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...

Immigration in Sydney was not anywhere near as tedious or drawn out as it had been in New Zealand nor as arduous as we had been warned. After New Zealand I had a print out of my visa, proof of departure and everything all ready for inspection none of which was asked of me. We settled ourselves into an airport shuttle since the airport didn't have any useful bus services and then spent 20 minutes for the driver trying to fill the last 2 seats. In these 20 minutes ...