After hanging out with Dr Karl Kennedy until the early hours none of us were feeling particularly fresh when we got to Melbourne airport at 6 am on Tuesday morning. Jon had a slight panic when he couldn't see our 7.30am flight to Adelaide on the screen, but calmed down when we reminded him we were flying to Brisbane. Despite our weakened states, the good people at Jetstar thought we looked not only willing but able to sit in an exit row and we found ourselves in the very front row on the plane. Apparently if you sit in seat 1C your job is to hold back other passengers while the stewardess operates the emergency exit - we left that task to Anna. Jon and I were only needed in case the stewardess was incapacitated in some way.

Despite hangovers, we were very much looking forward to our week road trip through Queensland - this is the home of the Sunshine Coast and we were planning to do some serious beach sitting. It was therefore inevitably raining when we arrived, and didn't stop for another 4 days.

Nevertheless, only hours after leaving Dr Karl we were at the home of another Australian legend - Steve Irwin. Australia Zoo is just north of Brisbane and home to a range of Australian creatures great and small. We arrived in time for the main 'Croc show' of the day, which came with a LB (Little Beauty) warning. Nowhere in the that warning, or the title 'Croc show' did it give any indication that there would be a flying display from birds going into the seating areas - not happy Jennifer. The main message from the croc show seemed to be to stay away from the edge of the water to prevent poor innocent crocodiles mistaking you for a kangaroo and attacking you. Most of the crocodiles at the park - with great names like 'Scrappa' and 'Agro' - were problem crocodiles caught by Steve Irwin and his father, and rehomed at the park. The Zoo continues to be heavily involved in the protection and rehabilitation of wild animals, and Steve's philosophy - both in terms of conservation and fashion - is on display throughout the park, which continues to grow after his untimely death in 2006.

We had decided to base ourselves in Noosa for a few nights, a town known for its fantastic beaches and national park - great for exploring when it isn't raining. So we spent a couple of days exploring the Hinterland of southern Queensland (which seems to be a generic term for 'not the coast'). This was very much make your own fun territory, and included such highlights as a fudgy clutch, and driving to find Bald k*** Road. This was supposed to be in a place called Bald Knob, but they seem to have renamed it 'Montville Mountains', probably to stop tourists driving there for the sole purpose of taking pictures of the sign. We were staying in a great hostel in Noosa though, and Anna and I were invited to participate in a real genuine hippy drum circle which made our evening. It did bring back memories of the Neighbours night dance off though, as the guitar playing / singing hippy didn't like my triangle accompaniment, and changed the tune to one where - even with my extensive percussion experience - no triangle playing was possible. I like to think he wasn't as an important part in a hippy drum circle as, say, the hippy drummer, but it still hurt.

After a couple of days exhausting the fun to be had in the Hinterland, we decided to head up north from the very rainy Sunshine coast and look at the Bundaberg factory where Australia's famous rum is made. The curse of the lonely planet map struck again when we realised than 1 inch on the map covered quite a number of kilometres in the real world. About 100km away from Bundaberg we decided to give up on that plan and head to Hervey Bay instead for a spot of lunch. Turned out to be the best decision we made all trip, not least because that night I had a can of rum and diet coke and discovered it's not even that nice and probably not worth a 300km round trip for a free sample.

Hervey Bay is famous for whale watching in the Australian winter, and for being the main departure point for Fraser Island. It should be famous for Vic Hislop, an Australian who singlehandedly made my road trip week, and still - 3 weeks later - makes me laugh out loud. Vic Hislop has made it his mission to educate the Australian public about sharks, so we thought he might be a marine Steve Irwin. He is a shark hunter, but rather than look after the shark and let them end their days in a nice park somewhere (like Steve Irwin), Vic Hislop kills the sharks and then stores them in a catering sized fridge in his Hervey Bay museum so people like us can go and have a look (well, when he doesn't sell them to Damien Hirst for making art - www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/1707090/Im-proud-Damien-can-sell-brmy-90-shark-for-millions.html) This is the only tourist attraction I have ever been to where they make you watch a disclaimer video before paying entry. They want to make sure you know there are no live sharks inside - this is not an aquarium, this is an educational experience.

Vic is convinced that the Great White shark will never become extinct, but is protected by a handful of rich corporations for their own gain (filmmakers, and diving companies that offer trips for diving with sharks). These people are lying to us about the danger posed by the great white shark and cover up the number of deaths by sharks every year. Vic has tracked every death in the sea around Australia for the last 15 years and printed them out on sheets of A4 and stuck them to the wall to show the true extent of this conspiracy. He also has print outs of his 10 page letters to the Australian Government on the subject. Sadly he has not yet received a proper reply - indicating just how bad this conspiracy is!

Vic has recently made a new film which we watched a section of, entitled 'Why do Whales beach themselves?'…bet you can't guess. Yup, whales beach themselves because they are being chased by sharks. The best bit of the film though was when Vic received a phone call to say there was a power cut and the power had gone in his industrial catering fridge. Vic had to get together some of his mates with a refrigerated van and load the frozen 5 metre great white shark in the back. One of his mates got in first to guide the shark in and then couldn't get out and had to ride in the back of the truck in semidarkness with a frozen great white shark. Actually, I'm not sure that was the best bit, I think the bit where he caught a great white shark in the 1980s and decided to educate people about them by tying the dead shark on top of his mini and driving it round the streets of Hervey Bay. Or maybe it was the bit where he tried to prove that painting a shark face on the bottom of a surfboard wouldn't save you from shark attack. He did that by tying fish to the bottom of the surfboard and dumping it in the middle of the ocean (which is how most people go surfing right??)

Needless to say there was much laughter in the car on the way back from that day out. We couldn't figure out what would cause someone to dedicate their life to killing sharks and then displaying them in industrial fridges. The man who sold us petrol on the way home went to school with Vic's son - we asked whether he knew if the family had lost someone close to them to a shark but he didn't think so. He just thought Vic was very driven, although his son doesn't hunt sharks for a living. There is a serious message in some of what Vic is trying to say - there are some dangerous sharks in the seas around Australia, and they can attack in water as shallow as waist high (someone was killed in South Australia while we were still in Oz) - but his educational methods could do with some work. I guess that's why most Australian's love Steve Irwin but haven't heard of Vic Hislop.

Next stop was Fraser Island for an overnight visit. Fraser Island is about 120 kilometres long by 25 kilometres wide and is entirely made of sand - you need some serious 4WD to get around so we left our hire car on the mainland for the night and took a tour with our guide Warren. Warren has driven buses around Fraser Island for many years without much incident - unlike many of his colleagues who have caused significant damage to the company's 4WD buses. Though Warren did once accidentally reverse into an aeroplane. Our 2 day trip took in all the sights on Fraser and we got to hear Warren's unique take on the background of the island. Tourism first came to Fraser Island in the 1960s, but the island has been inhabited for many years, first by the Aboriginals - who call the Island K'gari (meaning Paradise), then European settlers and more recently for logging and mineral mining before becoming a UNESCO heritage site in 1992.

Warren had jiggled the iteniary so we got to Lake Mackensie on the Saturday when the weather was glorious (rather than raining) - this was a massive highlight. Lake MAckensie is a freshwater lake, in the middle of a sand island. It is beautiful and great for a swim as there are no fishes to bite your toes. We also took a walk through the rainforest, as well as climbing to the top of Indian Head, highest point on the island, viewing the SS Maheno wreck on 75 mile beach and generally bouncing around like lunatics on the back seat of Warren's bus between stops.

After a jam packed two days it was time to get back on the road again - we drove from Rainbow Beach to Agnes Water (Town of 1770) that night enroute to the Whitsundays. Most of the six hour journey follows National Highway One, a single lane road with little by way of street lighting or interesting sights (although I did see a kangaroo waiting to cross the road right next to my car door towards the end of the journey which made me scared and excited in equal measures). There were very few cars on the road but we figured that most people had better things to do on a Saturday night. Like be in Sydney. Or Melbourne. Or even Brisbane.

When we finally made it to the hostel that night we were told we were the first car in since the road had opened 4 hours previously. Flooding in Queensland has been a major problem this summer and we had unwittingly decided to travel right through the middle of it. Oopsie. It was a fabulous hostel and we had a few drinks before bed and hitting the road again the next morning after breakfast. Google maps had told us it would take about six hours to get to Airlie Beach. It was only about 3 inches over two pages in the Lonely Planet. Nine hours later we made it to our motel…

From Airlie Beach our plan was to take a day trip to Whitsunday Island. There was much debate between the three of us as to whether or not we should go out -neither Anna nor I are great on boats and we were told to expect an extremely windy day, with many of the sailing boats that operate out of Airlie Beach cancelling their trips for the day. In the end we decided to go for it, and it was a great decision. We had a really good day riding over the waves for a spot of snorkelling and a stop on the white sands of Whitsunday Island. Bizarrely, the sands are cold and squeaky, although that made them much easier to walk along. It's the third most photographed spot in Australia, and it really did look like it does on the postcard. The crew for the day were fantastic, and on the way back into Airlie Beach we had a little singalong, much to the amusement of the 'cool' Australians onboard.

The final step in our well put together road-trip-itinerary was to take the ferry to Hamilton Island. We fancied a couple of days chilling out, and the flights back to Sydney go direct from Hamilton so figured that was as good a place as anywhere to do it. It seems that Hamilton Island is a giant island resort meant for old people or families. We figured that out when we arrived and realised the island mode of transport of choice was the golf buggy. For the bargain price of £40 for 24 hours we got in on the act too, until the novelty wore off about 30 minutes later. Anna took a flight over the Great Barrier Reef and kindly shared the photos with us as our backpacking budget did not stretch that far, but we spent most of our time eating, drinking and sitting by the pool (in drizzly rain which caught back up with us despite our best efforts to outrun it up the coast).

It was odd being three rather than two for the week, not least because it meant someone was always getting ganged up on (mostly Jon, sorry). Jon did a fantastic job driving us around for the week, covering 1800 kilometres while not being allowed to listen to his own iPod. He had his moments, particularly early on in Noosa when he decided he couldn't do a three point turn at our hostel and proceeded to reverse all the way down the 500m hill to the main road, which was a source of much hilarity for me and Anna. Reversing became a bit of a sore point for the rest of the trip, although when he asked Anna to get out of the golf buggy on the Whitsundays to guide him back to a parking space she decided enough was enough and refused. Which I think is fair enough considering the size of a golf buggy. But I think after a week and a bit of not being able to drink when he wanted because of his driving responsibilities he was quite happy that it was time for us to fly to Sydney and say Gidday (again) to Sarah and Pete….