Well the new year has crept up on us and has the realization that in just a matter of weeks our year of fun and frolics around the world will also come to an end! And although we are gagging to get back and make up for some much lost time I’m not sure that it'll be easy to say good bye to this wonderful way of life! But all good things must come to a (temporary) end and I’ve dragged myself away from making the most of the last few weeks to tell you all about our amazing Christmas and New Year!

James and I arrived in Brisbane just a few days before Christmas where I was reunited with my brother, Sam after he left to come to Oz on 'holiday' 3 years ago! Needless to say the talk flowed as much as the cheap Ozzie goon-juice and the five of us (with Sam's girlfriend Kirsty and her son Ryan) had a few late nights making up for lost time! This pretty much continued up till Christmas day and we started in good old fashioned Aussie style with cocktails, the day, of course continued this way and our BBQ lunch turned into Dinner as we started to get our acts together a little later than planned! And as if 9pm wasn't long enough to be holding out for some grub, Sam had forgot to stock up on gas so, like something out of The Royale Family, we huddled around the cooker waiting for it to cook! We had a great feast in the end - and although we were 9 hours ahead of you all its nice to think we were all enjoying our Christmas dinners at the same time!

After Christmas day came the realization that with New Year just around the corner and no means of transport to get us down to Sydney, we needed to get our act together. However, it was too late to buy a car, the rental companies were fully booked and the flights were extortionate and we were close to giving up when the heavens sent us an angel in the shape of an Apollo Rental Services rep who had a 6 man motor home which needed relocating to our chosen destination in 36 hours. These houses-on-wheels normally cost $300 a day but Apollo were giving us the vehicle for nothing and paying for the petrol to boot! The catch it seems was the fact that Apollo apparently make space craft as well, and driving one of these is like driving a bloody vessel! But after signing numerous insurance policies taking full responsibility for any damage incurred in our custody, James and I took off like Max and Paddy, signing songs of Amarillo down the coast! Driving the thing was great fun (people just get out of your way when your bigger than anything else on the road!), but when it came to parking this bad boy, landing on the moon would have been less of a mission!!

But what a relief it was to make it down to Sydney and after offloading our backpacks on the poor Apollo Rep with the promise to return the following day we made our merry way to Sydney Habour to secure the perfect view of the biggest fireworks display in the world!! However, we weren’t to return to our bags for another 3 days as the New Year celebrations continued for a bit longer than even we could have imagined… The arrival of 2007 came with a bang and we partied in style with the millions of people that had flocked into the harbour. Continuing on this theme the crowd flooded the roads for one almighty street party. It was only when we saw the sun rise that we realized our homelessness and quickly chatted up another couple in order to get a sofa for a bit of shut-eye. After a jam packed, hilarious bus journey we all staggered to our ‘beds’, only to be woken a couple of hours later by their lairy housemate who’d obviously missed to whole ‘good will to all men’ festival feeling and ordered us out into the stark reality of our destitute situation! But, by god, did we have a ball meeting the many people who would come to be, not only our saviors, but a real good crack as we went from down-and-out to partying with one of Sydney’s biggest ever jackpot winners! Oh yes, after getting acquainted with David, Colin and their American friends and getting rather gay with the campest group of lovelies ever, Belinda went on to win $100,000 on the slot machines!! We couldn’t believe it, especially as James and I were babbling about the pitfalls of such a pastime! (How gutted were we that we hadn’t joined in the fun?!) But include us in the celebrations they did and thanks to them we had a ball (and a rather big headache the next day!). We partied until the early hours as we all went from demure to dam-right debauchery, and all piled back to ‘The Gays’ for a showcase of Colin’s drag act (just check out the photos!), before collapsing in their plush pad for the night. Right so the next day we had to get a bed sorted, but without forking out $100 each for a dorm bed this was not an option, instead we found a really nice English couple, Rachel and Christian who had a mock campervan that they needed to sell before the end of the trip, perfect we thought, but as they were as unprepared to fork out $100 each for a bed as us, the deal couldn’t be done until the following day. By this time though our hangovers were seriously catching up with us so we got ourselves to a friendly little hostel and crashed on their sofa’s, sporadically waking to change DVD’s to give the impression we weren’t just dossers!!! Thankfully the next day we were the owners of a spankingly gorgeous Mitsubishi Starwagon, complete with such an inviting double bed it wasn’t surprising that, after situating ourselves next to beautiful Manly beach, we slept until the following day! Oh it was paradise to have our own wheels and the freedom to sleep anywhere the fancy took us. From the bustling, bohemian, bargain breakfast, beach of Bondi, to the mellow, meandering of Manly beach. When we had well and truly recovered from our new years antics we took to partying some more in the hectic, hell raising, hedonism of Sydney Harbour and the surrounding suburbs. It was on our way to one such outing that James and I heard the voice of a friend of ours, Nolan, whom we had worked with at The Beehive. I still can’t get over the fact that his voice was distinctive enough for us to investigate the culprit; not only that, but we had no idea he was in the country! After catching up in Sydney we hooked up again in Byron Bay for more laughs. On the way to bloody beautiful Byron we took a detour to Palm Beach, or as you may know it, Summer Bay. Home to many a day’s filming of Home And Away, we spent the day celebrity spotting but we didn’t catch a glimpse of Don Fisher, and the most we saw of the infamous Alf Stewart was his name above the surf club (quite frankly that was enough for us to get excited about!!). Byron Bay was more lovely than we could have imagined, with an abundance of dolphins that splashed around the surfers, stunning scenic walks complete with sightings of sharks, and a buzzing social scene it was no wonder we didn’t want to leave. One thing it may not have in its favour is it's attraction to tramps who find it such a great place to hang out they never want to leave. One night James and I were sat listening to buskers, enjoying the sunset with a few beers, chatting to a couple of bums who’d come from the notorious Nimbin (I’ll get to that place later), it turns out these guys had come for the weekend and kipped under the stars on the beach, while we were thinking they’d been here for a few days (Nimbin is only 40 minutes away), it turns out they’d been away from home for over a month, with only the clothes on their back and their ever flowing cask of Goon-juice for supplies! They were great to talk to though and we were all getting along merrily when our little gathering was interrupted by a very pregnant aboriginal woman threatening to, as she so very demurely put it, “bash [my] **** head in!”. This to me who spent most of their time on their soap box about the way the natives are treated in Oz, and here I was trying not to get bottled by an Abo with an attitude! Oh the irony! But this little hiccup didn’t deter us, and the constant 6am wake up calls from the persistent ranger (who obviously had a major problem with the amount of backpackers who just park up on his turf for the night without any concern for his empty threats of impounding, fining and clamping – poor guy!!), only made us all the more eager to return for more games of cat and mouse! This short interval came when we met my brother, Sam and Kirsty and Ryan for a weekend in Australia’s answer to Blackpoll. Surfers Paradise was packed with great restaurants, great bars and a few too many shops (Come on; Versace, Pravda and Louis Vuitton should only line the beaches of the very fashionable Cannes and Nice, where the holiday makers are fashionably beautiful, not Vicky Pollard wannabes!). It was lots of fun hanging out with Sam, enjoying the beach and their stories around the camp, before we headed our separate ways. Driving inland on our way down to Byron we took in the spectacular Springbrook National Park and the infamous town of Nimbin. This is (rather shoddily) Australia’s answer to Amsterdam, in that since a drug-fuelled 60’s festival put it on the map and turned it from hippy into hip. Alas alongside its lesser-faire attitude towards ganja has come a lackadaisical attitude to crack and it’s a wonder we made it around without stepping on a needle!! This place was so bloody random that it’s no wonder half its residents can be found bumming on the beach in Byron! After taking in another few glorious days in Byron we shot up to the sunshine coast, stopping at Noosa for a couple of its famous sunsets. Famous Frasier Island beckoned and in order to reach it we had to stop at rather quiet Rainbow Beach to organize a trip to its 4wd paradise. Amusing ourselves with Rainbow Beach’s great deserted lakes, lovely walks and scary sand dune slides, it was a couple of days before we got to meet the 9 other people that would make up our camping convoy. It soon dawned on us that the running order of the groups was determined by age; that is the two of us were deemed to be responsible enough to mother the other 9 who were all under 20! Bloody hell, we say it every time we do any group activity, but seriously we can’t do this cheesy bonding stuff! Don’t get me wrong we had a giggle taking in the lakes, view points, wicked beach driving, and hilarious drinking games. But the trip is clouded with memories of packing up a camp, washing the dishes, cooking in the dark, and with 11 people to contend with! Now I know why they say it’s a once in a lifetime experience!! Back to the sanctity of our marvelous van (with its cushioned mattress, clean clothes and no children -halle-bloody-lujah!), we got ourselves to the town of 1770, made famous as hosts of Captain Cook and his band of followers who paid a visit in that same year (original hey?!), and unfortunately that’s all the town is famous for! Oh, ok I’ll be nice because we did have a ball; although the town itself is very sleepy we made our own entertainment. And this entertainment came in the shape of a guy called William who spends his days making friends with the multitude of backpackers who are just passing through. Whilst James was trying his hand at surfing (god knows why he decided to have a crack at it a few days before we flew to New Zealand when there have been so many opportunities to give it a go!), I bumped into a couple who’d kept us company in (even sleeper) Rainbow Beach. William shortly joined us and we soon came to understand that he had exactly the same opinion of 1770 as the rest of us. In order to ease the dullness of his days William has installed himself as the ideal traveler’s companion, putting us up in his weird and rather wonderful self built home, providing us with a few great nights around his fire, food coming out of our eyeballs and with cocktails a-go-go! Best of all though was being in the company of such a random guy who would do anything to make you stay and keep him company for the rest of his days. Bless him, he was so lonely and so lovely we just wanted to bundle him up and send him out into the wide world in search of an equally random being! We managed to free ourselves of his impounding shackles and winded our way back to Brisbane via the beautiful backdrop of Montville and the Glass House Mountains and, with a few days to spare, enjoyed the relaxation of my brother’s house and managed to make the most of the glorious Brisbane heat to maximize our tans for the last time before coming home (and believe me I’ve made sure this tan is dark enough to last the chill of New Zealand!!) And with rather tearful goodbyes I said goodbye to Sam (well it doesn’t look like he’ll be returning home anytime soon), and boarded the flight to the final destination on our journey around the world!!! And can you believe that there’s only 4 weeks till we grace you with our presence again?! Just hope that weather picks up!