Thursday 28th October Up at 6am for 6:55 bus to Sydney airport so we could sit til midday for a delayed Tiger Airways flight to Adelaide. The cloud dispersed shortly after we took off and the views from the plane were quite interesting. As we approached the desert, it was possible to make out the occasional road with an isolated car. The ground had a sepia, marbled appearance apart from small circular or oblong, fertile areas created by a method of irrigation.Re...

Tuesday 26th October 6am start for Blue Mountains tour. Small coach with Marcell a very laid back, Dutch born guide on his first trip - well he got lost a couple of times but made light of it and we had a good day. The first stop was not to my taste, an animal sanctuary (Featherdale Park) originally set up as a petting park for local schools, which got a little ambitious. There were more koalas than I could count and the smell of the piss of that many koalas is ...

Saturday 23rd October 07:15am local bus to Newcastle, breakfast and then the 10:15 Greyhound to Sydney. It had a very friendly driver who stopped the coach to tell us there was an empty seat at the front and we would have a better view sitting there as we entered the city. He gave us a full commentary all the way. When we told him where we were staying, he said he would be passing it after the terminals and if we stayed on he would drop us at the door. Even Tabb...

Friday 15th October Off to Byron Bay, which promises to be better than Surfers Paradise (not difficult). Amie did hear someone on the phone yesterday describe it as awesome! There are probably many definitions of awesome, some good, some bad, but I guess they would like Southend or Blackpool on a wet weekend. As we drove out on the Greyhound a 50+ pony tailed American who had a studio in Las Vegas and didn't get off at Surfers Paradise, said he liked the look of...

Monday 11th October Heavy rain and thunder and lightning most of the night - flooding on roads. The greyhound driver on the way to Brisbane spoke to another driver on his cb radio and was told he'd be ok if he'd got his flippers on and that there was a "s*** load" of roads closed. The driver said "It's the end of the world". Much of the countryside was under water on the drive down, with many creeks and large rivers bursting their banks. The ...