OMG, what a mega journey,.....ferry....train.....bus.....then car.....finally got there.

Didn't know who we were staying with at this point, a distant relative of Lauras who she had never met, we had spoke to her over the phone only a couple of days before and it seemed a surprise to her that we were actually arriving....oops.

We met Karen when she turned up late at night and gratefully picked us up in her car from the bus stop around the back of the shopping centre, to be honest could have been anyone. When we got in her car, felt like we knew her instanly, so easy to get along with. It was only a short drive back to her house, her husband Gregg carried our bags in for us because we were so tired 'thanks Greg' and we settled down for the night. Both Karen and Gregg were fantastic and helpful during our stay and Laura has the opportunity of returning to live when Katherine leaves, could get used to the lifestyle.

The next morning had a walk aroung the area, so different from anything else, a livable and untourist town, some of the houses were so individual and fairytale like, took some photos to show people at home the normal Australian living.

The closest beach was 200 metres away, it can't get better than that, and the house we were staying at had it's own swimming pool, we felt we had arrived back in luxury after the hostels, with colourful parrots landing amongst the trees in the garden right next to us.

We only planned to spend a couple of days here, but Kat fell ill, (seriously never felt so bad, ha!!) was so glad Karen offered us to stay as long as we needed before moving on because being in hostels sharing rooms at this point would have definitely made things worse.

Just totally chilled out for the time we were here, relaxed at the pool and walked slowly to the beach, admiring a caravan park along the way, got excited, it looked and reminded us of Summer Bay, ha!

A few nights in to our time, we had our first major attack of cochroaches!!! Both of us have never moved so fast in our lives, they were coming out of all directions, even at one point all Kat said was 'oh my god', Laura had been asleep and Kat had never seen anyone wake up and move so quick shouting 'what what' in all her life. We must have totally looked like English wimps, shouting at Karen and Gregg after just meeting them to come and kill all of the cochroaches!!! In the end after being so scared and sleeping with the covers over heads, we woke up absolutely boiling!

We had plans to visit Palm Beach (Home and Away) whilst we were there but found out it would have been too much of a difficult trip and not enough time to become an extra in the show, lol, and we had made plans to meet up with Kirk, Joe and Ash in Brisbane so we had to leave it but we'll definitely go when we return to Sydney.

.....now the 14 hour overnight bus journey begins, how fun!