Christchurch

I'm not sure why I'm having such bad luck with transport at the moment. I suppose some of it is my own fault. I completly forgot to book the bus to the airport from my hostel so I had to sort myself out on the train. It wasn't that much worse, it was just an extra 20 mins walk. With all my stuff.I went for a quiet drink with some mates the night before my flight, left early because I knew I had to catch a train at 5.30am. I got a few hours sleep and set off at early o'clock so that I wouldn't miss my flight. As it happened, my flight missed me. It's not a nice feeling turning up at an airport to see CANCELLED next to your flight. Apparently Christchurch was "foggy" so I had to wait another 4 hours to fly to Auckland and then wait there for another 3 hours to fly back to Christchurch. I also, of course, never bothered to book a hostel before I left, so I've ended up staying a place called Cokers. It's a bit like a cross between an Amsterdam coffee shop and Fawlty Towers. Anywho, the last few days of ridiculous journeys, late nights and early mornings have finally caught up with me and I feel rubbish. I have decided to write off today and do nothing but get an early night. Christchurch can wait until tomorrow.

Oh and to cap it all I have an infected ingrown toenail which is gross.

NO! SLEEP! TIL BRISBANE!!

Well some sleep, but I'll get to that. Basically if anyone reading this ever wants to travel by Greyhound Australia, please be aware they break down. A lot. I was supposed to leave Airlie Beach yesterday at 11.15. However, the bus got stuck in 2nd gear which is not really much use to me. I ended up getting bored waiting so I went to find the last 2 stragglers from Team Spring Break (Pete and John) left (stuck) in Airlie Beach. We hit the jugs to pass the time until 6pm when I finally could start my marathon journey to Brisbane. I finally arrived here about 1pm. Yes that's right. A 19 hour bus journey. On a broken seat. You can imagine how good a mood I am in. I slept, but only for about 40 minutes tops at a time. You sleep, but there's no rest.

Anyways. Here I am in Brisbane booked into "Somewhere to Stay"
on Tim Kelleway's recommendation. I'm hoping to find the Swiss lassies from Spring Break who are staying around here somewhere so that I can give Australia a "Goon Slapping" send off. Next post should be from Christchurch barring any nightmare scenarios involving me oversleeping.

Whitsundays, Dolphins and Torrential Rain

Happy Australia Day everybody!! Yesterday I got back from my trip to the Whitsunday Islands. These are a small island group just off of the Australia mainland. They are World Heritage listed and are generally regarded as some of the best beaches in the world. I was on a 3 day sailing trip on a boat called the Tallarook 3. As I have said before, the success of these kind of things tends to rely on how the group gets on and once again we were lucky. We had a good group of people and an excellent crew so we had won the first battle.

Our trip started with a ride out to the islands and pulling up for dinner. The food was fantastic. Goodness know how our chef managed to make brilliant food for 24 people using only a barbeque on a boat, but she did it. We visited the famous Whitehaven Beach, which is the beach you'll see on all the postcards from the Whitsundays. It's really impressive, the sand is incredibly fine, so fine that it's practically death to any electronic equipment. This was cool, but for me, a number of other things were more impressive than the beaches. I have rekindled my love of SCUBA diving.

I did 2 proper certified dives off of the boat. I had forgotton how amazing it is to be underwater swimming around with the fishes. I can't remember the names of all the fish I saw, but the colours on some of them where incredible, they looked like luminous marker pens. I also saw a turtle, just hanging around chilling on the coral ignoring us completely. He was very cool. I am thinking I would like to do some more diving over in New Zealand or in Fiji, but I'll see how it goes

The other thing that happened was pretty special. We had 3 dolphins swimming in the current of the boat, playing around for about 10 minutes. This is pretty much unheard of on a boat our size especially for the length of time they were there. I have never seen anything like this, they were so cool. Obviously just showing off because they kept looking up at us to make sure we were still watching them. They basically grabbed a free ride off of us and got pulled along by the boat, jumping and playing around until they got bored and swam off. The captain said there must be someone pretty special on this boat. I can only assume he was talking about me. Despite the rain, the crappy toilet and the fact that we had to wear really attractive stinger suits to swim, I had a excellent time. All in all a pretty good trip.

I am back in Airlie Beach now where I have found some other members of Team Spring Break. The rain here has been biblical for the last couple of days. It's still raining now. But it's so warm it's like taking a shower, outside. I leave for Brisbane tomorrow then I fly on to New Zealand so this might be my last post from Australia. Or maybe not. Not that it really matters. Ok I should go now.

Airlie Beach

I am now in Airlie Beach, waiting to get on my sail boat to go round the Whitsunday Islands. I don't have time to put up any pictures right now, but I will update the post below when I get back. I am lucky enough to be on a boat with one girl that was in our Spring Break Fraser tour, so I'm not completely alone. However we have both had to go to the doctors for various whinging pom reasons. My feet have swollen and Sarah has a gammy ear. Other than that I have 3 days of sailing and SCUBA diving (they have reissued my Open Water License SCORE!) to look forward to. Photos when I get back I promise.

SPRING BREAK!

I arrived in Hervey Bay Brownieless, but having had 2 seats to myself on the bus. It turned out that 2 people on that bus with me were in my Fraser Island camping group. For those of you who don't already know, here's some information about Fraser. It is the largest sand island in the world and it is World Heritage listed. The island is home to many freshwater lakes, such as Lake Wabby and Lake Mckenzie. Mckenzie is (apparently) one of the top rated beaches in the world (even though it's a lake!) and it is particularly beautiful, but more of this later. I was booked to do a 3 day and 2 night 4x4 self-drive camping trip on the island. Basically this meant that I was put in a group with 7 other people, given a load of tents and stoves and shipped off over to the island.

The problem with these trips is that often how good they are is governed by how you get on with the other people in your group. We were incredibly lucky. There were 2 groups of us leaving on the same day and we all seemed to get on pretty well. Somehow we managed to acquire 2 chefs (one French, one Italian) who were a constant source of amusement ("anymore French... is impossible!). We bought all our food (and booze) and the next morning we were ready for our briefing. I can't begin to describe how funny and terrifying this briefing was. The old guy basically showed us videos and pictures of dead backpackers who hadn't followed his advice ("IF YOU DO NOT LISTEN TO ME YOU WILL GO HOME IN A HELICOPTAAAAH") and told us all these scare stories about how easy it is to die ("FROM THE MOMENT YOU ARRIVE THE ISLAND WILL BE TRYING TO KILL YOU"). The main beach on the island doubles as a beach, 70Kmh road, an airstrip and a deathtrap. He told us how there are 25 creeks and traps on the island which, if we drove in the wrong place, would certainly kill us ("IF YOU HIT THE FIRST ONE, YOU WILL NOT HIT THE SECOND ONE! YOU WILL DIIIEE!"). So suitably scared we set off for the ferry.

Our first stop on day one was Lake Mckenzie (a freshwater lake often used by FHM to take pictures of pretty ladies rolling in sand). Unfortunately this was to be our last stop for the day. After waiting 6 years to drive on Fraser Island, my turn came around, I reversed out of the parking space to find that the steering on the car had somehow got completely buggered. No worries we thought, a few extra hours at one of the most beautiful places on earth. Long story short, the mechanic couldn't find us and we had to wait overnight for him. The other group waited with us and we had a huge bonding session over some excellent (but not good enough for our chefs - "so sorry, for bolognaise, this is not bolgnaise, so sorry.") Spagetti Bolognaise. I managed to achieve the nickname "Big Dog" due to my (lack of) skill at catching a ball. Our French Chef was renamed "The Dingo Whisperer" because he would creep up to them whilst they growled and barked, saying "dingo? dingo? dingo?". We camped out on the beach and saw the sun come up over one of the world's most beautiful lakes, something pretty unique because you are not allowed to camp there, but we had no choice because we were stranded.

The next day our Bush Mechanics brought us over a new car and did a Mcguyver job on ours so they could get it back to the mainland. They also told us that we could get a free night on the island as we had been stuck for so long and wasted a day. We headed up the 75 mile beach past the Maheno shipwreck which in its day was one of the largest passenger ships in the world (and the fastest). We camped up at a place called Waddy point where we had too much beer and lots of rain. Some of us ended up getting drenched as we put everyone elses stuff in the dry(er) vans, so we stood outside in the wet for an hour. Some others (no names John) spent their time showing poor terrified Swiss girls things they should never have to see.

The next day we drove South down the Beach to Champagne pools where the sea washes over the rocks to fill pools of water full of bubbles. Hanging onto the rocks as the waves crash over was fun, but most of us came away with cuts and bruises, but it was all worth it. We then drove on down to Indian Head which is an outcrop of rocks where you can look out to see and on somedays see sharks. Which we did. No idea what kind of sharks, but they were there swimming around, waiting for some dumb backpacker to fall to their death. Other people saw Manta-Rays and turtles, I think I saw a turtle, but I'm not 100% certain.

This was our last night camping and we camped in a site just off of the beach where we built a contender for the best bush camp ever (we couldn't have done this without Knotty's expert knot tying), by using the tarps to keep the rain and wind off and sleeping underneath in the open air. This was drier and cooler than any of the rubbish tents we were supplied with! We drank the rest of our booze and passed out under the tarps ready for our last day.

We ended our trip by visiting Lake Wabby, a greener lake than McKenzie (for complicated science reasons) where we all risked "SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH" by running down the steep sand dunes into the shallow water. After the 40 minute walk back to the 4x4 we headed back to the ferry and then back to Hervey Bay.

All in all it's one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and we were lucky enough to be able to do it without a guide (set to change in the next few months, no more unaccompanied groups because of deaths). Made extra special because we all got on and everyone mucked in. Seemed a shame that we have all gone our separate ways, but we'll always have "New York, NEW YORK!".

Seriously Dude, Where's Brownie?

Right, I've got a lot to get through, so I'm going to split this up. Firstly, as some of you already know, Brownie has decided to go back to England. As far as I know he arrived safe and sound, although he hasn't let me know yet (hint hint). I know you all may have questions about why he went etc., but please address them to him. Let me say, No, we didn't fall out, Yes I am fine on my own and yes, I am going to miss him (ahhhh).

Anyways, enough of that, here's what happened on our last night. Brownie and I decided to go to the bar dressed in our football shirts (Ashton RIP) and ended up looking so "Brits Abroad" it was ridiculous. Apart from the socks we looked in full kit. We had a good night out and then caught a bus at 4.15am to Brisbane. Brownie stayed in Brisbane and we said our goodbyes and I tootled off on another bus further up the coast. Brownie managed to get a flight home and was home before I could get to Fraser Island, which is coming up.

Byron Bay

Hello all, have a spare few minutes so thought I'd let you see where we are right now. As you can guess from the title we are currently in Byron Bay, a little town on the eastern coast that is the first point in Australia to get the sun and is famous for it's surfing. We are staying at a place called the Arts Factory who had run out of dorm rooms and have put us in a big teepee. "WOW!" I hear you all say, well not quite. It's pretty cool, but apparently it gets like an oven in the morning and we have to share it with the local wildlife, the rats. It's not all that much of a problem as we got here at 10.30am and we leave 4.15am tomorrow morning. It's a hard life huh?

Sydney and beyond...

We have a lot to cover in this post, so I better get going, first things first though, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS! Hope you had a good day and a nice evening out will call again soon and catch up proper. We have finally left the clutches of Melbourne however not before we tasted some of the local wildlife. Between us we ate a roo-burger, a croc burger, emu sausage and crocodile tail. All of which were pretty tasty, crocodile really does taste like chicken. We spent our last night hanging around in backpacker bars with some mates it was a good send off to the city.

We left Melbourne on an overnight bus that took 12 hours to get to Sydney and we've been here ever since. We had a wander round the harbour area and seen the famous sites (see photos). Sydney is an ok place. If it wasn't for the bridge and the Opera House, it'd just be another big city.
However these landmarks do give it something and makes the harbour area a good place to sit and have lunch or a drink. We both feel that it lacks some of the charm that Melbourne had, but this might be because we spent a lot more time there.

Yesterday we took a day trip out to the Blue mountains. Apparently these are not actually mountains, they were created by the erosion of various ice ages over the last 120 million years. We visited the 3 sisters, so called because of various stories, mostly involving a father turning his daughters into stone for some reason or other and then losing his magic bone. We had a really good tour, we went on the steepest railroad incline in the world (52 degrees!), a cable car and visited a wildlife sanctuary which houses only Australian animals. I now have so many pictures of wallabies, kangaroos and koalas that it's ridiculous. The koalas were painfully cute, apparently they sleep up to 18 hours a day, not a bad life. When they run around though they are pretty nippy. We were dropped off in the Olympic village and we got a ferry back into the city. Where we got some stunning views of the harbour, the bridge and the Opera House.

Last night Brownie did the Harbour Bridge climb. It took about 3 hours and it sounds like he had an awesome time, but I'll let him tell you all about that when he can, but I can show you the photos.

The next few days are going to be pretty hectic, we leave Sydney tonight at 9.45pm arrive in Byron Bay 10.15am tomorrow. We then jump back on the bus at 4.15am the following day to arrive in Hervey bay lunchtime on the 17th in time for our Fraser Island 4x4 briefing. We then spend the next 3 days on Fraser Island. We'll try and update when we get to Hervey bay, but if not then there'll be more from us on the 20th.

Everybody needs good...

We have seen a lot of Melbourne in the last few days. Last night one of Brownie's colleagues took us out for drinks and dinner. We went to lots of hidden bars that were secreted away in alleys and behind bins and all sorts. They were the kind of bars that you would pay about 4 pound a bottle in London. We also had a great Chinese meal down in Chinatown

Monday we went out on a tour to see some of Melbourne's most famous sites. Namely, Pin Oak Court, AKA Ramsey Street. It's surprisingly small in in real life, the camera work they do to make it look like a big street is pretty clever. It's also full of tourists. I don't think I'd like having bus loads of English students turning up every day to take photos of my house. Our bus driver also took us to some other famous Neighbours landmarks, the church where Scott and Charlene were married, Erinsborough High and the hospital Mrs. Mangel died in. I didn't really recognise most of these placed (Brownie did), but I took photos anyway. Today is a bit rainy and grotty (yes it's not all fun in the sun) so we're thinking of you all back home.

Church where numerous wedding have taken place, including Scott and Charlene.

Erinsborough High. Do you recognise it? I didn't.

Me and Brownie outside Harold's house.

I think this is the Kennedy's house.

Also, congratulations to Rob and Rachel on becoming proper grownups and having baby Erin. Good luck guys, I'll come and see her when I'm back

Ouch.

Yesterday I remembered why I hate the beach. We went down to St. Kilda (just outside Melbourne) and had a good time in the sun, playing cricket in the sea and just lazing about. I must have worn myself out because I fell asleep. I did put suncream on, but apparently not everywhere and not enough. I now look like a red and white deformed panda. Still, I won't do it again!

After getting roasted on the beach, we headed back the hostel where we blagged free pizza and played in a pool competition. I was crap and Brownie wasn't much better, both of us losing to the eventual winner. Still not content with the day, we toddled off to the Crown Casino, where we watched people losing crazy amounts of money and I spent $25 on roulette, last of the big spenders huh :)

Where's Brownie?

I am now back in Melbourne after spending a few days out in Werribee with some friends. It's been a good few days, we took a boat trip out round the bay and I got some good pictures of Melbourne from there, we went to Werribee open range zoo and yesterday we went fishing. The zoo was great, even though I was in charge of more kids than I have ever seen in my life! But they were all pretty good so it was good fun. We saw lions, giraffes and rhino amongst other things. I think I was having more fun than the kids! We went fishing with Sarah's husband Shane who knew what he was doing. Despite trying all over the area, we only caught one little flathead, which was so small, we had to let it go.

I still haven't managed to find Brownie yet. I reckon he's around here somewhere. He's in the same hostel, but he must have gone out for the day because I can't find him. WHERE ARE YOU!? (let's be 'aving you!!!)

Melbourne

The last few days have been a bit of a write off. I can safely say that I have seen very little of Melbourne except the free gardens and the free art galleries. There is a section on contemporary indiginous art where some of it looked pretty cool, but I couldn't quite work it all out. Worth seeing though. Other than that I've been sucked in by various Happy Hours and drinking with Aussies and Germans (hello to you all!). I don't have many decent pictures to show, so I'll add some when I do.

Today I'm off to visit my Mum's friend Julie, who has kindly agreed to put up with me for a few nights. So I probably won't update this for a few days. Anyone who wants to send me pictures from their New YEar celebrations Please do. My email is in the link to the right.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AGAIN!

Hi all. It's been 2006 here for almost 13 hours. I had a good night, watched some fireworks and checked out a few of the local bars. It's still incredibly hot. Hope you all had a good night. Send photos please!