ATTENTION

There are now LOADS of photos on the Flickr - basically everything since we left Sydney. We've compressed them all down so sizing may be a bit small. The new sets aren't in any order though.

For all of you who have been trying to leave comments to our blogs but aren't registered we've also opened up acces so anyone can leave a comment. If you wanna use the guest book all you need to say is your name and where your from, the rest of the details can be left blank.

There are also 2 very long posts below so please persevere with them. For some reason we can't spruce them up with photos, sorry.

The big drive through Queensland

After finishing in Yorkey’s we embarked on the next major part of our journey – the 1325 mile drive down through Queensland to Brisbane.

The drive has been pretty cool, the scenery was pretty diverse and it still seems a bit weird that we started it in a rainforest and ended in a city. Don’t know if any of you guys saw the news reports earlier this year of a tropical cyclone (called Larry) that hit northern Queensland but the damage was pretty extensive – some of the banana plantations are still decimated – and this is the reason why we haven’t had a ‘nana since we left the UK, cos there so damn expensive over here. We also saw some of the biggest sugar plantations ever and loads of mango groves (I wasn’t allowed to go scrumping for any though – boooo). Things got a bit remote at stages as most towns are very small and up to 50 miles apart, two of the more extreme ones being Childers – which was very picturesque & quaint, and Marlborough – which was ropey as hell, basically Hicksville. However, onto the towns we stayed at;

Townsville – No, not the home of the Powerpuff Girls, but a tourist gateway to Magnetic Island. This is yet another offshore paradise, but due to its size it has some resorts and so we didn’t worry about getting over to it. Instead we explored the weekend markets, the beach front lagoon, very odd exercise walk along the esplanade and did a bit of sunbathing (well, more like skin burning).

Airlie Beach – Bloody wonderful here. The place we stayed at was on the top of a hill overlooking the harbour & surrounding islands, and simply beautiful. Airlie is a bit of a backpacker’s haven mainly due to its close proximity to the Whitsunday Islands. These have some of the best island beaches in Oz but due to the increasing wind speed at sea it meant sailing out was very choppy. As this was just a stop over visit, time and conditions meant we had to pass on getting out to the Whitsunday’s so instead we took in some more exploration of town and some relaxing time in the pool. This is deffo a place to move to.

Rockhampton – Again another stop over town and our first motel experience. We just rocked up into town and got a room – this was now a proper road trip. Rocky is mainly a cattle town and known as the beef capital of Oz, and when we had our steak dinner we were not disappointed. Our rump steak was just as good as a fillet back home, so if anyone fancies a good meal, drop into Rocky. Not much to say about the town though, just normal but with cows.

Hervey Bay – Another pretty town with loads of picturesque wooden houses and despite the tourists, seems like a nice place to live. Our main reason for stopping here however, was to go whale watching. After mating in the Antarctic the whales travel to the tropical waters in north east Queensland to give birth and then travel back down to the Hervey Bay & Fraser Island area for a holiday with their babies. Despite our bad experience up north the sail out was so much better – proper sun drenched sailing on sparkling blue water. We saw a few dolphins and turtles to start with, which to be honest was more than we’d imagined we’d see. But then came the best, a mother whale and her calf just swimming by. It was totally amazing and difficult to show on our photos just how huge yet graceful these creatures are. There were several pods of mum & bub, some even had a third whale as escort for those with really young calves, however when we dropped anchor for lunch one of the calves started to be a bit nosey and swam towards. Although these whales don’t worry about the boats the mothers do have a tendency to swim in between calf & boat, but as this baby came over there was no sign of mum. Suddenly on the other side of the yacht, the mother actually raised her head out of the water to check us out before shepherding her calf away. It was mind blowing to see such tenderness in an animal so huge. As the afternoon moved on the whales got a bit playful and were singing and slapping their fins on the ocean surface. Our sail back was wonderful, in the lazy afternoon sun and a good day was had by all.

Beerwah - Ok we didn't actually stay here but this is where Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo is. The flowers, inflatable crocs & khaki shirts that have been lain as tribute to the great man were still to be seen everywhere - very moving. For any of you that saw some of his tribute ceremony the Crocoseum is a lot smaller in real life than on tv, so the service must have been quite snug. We got to see loads of crocs & reptiles but also some very cool juvenille tigers playing in a pool. And we got to contribute to the Wildlife Warriors fund. Good work by all. Then it was on to our last stop in Oz, Brissy...

One last note about the drive; for anyone whose read “The Yes Man” by Danny Wallace you’ll know what I’m talking about next. For those who haven’t, Australians have a penchant for Big Things. Not in an “everything is bigger in Texas” kinda way, but they seem to like large (but slightly ropey) concrete sculptures. So far we’ve seen a few including a big crab, a big hat, a big snake, a big mango, a big Captain Cook, a big strawberry, a big beer can, a big pineapple, a big horse, a big lawnmower, a big Ned Kelly and several big cows around Rocky. But as they’ve all been along the highway photos have been difficult to take.

Totally Tropical Taste

After all the excitement of the Red Centre, we bundled off to Queensland in search of some sun and sea and fishes. The Great Barrier Reef stretches some 2,300 Km along the coast of Oz, and it was our first and foremost reason for visiting Tropical North Queensland. We flew into Cairns on Sunday afternoon, and picked up our hire car to travel about 20 mins up the coast, to a seaside village called Yorkey’s Knob. No joke with the name and despite the locals’ best efforts to casually refer to it as Yorkey’s, the local store had “The Knob” painted on its side wall.

From here we took a trip out to the Low Isles, about 20 miles out into the reef. Despite me being seasick for the first time in my life (and boy, was I sick) when we got to our island destination we were straight in the water for a guided snorkel of the reef, in some very snazzy, blue Lycra bodysuits. Due to the wind picking up the current did increase somewhat so Tash went back to land (I personally think this was a ruse so as to get more sunbathing done), but I managed to see loads of giant clams, parrot fish and cool coral – a variety of which secretes a mucus when the tide lowers to stop it drying out, that has an SPF of 60! But it smells of dead fish. We even got to touch a sea cucumber and see it pooh out clean sand. You’ve probably all heard me rave on about snorkelling in Egypt and to be fair the concentration of different fish there was amazing. It was also a lot warmer and clearer there but the weather conditions in Oz probably affected our dive. However, on the reef I did get to see a turtle and a lagoon ray. It’s impossible to describe how amazingly graceful they both were and even more saddening to know that turtles are still hunted for their shells and to be made into soup. The ray was gliding along when it saw me, and just wriggled itself into the seabed to hide. None of this attacking human bollocks that some sickos along the coast are using as a reason to chop their tails off and leave them to suffocate on a beach. The island we were on was totally tropical – coral sand looks a lot nicer than British pebble sand, but slightly crunchier. So we chilled for the afternoon then hopped back on the catamaran for possibly the WORST hours sailing ever. Whilst cats are very fast and unlikely to tip over, they do rock with even the slightest wave and as the wind had been slowly picking up all day the waves were fairly huge. We got totally soaked by the waves crashing and how neither of us threw up again is still a mystery. Needless to say any more boat action will only happen on a very calm day.

We also got out discovering the other unique feature of Queensland - Rainforest. Despite being somewhat smaller than those in South America, the Australian rainforest is considered to be the oldest in the world. As we’d already seen Cape Tribulation from our sea journey we went to explore the area around Mossman Gorge, in the south of the Daintree National Park. This was mental; obscenely clammy and dense when you actually get in the rainforest, but suddenly dropping off to the beaches & ocean. I was tempted to have a go at swinging on some jungle vines, but I don’t think Tash was too impressed with the inevitable scenario of explaining to some ambulance men that I was trying to be Tarzan. There were also loads of huge boulders sitting in little streams which created these really cool pools for swimming in.

Rock-tastic

I know that this is a little bit late, as the majority of people reading this blog already know our news, but I didn’t want to post without being able to put any pictures up to go with it, so that’s why I’ve had to wait.

I get really shy (honestly, I do!) when it comes to things about me, which is why its taken me the best part of 10 days to get round to writing this blog about what’s been going on. For those who maybe don’t know, Keith and I have been together for nearly 5 years, which has gone far too quickly and doesn’t seem possible really, considering it seems like yesterday when I was checking his Brett-esque hip shaking out downs at Subs. (Yep, it was that dancing that lured me in, and the rubbish on his feet at football matches!)

So, on the first evening of our trip to the Red Centre, after going to Uluru to see the sunset, we went back to the camp for a Barbie. Keith dragged me off to go and look at the stars and the moon just because we’d never seen skies so clear and so many stars before, (I protested at this event as I was tired and ready for bed!) but little did I know there was an ulterior motive for this star watching! Keith asked me to marry him….and I said Yes! (He had to ask me twice in fact, as the first time, I asked him if he was joking, this after being speechless for a few minutes, and that doesn’t happen very often to me!) To celebrate afterwards, in true Keith style, we had a cuppa!


I’m so happy, we both are, my ring is just beautiful, and Keith is the sneakiest little bugger there is, but I love him so much for it, as I’ve since found out that he’d asked my dad a good few months before we came away and had been carrying the ring round with him since we left home! I’m looking forward to being able to celebrate when we get back, not least so I can flash my gorgeous ring off!

Thank you Keith, for making me the happiest girl in the world. X X X X

Red Centre

So, after our somewhat hectic visit to Melbourne we boarded yet another plane headed to the Alice Springs, which is, give or take a few miles, slap bang in the middle of Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south. To be honest Alice is not our kind of place. It’s a bit like a more desolate version of Strood or Gravesend or an empty seaside town but in the middle of nowhere. It was hot & dry and the main river through the town didn’t actually have any water in it. It honestly was exactly like every Castlemaine XXXX advert you’ve seen – which are justified further by the fact this is the only place we’ve seen it on sale. Our tour guide for the next few days was actually a Scottish guy who’d left Scotland 35 years ago and lived all across Oz but he thought Alice was the best place ever.

However, Alice was purely a bed for the night and somewhere to store our bags as the reason for going to the Red Centre of Oz was to visit Uluru (Ayers Rock). After a huge 300 mile journey through the back end of nowhere (we did stop off at a camel farm but I couldn’t face a camel burger at 10 in the morning) on a 4WD minibus we got to our campsite in the bush and headed to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). These were pretty impressive domed mountains and we had a bit of a hike into some of the inner gorges. It was scary to think that these were the eroded remnants of mountains that are believed to have once been as big as the Himalayas. We then travelled towards Uluru to take in the sunset. We did see the mighty rock change colour as the sun was setting from a deep red to a slightly purple tinge, but then a dirty great big cloud came across, so we missed the final drama of dusk. Never mind, as by the time we got back to camp the stars were out and the full moon was stupidly luminous. Our group had a bit of a fire going and we enjoyed some porterhouse steaks & snags on the barbie. There was one final surprise that evening but I’ll leave it to Tash to reveal all.

Next morning was up at 5 so we could get back to Uluru for sunrise; this was pretty cool with the rock going a pastel orange colour. The morning was spent exploring the base of the rock – there were a couple of tranquil watering holes (the only 2 at Uluru and both still used by the local tribe, the Anangu), some cool Aboriginal cave paintings and breathtaking angles of the rock itself. We didn’t climb up it as this is V disrespectful – a bit like visiting a cathedral and walking the crap from your shoes across the alter – but by mid morning we’d hiked over 7 miles. It had rained on Uluru about a fortnight ago and apparently some guy had complained about the lack of good weather, despite seeing something that even some of the guides have never seen! So we hopped off back to camp for some lunch then drove through the bush to get to our next camp. We did make a stop for the collection of firewood and I now have a genuine bush injury – ok, so it’s only a 1 inch cut on my leg but I’m counting it. There was also this really cool little lizard, but one of the French blokes in our group picked it up, and in an act of self defence the lizard dropped its tail, which carried on twitching for several minutes. We had more good nosh at our camp - coconut chicken curry and cheesy damper bread all cooked on the fire.

We were up stupidly early again so we could get to Kings Canyon to take in the sunrise and clement morning temperatures. Some bonkers hiking took us across the canyon top which was amazing, even more so as it was once the ocean floor, millions of years ago. Hidden in the ridges behind the main canyon mouth were some beautiful waterholes, one of which is referred to as the Garden of Eden, which was where we had a morning snack of apples & cake, but no fig leaf action. After this up & down hike of about 5 miles and lunch in the bush we were looking forward to a nice drive back to Alice. However our guide’s survey said aaah-eeerh! As time was good we went back off road and drove through the MacDonnell Ranges, something that was usually on a separate tour. There was this whopping great crater left by a prehistoric comet that hit the ancient super continent of Gondwana (which basically fragmented into South America, Africa, India, Australia & Antarctica) and we saw the salt lakes that Donald Campbell used for some of his land speed record attempts. We also came across a camel that refused to move out of the road until our tour guide floored it and basically chased the camel off the road.

So we bid farewell to our touring group including an Ozzie version of Aaron, a very mardy Dutch chunker, a typically crazy Dutch woman whose boyfriend was bemoaning the lack of proper football on Oz tv & was missing Match Of The Day and a French dude who looked scarily like Rob – similar hair style & colour, same concerned expression, but slightly effeminate. Although I’ve never actually heard Rob speak French so this geezer could have been even more spooky. We did try to post some photos on our return to Alice but the internet access there had a very low bandwidth – we’ll try to get some up soon.

Next stop is the Queensland coast for some reef and rainforest action.

Look a' Meee, Look a' Meee!

After leaving Sydney, we headed on down to Melbourne, which is commonly known as the city that has four seasons in one day (cue shudder from Keith as he remembers the Crowded House “classic”). It was wet and pretty miserable when we arrived, and in true first impression style, we hated it. But as everyone told us it would, it really did grow on us by the end of our four days, and if Melbourne had Sydney’s weather (never say to a Melbournian that you prefer Sydney – it’s a bit like asking a Manc if they support United) it could even be a more liveable city.

On our first afternoon (Sat) we just had a noodle around the shops – Melbourne is a shopper’s paradise – and our hotel was on the main Mall – great if you’re not travelling round the world and have the storage space of a gnat. Boo. We also managed to find a cool pub to sit and watch the AFL in and Keith finally tried some Victoria Bitter, which is much tastier than Fosters by a mile (Fosters is derided down under), and he wants to know if there is anywhere at home that sells it so can you keep a look out for him, please.

Sunday was a day of the obligatory touristy stuff: a morning city tour, which was cool, it would be interesting to come back in a few years and do it again, as there currently doing a major re-development of the docklands area, like Docklands at home, and it really does look cool. We got to go past the MCG, which looks absolutely amazing, and is where England will (hopefully) retain the Ashes in the final test. Melbourne is just so huge, it sprawls into Suburbia from every angle and for anyone that has ever seen Kath and Kim, we even saw the Foutaingate Shopping centre (BTW the geezer, or should I say bloke, who plays Kel is actually a really famous actor over here). In the afternoon, we picked up another tour; this one was down to Phillip Island, which is about 100 miles off the coast of Melbourne, to see the nightly migration of the Fairy Penguins, which was amazing. Every night, just after sunset, the Penguins come on to the beach in their hundreds and travel to their burrows in the hills to feed their young. The penguins are only about 11 inches tall, and we saw them coming in from the sea and managed to track them all the way back to their holes, which was so cool. It was worth standing in the freezing, pouring rain and getting battered by the sea to witness it as the Penguins even walked round our feet to get to their babies.

On Tuesday, it was another early start, and this time we went to the other side of the Melbourne coast, to travel the Great Ocean, which runs from Melbourne, Victoria to Adelaide in South Australia. The drive down was along a pretty windy coastal track and not for the faint hearted as we were pretty high above the sea at most times. We stopped for lunch in Apollo Bay, which if it wasn’t for the glorious sunshine, could’ve been home with the rolling hills. Keith had Shark and Chips to eat, which he was very impressed at as well. We then travelled along to the 12 Apostles (although you can only see 8 from the ground) which is the main highlight of the drive. The Apostles are huge rock formations, just sitting in the sea. They were amazing, and our pictures don’t do them any justice at all. Before heading home, we went to see Loch Ard Gorge, and some more amazing sandstone formations, which were just incredible to see. And to top the day off, we got to watch Finding Nemo on the drive home.

So, you probably think we’ve missed out Monday, but we thought we’d leave the best ‘til last. On Monday morning, we went on a special tour, the Holy Grail of Australian tours. After pulling up at a studio car park, which we were told we couldn’t get into, we were all a bit grumpy, in fact, we felt quite ill. But we didn’t need to worry – there was a doctor at hand. Yep, we got to meet THE Doc, Karl Kennedy, and even managed to have a little chat with him before getting a picture of us together and a few autographs. And he was such a nice bloke as well! (For those of you who have no idea who Karl Kennedy is or where we were, we went on the Neighbours tour!). Next stop was Erinsborough high, which is actually a school for Non-English speaking students in real life, and after that, we went to Ramsay Street, which is so much smaller than on telly. Unfortunately, they weren’t filming, but in a way, that was good as we got to go and stand outside all the houses and get loads of photos. And we also found out what will be coming up in the next few months, but as you guys are behind us as it is, we don’t want to spoil it for you...

Sad day

Firstly, today is our last in Sydney as we're off to Melbourne tomorrow morning. This city is wonderful and somewhere you could honestly move to, rather than just visit. Even when we experienced some of the coldest days in Sydney's history it was nothing compared to some spring mornings at home. And the views are obviously fantastic.


Everyone has been really friendly, including;
- The guy in Woolworths who knew about proper football and surprised me when I said I wasn't much of a rugby fan, by saying "I guess that's cos you're not from the north of England".
- The guy at the tourism kiosk who emigrated here from England years ago and looked & sounded just like Tash's granddad’s brother.
- The crazy street busker whose show consisted of him playing air-guitar to some classic rock. However the only way you could tell which tune he was playing along to was by the shapes he was pulling and the odd noises he made, as he was listening to the music on a walkman.
- The Brummie geezer and Manc bird who cut our hair.
- All the shop assistants, tour guides, travel agents & record shop clerks (one of whom excitedly told stories of Evan Dando's conquests when I bought a Juliana Hatfield cd).
- The VERY fruity bus driver, who despite being a bit jobs worthy, kept making very saucy comments to the female passengers, persuading an oriental lady that she was his special friend by using a Chinese dialect she clearly didn't understand and regaling to everyone on the bus how the last time he was in Kings Cross he spent his time with 3 ladies! He looked like a Barry Humphries character and was 71.

Secondly, today also marks the passing of Tash’s Dunlops. One of my better inspired Valentines gifts (maybe not all that romantic but they were a brand new style and only 1 day old), they have finally given up the ghost and will be replaced by a pair of brown & pink All-Stars.


For those of you that have experienced the pong from said sneakers this passing is a blessing in disguise.