Sydney on the 30/12/12 and the four became six - We all met in the Belgian Heritage Café, suggested by Al & Sari, it was Mr Hornsby's birthday and he treated all to a meal and refreshment (dammed decent fellow). The second night was New Year's Eve (the main event) and the six of us assembled in Nick's seafood restaurant and had an excellent night of eating, drinking and partying into 2013 - It turned out to be another free meal because Dan's brother Kevin...

The next stage our Australian tour was flying to Cairns, where we picked up another hire car and drove to our respective accommodation in Cairns. The next day was our big event; we boarded a catamaran and set sail for the "Great Barrier Reef". The day was beautiful and sunny and by the time we had reached Michaelmas Cay, we were in a very chilled frame of mind; MC was picture postcard perfect (except for a huge bird colony that were initially reluctant to share...

After our brief encounter with Melbourne we flew to Alice Springs and picked up a 4 x 4 ready for our expedition across the "Red Centre" of Australia. Alice Springs itself was a fairly quiet town but extremely hot. At 4:00 am in the morning we were picked up by bus and taken out into the desert, where we prepared our hot air balloon for a dawn flight. We took off just before dawn and it was an incredible experience - watching the dawn rise over the desert, whilst...

Arrived safely in Sydney and were fast tracked through Passport Control and customs, courtesy of a VIP pass provided by Al. Three days on the road following the coast and photographing every beach and cove along the way - Google have asked if they can use our photographs to replace their current "Google world". We drove about 250 Kilometres a day and made three overnight stops along the way at Jervis Bay (with the whitest sand beach in the world according to th...

Apologies to all our readers for our long absence but Australia has proven a very difficult place to make a good internet connection, however the story continues …… We arrived in Singapore and booked into our modest hostel, which was conveniently located five minutes walk from "Clarke's Quay" and the surrounding Bars and restaurants. On our second day we made our way to Raffles to meet Al and Rachel who were flying in First Class. The receptionist told us th...