On the fateful morning of the 11th January 2010 we decided that we would do something we were all looking forward to doing and visit Australia Zoo. We hit the road early leaving Owen in bed as he had already visited the zoo with his family during his time in Brisbane. As those of you who watch the news may know, this also happened to be the day that the floods decided to strike Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba. Our main issue was that being on the north bound lan...

Sonnia generously took us back to Bangalow to pick up "the exec" and after settling the $462 bill (£310ish) we were back on the road. With morale low at this point and the flood situation getting worse further north preventing us from going towards Cairns we spent some more time in Southport enjoying Sonnia's baking, going to the gym, going bowling and in a real effort to cheer myself up loving fish as much as I do, visiting the sharks club where the reception i...

Feeling thoroughly chilled out after our Nimbin experience we hit the road, Burleigh Heads bound. It was pelting down with rain and with poor road conditions we were glad to be back on the main road from Lismore to Bangalow. We realised quickly that something was amiss with the car as all our electronics began failing on the car (including the wind screen wipers). With the rain only getting worse we couldn't risk waiting for the next garage so we pulled up on the...

The time had come to leave the comfort of our "home away from home". We treated the Burgoyne's to a meal out at the casino (surprisingly not losing much money in the process), gave out some gifts as a token of our gratitude and picked up Owen from the train station to set out on the road again. After a drive through the rainforest along things claiming to be roads, containing more holes than Swiss cheese we arrived in the hippie town of Nimbin. It was small and...

With the euphoria of New Years having wore off we decided to perk ourselves up with a visit to O'Reilly's. Set in the mountains we made the difficult drive up to the spa where wild birds dominate the landscape. Armed with bird seeds we soon made friends with the locals and before long parrots were using us as ready made perches. After playing with a friendly wallaby for a while and exhausting our supplies of bird seeds we wandered down the tree top walk. Above t...