The journey from Hervey Bay to Airlie Beach was 13 hours in our camper van, so we decided to break the journey up and do a stop over in Rockhampton. Rockhampton claims to have 300 days a year of sun but even it was raining non-stop from the minute we got there to when we left! We arrived at Airlie Beach late afternoon - it had been raining all day and was forecast to continue into the night. We really wanted to see what Airlie Beach was about and as it was a Fri...

Well the first couple of days in Byron Bay were a wash out - literally! We got there early afternoon and found a well-located campsite close to both the town and Main Beach. We ventured out into the rain to explore and it's chilled out, hippy vibes were very apparent. One afternoon, in between showers, Dave rented a bodyboard and headed out onto the waves, whilst I did the Lighthouse trail. I saw another wallaby, went to the most Eastern part of mainland Austra...

Sydney was crazy - our hostel was located right in Kings Cross, the main party district and there wasn't much sleeping going to happen… We tried to keep up with the young 'uns as well as making the most of the $10 steaks! Kings Cross itself was a bit dodgy - but nothing that living in Manchester hasn't prepared us for! The first night we met up with some of Dave's mates from Stratford who live out in Oz. A couple of quite ones at Bondi Junction turned into c...

We spent the first 11 days of our time in Australia with Dave's family in Melbourne. They live in a suburb of Melbourne, Werribee, which we used as a base for our explorations. After 7 weeks on the road, it was lovely to just relax and not have to pack / re-pack our cases constantly J It was also great to spend time with his family - including two new additions to the family, cousins Tilly and Sam. We hired a car and spent two days exploring the Great Ocean Ro...

We made our way to Queenstown, with a few stop offs along the way to break up the journey. Knights Point (just north of Haast) was a lookout en route - it offered amazing views of the West Coast, including breath-taking cliff formations. We also stopped at Wanaka - a town set on Lake Wanaka, with a slightly more relaxed edge than Queenstown - we really liked it there so decided to change our plans slightly and go back to Wanaka later in the week. Eventually, w...