My coach towards South Australia was due to pick me up from the station at a little after seven this morning, so, being a man, I left everything until the very last moment and had to get up at the crack of dawn to pack my suitcases. Of course, the only place open for breakfast at this time of the morning was McDonalds, and so at six o'clock I was wheeling my luggage into a deserted restaurant and making the mistake of trying to make smalltalk with the spotty-face...

Over the last few days, I've had the opportunity to take a break from travelling for a while and relax in one of Australia's truly big cities - and I think I've earned it. For nearly a week, there has been no worrying about having to catch a connection, and certainly no having to phone up bus companies to find out which parts of my route are currently underwater. I am annoyed that the combination of floods and prebooking my hotel in Perth has prevented me from st...

At breakfast this morning, I carefully lifted the milk jug from the buffet table and was slightly surprised to find that the whole thing fell apart in my hands. Several pints of milk sloshed all over the carpet and I found myself standing in the middle of a small white puddle holding nothing but a handle. For a moment, I imagined that I was about to find myself surrounded by kitchen staff cursing and swearing at me - but instead the waitress merely raised her eye...

The coach journey from Darwin to Broome has been an experience, to say the least. There seems to have been an almost total lack of communication between the driver (I'm sorry, I mean the Captain) and Greyhound themselves - elsewhere in the world he would've been able to keep in constant touch with the company over a radio in the cab, but I guess the wide expanses of nothing making up Australia makes radio reception impossible. Instead, we have had to rely on info...