FRASER ISLAND - 8th JuneWoken up at 9:30am the next day by a very friendly and chatty cleaning lady we are informed that it is the Queens' Birthday - a public holiday in Australia (seemingly) - but which means that everywhere in town will be either closed or extrememly busy (being one of the few establishments not closed) and that such non-closed establishments will most certainly be enforcing some ludicrous public holiday surcharge of 15% - so my $5 beer shall i...

It was a short walk from the Transit Centre to Base once we'd gotten our hands on a map and in the 4 necessary road crossings Lucy very nearly got ourself run over by a turning bus into an underground station she had not noticed, but onced checked in and settled in our dorm we were downstairs in the 'Downunder Bar" for a $10 meal deal of steak and chips and beer - bargainous! (Although it must be pointed out that the beer was not a pint as expected). I enjoy...

Whilst Newcastle was effectively indistinguishable from its British counterpart in the early 1900s, Surfers Paradise is Florida slammed into the middle of Australia. One region of the Gold Coast is infact named Florida, further compounding the idea that the Australians are awful at naming their country (or at the very least lazy when it comes to naming their country). Surfers Paradise is a small part of the Gold Coast (for the Gold Coast appears to be a number o...

Our first challenge was finding the hostel. We were staying at the somewhat legendary Arts Factory, but its a bit out of the way on the fringe of town and without the Lonely Planet we weren't entirely sure where it was. A trip to the tourist centre provided us with a map and we were able to locate it, btu a rather inconvenient railway track seemed to run right through the centre of town meaning we would have to walk all the way to the bottom of the street cross o...

Newcastle, Australia shares a few similarities with its name sake in the UK. First, in industry, Newcastle is the worlds largest coal exporting harbour in the world and whilst Newcastle Upon Tyne has never had such a lofty title its prosperity was built on its monopoly of the coal trade in the Tyneside area of England for almost 400 years. And both cities built up significant shipbuilding industries in the 19th century. The second is in its placenames. Many of th...