next road to our campsite.

Tomorrow we will probably head to Brisbane. I can’t put photos up now because Sean is getting restless. That’s also the reason why this is so rushed.

Anyway we headed off back down the highway on the longest most boring part of the journey. It’s boring because there is nothing to see except sugarcane fields and we hardly go through any towns. However we did have a slight bit of excitment when our van and other cars around us got pulled over into a layby by some police officers. They were doing a routine check up of cars and Sean had to show his licence and have a breathaliser. Well he passed and we carried on, arriving at Carmilla beach a bit later on.

We didn’t plan to stay on the beach, however we came across a free campsite with a couple of older campers there so decided it was suitable for the night. The beach was quite strange because the tide was right out and we decided to walk to the sea which took about 20 maybe more minutes to get to. Along the way we found so many weird creatures, like a huge snail with a big eye and loads of weird crabs that disapear down the sand in seconds. We also came across some dead jellyfish and some weird starfish that we thought were actually just shells that looked like a slice of banana, but they kept burying themselves into the sand so we realised that they were actually living.

The next day we headed to Yeppoon, which is right by the Keppel Islands. We didn’t visit here on the way up and had wanted to so thought it was a good stopping place for the evening. We found a campsite which was nothing special, but was again on the beach and near a town so was in a good location.

In Oz there is this thing called Schoolies week, where all the kids that have just finished school go to a place like Airlie or Yeppoon or loads of other places and basically just party for a week. Airlie was swapped with kids for schoolies week when we left and there were a few in Yeppoon, although nothing like as many in Airlie. Well our campervan site ended up being between all the schoolies tents and we both thought the same thing, ‘oh god’ although it ended up being extremely amusing as they were all very friendly and came and introduced themselves to us. We ended up talking to them for ages and they constantly asked us if we had this or that in England. One girl asked if we had kangaroos and koalas and was amazed to find out we didn’t!

What I found out through talking to them is that hardly any of them actually go abroad, one guy had only just been out of Queensland twice, one time was just going round a roundabout because half was in Queensland and half was not! They then asked me where I had been abroad and were amazed that I had been to lots of other places, even though I explained that Europe is all very close together and that England doesn’t have everything like Australia does. It’s very weird to think that I have probably seen more of Australia than most of the people we spoke to last night, even though i’m from the other side of the world.

So we had an enjoyable afternoon with them as they were all extremely funny and kept Sean and I well amused. We then left this morning and made it down to Gladstone where we are now. Gladstone seems to be a large town with beaches and shops etc..We are hoping to find a campsite a little lower down to make our journey tomorrow a bit shorter.

Our next stop will be Hervey Bay and then to Rainbow beach the next night where we have a free night in a hostel before our trip to Fraser Island on Saturday, which we are looking forward to lotssss.

Last night everyone from Apollo met up in a bar in Airlie Beach, where they ordered loads of dominos pizzas for us. It was just a chance to talk to everyone again on dry land. It was a good evening and I quite wished that they had done it before the trip because it was easier to talk to everyone instead of just a couple of people.

Our plan now is to leave Airlie beach today and head back down towards Fraser Island for our 3 day 2 night trip. Our first stop will be Mackay again and will aim to get to Fraser for Thursday.

Apollo

We boarded and immediately got given our beds. The beds were little bunks all around the whole of the boat..

Bunk Beds Aboard Apollo

So we set off to our first destination which was Silica Bay. There were some fairly strong winds coming from the North as well as other winds, which meant we werent able to take the normal route because we needed to shelter the boat from the strong winds. This meant that we didn’t get to go to Whitehaven Beach, although the crew said that Silica Bay is the nicest place to go and that they never get to go there because the winds are not usually like they were. We did pass Whitehaven beach on our second day though and it looked pretty similar just 10 times bigger.

Silica Bay

Silica Bay

We were taken to the beach by the boats tender ‘Apollo 2′! which is a little dingy on the back. The beach was really amazing, the water was so clear and in parts very very hot. It was the temperature of a bath! Everyone had one free dive each, which came with the trip, however I didn’t do mine because it’s something that i’m really not keen on doing. Sean did it though and he seemed to enjoy it, although I did see sting rays just while walking through the water. Instead of diving I just sat on the beach, which has the purest sand in the world apparantly. After about half an hour the tide had come right in and the huge stretch of sand I was on disappeared completely. I had loads of peoples stuff because they had all gone snorkelling so i had to lug it back and forth to different parts of sand and then again when it disappeared again. In the end there was a tiny bit of sand left which everyone had moved to because it was a bit higher up.

That night we moved to a more sheltered bay, with lots of other boats and had our supper and played uno and poker with a group of people from the boat. Everyone was very friendly and there was a mixture of nationalities, german, dutch, irish, italian etc..there were also two english guys on the boat, one of which we got talking to in the evening and we found out he was from Southsea and has just been accepted into the police force there! Well we were all pretty amazed about how close we actually lived, yet we are on the other side of the world. The crew were all very friendly and funny too, there were four men, this included the chef as well.

My favourite was the Italian guy who really was very funny. I know Sean mentioned him in his blog but he deserves a mention in mine too. He liked to take lots and lots of photos, he would run up and down the boat taking pictures of people, the boat, the water, the sun, anything he could really. Before the trip had even started he was taking pictures of a girl he didn’t know collecting her stinger suit, at first Sean and I both thought that he was some kind of photographer that took pictures of the trip then we all looked at them after, but he certainly wasn’t. He reminded us loads of Borat for some reason, he would stand on the boat with his chin up high and his arms pulled right back looking out into the sea. His dancing was also very entertaining, he would stand with his hands on his bunbag and wiggle his hips while nodding his head.

Anyway that night I slept pretty well despite the fact I was squashed between Sean a wall and a very very low ceiling and when I woke up in the morning, we were already moving.

Day 2: We headed to another place which has amazing snorkelling, but there wasn’t really much of a beach. The little tender dropped us off in the middle and everyone set of snorkelling. Seeing as i’m not really too keen of deep dark water I wasn’t exactly confortable being there. I immediately wanted to get to shore, which was a fair way off and already had taken in a fair amount of sea water. I slowly headed to the rocks, still without looking at what was really beneath me and made it, where I hung out with the hermit crabs and other stuff…After a while I realised I would still have to go back to get the boat so slowly I started snokelling in the shallow end and headed out where a canadian girl shouted ‘have you seen the turtle?’ I said no, as I hadn’t really been looking and she shouted back, ‘it’s underneath you’..I wasn’t really sure how to take this news but I thought I had to look otherwise I would look like an idiot. Yep, there it was, just below me and I have to say it was really amazing to watch. It was so so big and was just cruising along while other snorkellers quickly made their way over to swim with it.

Once I had got used to the idea of breathing underwater I could see why they said it was amazing snorkelling. There were so many fish everywhere, all different colours and sizes etc and they didn’t bother swimming away from you, instead they would swim right by you.

After lunch they gave us the choice of going to another good snorkelling spot or going to a resort with a pool and bar. Well the resort won! We spent the rest of the day there, Sean and I hogging the pool for a reasonably long time. We saw a huge goanna which was pretty cool.

From there we went to another little bay which was sheltered from the winds again, where we slept the night.

At some point along the journey we saw another boat which apparantly had a very nutty skipper. They ended up singing a singing us a song to which we got taught a song ‘suck my balls’ which we sung back to them, while a few boys started mooning them. Just after our song a group of dolphins appeared by the other boat, which was pretty cool.

Day 3: Well everyone was pretty tired because of the unbearable heat we had to put up with in the cabin at night time. Sean and I were so hot we had to move up outside the boat to cool down, it was probably everyones sunburn radiating out.

Anyway we headed to our last destination which was a huge stretch of sand out in the middle of the sea, so we got dropped there by the tender and had a wonder around. Most people went snorkelling, although I had developed some kind of problem in my back since the morning which has gradually got worse, so I couldn’t snorkel because it was too painful. Hopefully it will be better after a good sleep. I did however hang out with the hermit crabs again, as they are quite funny creatures. I spent most of my time poking it and watching it come back out while Sean snorkelled with everyone else. I did however see another huge turtle while we were in the tender. It came up for air and tilted its head right back and took a huge breath, it was quite funny. I also saw little sharks swimming around some snorkellers which was also cool.

From here we headed back to the marina and ended up racing another boat just before we got back. This was quite exciting as we were so far behind them to begin with and ended up beating them.

So that was our trip in summary..all the islands were amazing and the water was so clear. It’s impossible for someone that hasn’t been there to really understand what it’s like and the photos don’t really do it justice, but anyway i will put photos up tomorrow on here..