Feb 2007

We got the bus from Byron Bay, was a little sad to leave as I really liked it there...want to go back and jump out of a plane again! Anyway, we arrived in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast not long after we left as the clocks went back. So rubbush, it's summer, but dark by 7pm. We got to our camp site and as we were setting up the tent it started pouring with rain and we got very wet along with all our belongings! So, we ended up sitting in the tent for about 45mins waiting for it to stop pouring, all good fun! So, the Gold Coast wasn't looking too glam as we arrived on one of the few days in the Gold coast when it rains! Oh well, we got to burn cd's and do fun stuff like that!
The time in the Gold coast did get better, the sun started to shine. On Saturday we met back up with Dave again and went to Sea World together, we had a nice time there, watched sea lion and dolphin shows, went on a few rides and saw sharks and lots of other sea creatures. My favourite part though was seeing polar bears, they were most amazing to watch. I could have stood there all day watching them and I know that Dave could too. They were such big bears, i just wanted to give them a big cuddle! They were gorgeous. We cooked on the BBQ a few times as we have no pans, so unfortunately it has to be hot dogs and steaks!!
Sunday we spent by the pool, it was so hot though, I was sweating like a man! The pool at the camp site was really nice, in fact the camp site itself was rather nice....apart from the ground being too hard to put the pegs in! We went out down into Surfers Paradise in the evening, it was about half an hour walk from the campsite. We had some food, watched the street entertainers and had a drink in an Irish bar! Spoke to my Grandad as it was his birthday, got a bit sad with everyone getting together and I'm not there. Also had dreams about Becs wedding and meeting Ethan (Lizzy's little boy) last night, so think I must be missing home a little! Yesterday we went to Movie World, wasn't sure we were ever going to get there as 3 buses decided to drive straight past us. i was getting a little irritated having stood at the bus stop for 50 minutes waiting! When we finally got on the bus, we got to bus surf and were nearly thrown through the windscreen a few times....but all was good, we got there safe in the end! We met up with Dave at Movie world, my favourite part of the day was the Police Stunt show, it was awesome. the best ride was the Scooby doo ride, a rollercoaster in the dark, I loved it! We spent several hours, going on rides, getting wet on the log flume and watching a 4D Shrek show. We left Movie world and Dave took us down to Harbour town shopping Centre, a label discount shopping village....big mistake! I got quite stressed, saw so many nice things and at bargain prices too. Unfortunately travelling doesn't allow you to spend too much money on clothes! I bought myself a new bikini as I'll hopefully be wearing it lots over the next few weeks! We left the shopping village and got on the bus back to Main beach where we were staying...only to realise we weren't on the right bus. Not much luck with buses! So, we got off and went back the other way and it took ages to get back to the campsite. Got back, had our BBQ and then made our way down to the bus terminal. I fell asleep when waiting for the bus, then again when we got on the bus! We arrived in Brisbane about half ten, we walked to the hostel which almost killed me as we have so many bags. Then I went to sleep again!!
The irish lads who I spent Christmas and New Year with have just got an apartment here as they're planning to stay and work for a while, so we're just about to move to their place for a few nights. All's good, I'll be back with the Brisbane update in a few days! Sorry, no photos as I have run out of space for photos on my blog this month. I'll put some on in a few days! Miss you and love you all xxxx

Camping in Byron Bay has been cool, feel quite at home here with our little nylon home to go back to! The toilets are bug free and the camp site is right on the beach...couldn't get anymore perfect. Oh yes it can, the place is full of lovely dress shops and I finally got to fly!
We've spent our time looking around the shops and lazing on the beach, believe it or not, that's the first time I've had a bikini on and laid on the beach in over 2 months....what do travellers do hey!?
The highlight of my trip so far was getting up at 5:30am this morning and heading out of Byron Bay to the airstrip. We finally managed to even get to a skydive centre!

I got all prepared and the guy explained the process of jumping and the landing aswell. I'd forgotten it all by the time he'd said it! Anyway, off we went up in the small plane all jammed in like sardines in a tin! The journey to 14,000 feet took far longer than I expected, I was quite relaxed really. Far more so than i was on the ground..as my nerves show on the dvd. As soon as we reached 14,000 of we went, I was second out and Ian third. We both had camera people jumping with us! The feeling was incredible, freefalling through the sky for 70 seconds. It was truely amazing. It was pretty cold and then we hit an ice cold cloud which definitely was cold, I could barely breathe and I went a bit deaf as my ears weren't too impressed with the altitude. Whilst in the cloud Steve my man pulled the parachute and we flung into the air, then I really did feel like I was flying. Below the cloud it was far warmer, but it was raining. It was so awesome, just sitting comfortably, floating through the air...the best feeling ever!
My face looks crazy in the pictures, but it's going to when falling at 200kph! When at the bottom i just wanted to go back up and jump again! I like the way you can see the plane in the background! Moving on to Surfers Paradise tomorrow.

We spent a day in Port Macquarie and a day in Coffs Harbour, deciding to do flying visits so we can move further up the east coast and relax and have good times at the beach.
We got up pretty easly in Port Macquarie in order to make good use of our one day and to get around quicker we decided to hire some bikes, brand new,a bargain at only $5! So, we headed off on the bikes and my bottom was in agony after about 5 minutes, but it soon went numb and I got used to it!! We cycled down a small reserve called ' Koolongula' hoping to see bats, lizzards, and snakes, and we managed to see two lizzards, although we were going pretty quick on our wheels! We then headed down to the beach front and cycled along the coast, saw some big scary pelicans!...the new bikes weren't that great with rick solid sadles and new hand grips, my hands were red raw. After 2 hours I'd had enough of the bike, so we took them back! I decided I'd rather walk!
In the afternoon we went to the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, they were so cute. Was thinking about adopting one, but decided I need the money too much right now! We had a lovely time, learnt lots about the animals, the blind Koala was my favourite. We were there for feeding time. But because it's a hospital you're not allowed to hold them.
We left Port Macquarie that night and arrived in Coffs Harbour about 1am. It's such a mission getting into a dorm and making beds without making too much noise. We got up and made the most of our day in Coffs Harbour, a much bigger place than we were expecting. We walked the 3km and back down into the town and back, went up to a lookout whcih gave some wicked views out over the beaches and then sat by the harbour and had ice creams. It was a good day, but I think it was only worth staying a day there as there wasn't really very much to see.

As I said it was pouring with rain for a day in Sydney, but it managed to brighten up a bit although it was still quite overcast. When in Sydney we went to Olympic Park, went to the Sydney/Telstra Stadium where Jonny Wilkinson won us the world cup. The tour was pretty good, mainly focused on the 2000 Olympics, we got to stand on the Gold podium which was pretty cool. Went in the changing rooms and toured all around the grounds, it was cool. We originally wanted to see the cricket ground (well Ian did), but we went to completely the wrong place! The tour was fun anyway. From there we got the train to and a bus to the Famous Bondi Beach...it wasn't as great as I was expecting, think possibly because the weather was a little dull. But we sat on the beach for a while watching the surfers and had a look around the surf shops (not buying anything!!) Much of our eveing was spent planning our trip to the blue mountains and up the coast. The following day I had a lay in while Ian went to find the cricket ground, he went on a tour which he really enjoyed. In the afternoon we got the ferry to Manly from Sydney harbour and had an afternoon looking around there and sitting on the beach. Manly was lovely, but I'm feeling once you've seen one nice beach you've probably seen them all! It was great to sit and watch the surfers. The ferry on the way back into Sydney gave us some great views of the city, everything in view...it had to be at this point my camera ran out of battery! In the morning I'd had a surprise, randomly bumped into Steven one of the Irish lads that I spent Christmas with in the hostel so that was a nice surprise. Ian and I went out with them in the evening for a few drinks, had a good night...Ian was a bit more of a dirty stop out than me and went off to Bondi.
Thursday we got the train from Sydney to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, about a 2 hour train journey west of Sydney. We got there about lunch time. We camped in a hostel garden...was quite strange, but good as we could use all the facilities. We got a tour bus around the Jamison Valley and went for a walk. We walked into the valley and to Scenic world where we got the steepest railway in the world down into the valley and then the gondola back up. We got some great views although the blue mountains haze is across the photos which is annoying. We didn't have long to explore as we were a bit late arriving as we missed the train by about 2 minutes! The following day we got up and went up to the Valley, I wanted to go to the rainforest room as it sounded cool. We walked for an hour down the furber steps (hundreds of them) down into the valley, only to find that the rainforest room was like a meeting room! (Gutted!) So, Ian walked back up (crazy) and I got the steep railway back up to the top of the valley. We got to see some water falls and more amazing views of the valley though.When at the top we went on a cliff tops and valleys tour on an open top bus which was cool. Got to see some fabulous views, and also some great lightening! There was a storm in the valley which later came over to Katoomba where we were staying. Our tent didn't leak, but now I'm sad because it's not looking new anymore!! We did some more walking and the next day my calves were killing me! Got to see the 3 sisters from Echo point and the Katoomba falls. It was raining in the evening, so got pretty chilly...the people in the hostel put the fire on. We braved the cold and went for a walk and then back to our tent...didn't have the best nights sleep. We spent the whole of Saturday travelling, train, bus, bus, mini bus arriving at 10pm in Port Macquarie in the East coast.

Well, I'm sat here in Sydney and since we arrived back here it has been raining...not just raining, absolutely tipping it down! So, time for me to update my journey.
We left Adelaide on the Monday morning, Sue very kindly took us to the airport and waved us off. We got our flight to Alice Springs, while in the air I soon enough realised why central Australia is called the 'Red Centre'', it really is very red. We arrived in the desert a couple of hours later, it was even hotter than Adelaide and that was pretty warm! The whole time we were on our central trip the temperature didn't go below 40degrees during the day time. We had a little look around Alice Springs, not a great deal to see and also not really a very nice place. There were lots of aborriginals hanging around the streets and doing a lot of shouting at night, felt like I had to have my whits about me. The second day in Alice Ian and I went to the desert park, it was so hot, I drank so much water and didn't go to the toilet once all day! We saw lots of insects...especially flies which are very annoying. We wondered around, listened to a talk on how the aborriginals live in the bush, saw kangaroos, emus and different birds. My favourite bit was the nocturnal house, there was loads of lizzards, enchidna's, snakes, spiders...luckily they were all in glass cages. From the park we went back to the hostel and then Ang and Pete arrived. It was really great to see them, we spent the evening catching up and sharing our travel stories.
The following day we collected our wagon and started our journey. We headed for the Glen Helen Resort, on the way there we stopped at Simpsons Gap It was a pretty cool Gap! I kept thinking crocodiles were going to come out of the water behind where the picture was taken!
We left there and made our way to Ellery Creek, were going to go swimming...Ian and Pete got in but Ang and bottled it! The last stop before our final destination for the day was Orminston Gorge, we did want to go for a walk there but it was just far too hot to even get out of our lovely airconditioned car let alone walk a couple of km's! We got to Glen Helen resort and set up the tents, Ang and I spent a bit of time teasing the boys by sitting in the car pretending we weren't going to help put up the tents...we soon got out of the car and our tents were ready in no time! We had a swim in the pool, played scrabble and then went for our dinner. We went to the restaurant at the camp site, the food was wonderful, we tried kangaroo, emu, camel sausage and crocodile, all were very nice! The random thing about the restaurant though was the man serving us, he was a complete nut case!...really random and he'd set up us four poms...had a little joke going with the rest of the people in the restaurant. It was a random night! On our way up to our tents we saw the most amazing stars in the sky, it was so clear, the sky was almost full. It was then time to attempt going to brush my teeth, Ian came with me, to open the door you had to dodge the 3 lizzards on the door handle, once inside the place was crawling with ants, moths flying everywhere and spiders all around. It was horrible! Apart from that camping the first night was fun!
From Glen helen resort we had to go all the was back to Alice Springs and with our car we couldn't get through the unsealed roads to Kings Canyon. So after stocking up on petrol, water and food in Alice we drove to Kings Creek Station. Set up our tents, had a swim and then cooked burgers on the BBQ. For the rest of the eveing we played cards and murdered moths, flies and crickets! They kept flying into the candles...sometimes with a little help. This campsite I nicknamed the Moth place! Frome Kings Creek Station we left to go to Kings Canyon, we wanted to do a longer walk up to the top of the canyon but again the weather was too hot 42 in the shade. So we went for a short walk and got a few photos, I felt awful when we got back, I was just so hot. We drove another few hundred kms from there to Ayers Rock resort, the nicest of the 3 campsites. Here to be our home for 2 nights. The facilities were far better than the other places and the toilets were pretty much insect free. That wasn't to say the dining area wasn't though! We put up our tents, went in the pool and then drove to the national park for the sunset. The sunset wasn't great, but Ayers Rock is quite impressive. when we got back we had a BBQ, and this is when we realised that the dining area comes alive at night...the place was moving with cockroaches. We chose to stand up to eat our dinner! There was a mouse and a few rabbits around aswell as the usual moths, crickets and flies.
We got an early night as we were up at 5am to go and see the sunrise at Ayers Rock, can't say I was too impressed with the sunrise either. There was hundreds of crazy people standing around the huge rock waiting for the sun! We drove to the Olgas which are a set of rocks about 30 kms from Ayers Rock, we were there by 7:30am ready to start our walk. We walked about 10kms, arrived back at the car at 10am. The walk was great I really enjoyed it, got some superb views, the rocks were just unbelievable. It seemed the flies took a liking to my hat! We spent the rest of the day doing some washing and I did a lot of moaning as it was just too hot to do anything. We just sat there sweating for hours. It clouded over a little later so Ian and I went to the pool and chilled there for a while. Later we drove back to the Olgas to see the sunset, we didn't get a great sunset by the Olgas but as we drove away the colours in the sky were beautiful so we stopped to take a few photos on the way out of the national park. We stopped for petrol on the way back and managed to get some free sausage rolls and pies from the petrol station, it was great as we had nothing for dinner! Sausage roll and corn for dinner and then off to bed!
We got up fairly early, I packed the tent up all on my own in a matter of minutes had some breakfast and made our way to the massive 2 gate airport of Ayers Rock. The plane journey was pleasent

Whist in Melbourne we managed to see quite a lot over the short period of time. The neighbours tour was obviously the highlight although I didn't get to meet Harold which was quite disappointing! We went to Erinsborough High, Ramsey Street and then met Dr Darcey. It was so wierd being in the street, and people actually live in the houses. There's a security car that sits in the street 24hrs a day so the residents don't get any trouble, as it has been known! Would have been good to see the set, but we didn't. I enjoyed myself anyway and so did Ian! We spent the following day having a good look around Melbourne, went to the Telstra dome one of the stadiums and had a look around the harbour. From there we got on the tram and went to the immigration museum, quite a Geography teacher thing to do but it was really interesting to see Australian immigration history. It would be a great Geography school trip! Obviously my favourite bit was standing in the cabin of a 1900's ship pretending I was sailing to Australia over 70days!
From there we went up to the observation deck to see Melbourne from above, 253 metres high, only half the size of the CN tower that I went up in Toronto, but still pretty cool and plus everything else in Melbourne isn't as high. We walked to Federation Square, Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens where we saw Captain Cook's cottage and a model tudor village. The cottage was transported from England and rebuilt. By then we were shattered from walking all day, went back to the hostel and then walked miles again in the evening to go to the cinema in the evening. Went to see 'Persuit of Happiness', good film, but 'The Holiday' still wins! Came out of the cinema and it was raining, but managed to see nice views of Melbourne at night.
On Wednesday we left the hostel in the car and went down to the Olympic Park area, Ian insisted on breaking into the Rod Laver Arena to have a look at where the Australian Open was held. We looked at all the courts, went over to have a look at Olympic Pk and the Vodaphone Area and then onto the MCG. We were hoping to watch some cricket, but got there to find it wasn't starting until 2pm and we couldn't stick around that long otherwise we'd have ended up sleeping in the car again. Ian was gutted we couldn't get in, so we hung around until 1:30pm, were going to pay to go into the stadium for about 5 mins to take a photo! They actually let us in for free (imagine that happening in England!), was a massive stadium. Put a big smile on Ian's face anyway!
We left Melbourne and started our journey along the Great Ocean Road, took lots of photos along the way. The coastline was unreal. We reached the 12 Apostles about 6pm, little dark for some photos. There's actually only 7 Apostles, I like the view the other side where you can only see two stacks.
We continued, went to several more lookouts, but couldn'y find anywhere to get any food. It really amazes me, how you arrive in what you think is a town on the map and it's got 2 houses and no food! We finaly arrived to Port Fairy our bed for the night about 9:30pm. The beds were so small, like sleeping in a cabin on a boat!
The following day we went to Tower Hill reserve quite early in the morning, we saw some Emu's, Wallabies and a koala asleep up a tree. We also found an injured Kangaroo, I felt so sorry for it, it couldn't move and was bleeding so we had to report it. We left there and went back to Port Fairy and walked around Griffith Island, it took about an hour, saw another lighthouse! Got some beautiful views. Drove from there to Portland, made our cheese and pickle sandwiches (I'm eating well!) and then drove another couple of hours to Mt Gambier. A large town which had an incredibly blue lake created from volcanic minerals. It really was so blue. From there we made our way to Robe, our bed for the night. Definitely the nicest hostel so far. The place was beautiful, big old house with fantrastic big rooms. It was so nicely done out, wished we could have stayed longer. We had BBQ and then played bingo!!
The following morning we had a wonder around Robe and then got on our way to Adelaide. We stopped at a couple of points along the 128kms of Coorong National Park. The expanse was unbelievable, just miles and miles of sand and dunes. From there we had a quick stop in Murrey Bridge for an icecream and then arrived in Adelaide. We said goodbye to the car and then Sue picked us up. We're staying with Gary and Sue, some friends of Ian's parents. They came to England last year, so it's nice to see them again and it's great to be staying in a house!
Yesterday I met up with Jess who I travelled with in South America. It was so great to see her! We met at the cricket Oval so Ian could get his fix and then we had a look around the city. Walked over the River Torrent and to the markets and the botanical gardens, saw the largest greenhouse in the Southern Hemisphere. We saw a random bird with yellow eyes! We left the gardens and wondered around the city, Ian and I bought a tent, cheaper form of accommodation! Then went to the bar where Jess works of a drink, it was really nice. Was kind of strange saying bye to Jess as I feel like I may never see her again, but we've become good friends. So hopefully we will see eachother again. Gary and Sue picked us up and they took us for a meal. Ian had kangaroo, was quite nice. Today Gary and Sue took us out after Gary's delicious beakfast. We went to Glenelg and Brighton, the beach areas of Adelaide. There's a lovely marina and some great houses down there....I want one! It's absolutely boiling here, 38 degrees. Hottest day of their summer so far! I'm glad the house is airconditioned!
Tomorrow we're flying up to Alice Springs, meeting Ang and Pete on Tuesday and travelling with them to Uluru (Ayers rock), camping along the way....could be interesting!