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Hello friends and family!
Sorry we haven't updated our blog for a while! We have been travelling the east coast of Australia over the past 7 weeks and we have reached our final evening here in Sydney on the 24th November 2012. As it has been almost two months, we will break down this blog by the towns rather than day by day! Makes it a bit easier for both of us...
Melbourne: Dumping our coats in New Zealand, we landed in Melbourne expecting the heat to hit us as we stepped off the plane. Little did we know that southern Australia isn't always warm enough for bikinis every day! We shouldn't complain though, it was still bright and sunny throughout the week we were there. Settling into a hostel, we found ourselves getting out a lot with the excitement of the Oz buzz. The first main trip was along the Great Ocean Road which is one of the most scenic drives in all of Australia. We saw some glorious beaches, visited the twelve apostles and met our very first koala bears!! There were dozens of them scattered in the trees, all curled up like big teddy bears. Throughout the day, we visited an old lighthouse, had a barbeque lunch and took a few coastal walks. Lovely. The next big highlight of Melbourne would have to be Neighbours tour and evening!! Sarah went on the tour by herself and saw Ramsay street as well all the famous sets! She was the first person to pose for all the photos too... sad, we know. Both of us went to the 'Neighbours night' where we met Dr Karl Kennedy, Libby and Stingray! We had a few drinks whilst playing trivia games and listening to a live gig by 'Karl' and his real-life band - lots of fun. We bought attraction passes and spent our first day at the Melbourne aqaurium! We saw lots of native fish and spent a lot of our time watching the penguins as they protected their eggs! Throughout the week we also visited the Old Melbourne Gaol which has now been converted into a museum and went through the 'conviction system experience'. In the afternoon, we headed up the Eureka skydeck which had wonderful views across the whole city. There was so much to do and see in Melbourne and we spent a lot of time walking around looking at the art, markets and stores. The city was very posh and we even spent one evening at the Casino cinema where we saw 'Lawless', a genius film. We rode the tram a couple of times and visited our friend Joe Joiner before we left! Having a drink with someone from home was lovely. We went out drinking one evening to a rooftop balcony bar which felt like luxury compared to the hostel bars we were used to.
Sydney: After 9 days in Melbourne, we took a 12 hour over-night coach north to Syndey. For our first night, we booked ourselves into a hostel room nicknamed 'the church', as it had stained-glassed windows, and occupied 32 people!! The majority were boys and the room did not smell fresh... We spent the day wondering around the city getting our bearings and ended up in a huge food-court underneath a Westfields mall which was delicious. We returned many times after we realised the roast dinners were reduced to £3/£4 after lunch time! That evening we tried our first free goon (cheap boxed wine) and participated in a hostel quiz. We later joined the other back-backers and went to a local gig in an underground bar. We spent nothing throughout the evening and somehow ended up in quite an interesting state. We had our first and only official argument throughout the whole of travelling and made up again before noon the next day! We then spent the day having another look around and made our way to Darling Harbour which is beautiful! It is filled with modern bars and restaurants right on the water and is also home to the world's largest imax cinema! We had a cheap lunch by the bay and made our way back later to meet our friend Rosa from home who is currently living in Sydney with her boyfriend!! We had a couple of drinks back at the harbour before Sarah and Rosa then went to a local arena to watch Mumford and Sons play! It was very emotional! Laureen went and watched the film Luper in the cinema which was very good! That evening we took our bags and walked to our new 'couch surfing' hosts who had offered us a bed for the next week! We turned up at 1am in the dark (terrified), woke up one of the guys by calling him and were relieved when we met the boys and found that they were extremely normal! (And very good looking we may have noticed...) We stayed with them over the next week as we spent our time in Syndey and they even cooked a bbq at the weekend with around 10 of us sat in the garden! Truely Australian. Two of the guys were also heading to a festival that weekend, so we got a double bed to ourselves! Luxury after the hostel. We spent the next week exploring the city and seeing many friends! We didn't go out on any big nights but we did have a wonder down 'Kings Cross' one evening, by accident as we were looking for food!! That was quite an experience; it is very rough and felt like we were in Amsterdam. Looked like lots of fun though. One of the highlights was when we met up with Mr Gleeson (our old drama teacher who moved back from Australia) and went to the Randwick Races with him! We put on dresses for the first time in forever and spent the day being elegant. We met Gleeson's dad, brother and a couple of other friends too and even went for dinner with them all afterwards. We placed a few bets throughout the afternoon based on their names, but didn't come away with any wins unfortunately! To complete a lovely weekend, we then met up with Lara (from New Zealand) and her friend on the Sunday and made our way through a couple of markets before heading up one of the bridge tower view points! We finished he day by having a drink at the Syndey Opera bar in the afternoon! It was very cool and amazing to see it in real life!! To make the Sydney experience even more 'touristy', we then spent the next day climbing the Sydney harbour bridge! It was a lot easier than we thought, however it was SO windy that we could barely breathe or walk at some points! The views were incredible and climbing vertically up through the traffic was exhilarating. We learnt a lot about the bridge and all in all, it was a great experience. That evening we went back to Darling Harbour and met up with Sarah's friend Joni from England (their parents were in the same anti-natal group for their older siblings!) We had a few drinks together and it was a lovely catch-up! Before we went home, we then heard from Reece and Luke (the two boys we bump into EVERYWHERE) and they came and met us for one more drink with a couple of their friends. The next day we got up early and went and grabbed ourselves a nice big cooked breakfast! We decided to try and diet over the next month so this was our last day of being naughty... We then took a stroll through the botanical gardens to walk off our meal, which was beautiful. Once we made it to the ferry port, it was then time to head to Toronga Zoo! One of our couchsurfing hosts, Matt, works for Coca Cola and so got us free entry tickets! Whilst we were waiting for our ferry, guess who snuck up on us but the very two; Reece and Luke again!! We were both SO scared with Sarah thinking momentarily that we were having an earthquake and Laureen thinking that her dad has possibly flown to Australia to surprise us?! These were only mili-second thoughts! The boys then joined us to go to the zoo as we had spare tickets! The ferry ride to the island was lovely with beautiful views of the bridge, opera house and city skyline! We then took a gondola to the top of the zoo and worked our way round the animals! That evening we met Lara again for a drink with a couple of her work colleagues and our friend Matt from New Zealand also joined us now that he had arrived in Sydney! On our final day, we walked around 6km to get to the campervan company!! We arrived by noon and waited for 2 hours for anyone to acknowledge us and then didn't leave until around 6.30pm!!! To cut a long story short, the customer service was appauling, and we had to pay an extra $1000 more than we thought... So we were not happy bunnies. BUT we had ourselves a campervan for the next 30 days which was great! We drove (for the first time in 4 months) back to the boys and parked on the wrong side of the road, in the wrong direction and next to a 'no stopping' sign. Whoops. As it was late, we stayed one more night in Sydney and went out for dinner and met the boys for drinks for the rest of the evening. A lovely way to end!
On Route: We started to travel north in our campervan. We were heading towards Cairns but made one stop on the way to Hunter Valley! We camped for two nights and spent one day doing a vineyard tour with wine-tasting! Throughout the day, we visited many wineries, vineyards and little shops. We tried many local drinks including schnapps and vodka's! We weren't quite sure what we were supposed to be tasting for but we certainly liked it! Sarah started downing her tasters until she got advised to 'try it in 3 sips to get the flavour'. Laureen was already doing it the correct, sophisticated way! We stopped on the way back to watch a pack of kangaroos hopping through the vineyards as the sun went down. Really special. We then spent the next four or so days 'campervaning' our way up to Cairns. We blasted Mumford and Sons and Johnny Cash on the stereo and took half day shifts each. It was very nice to finally stop!
Cairns: During our stay in Cairns, we booked a couple of excursions and ticked another thing off our bucket list! Firstly, we took a tour to an aboriginal and wildlife park! We got to meet some kangaroos face to face, admire the native snakes and gawk at the huge crocodiles! Later, we even got to cuddle a koala bear for a picture - amazing! It was one of our favourite parts of the whole trip. We then got a cultural experience where we met some aborigines who showed us spear throwing, native dancing, didgerydoo playing and even taught us how to throw a returning boomerang!! Laureen was great but Sarah's didn't quite go in the right direction! In the afternoon, we were then driven to Kuranda village where we were given time to ourselves. We wandered around the little hippy markets which had a voodoo atmosphere and saw many hand-crafted items. The next day was another huge highlight of our whole trip which was swimming in the Great Barrier Reef!!! A ferry cruised us out to a serene location where we then spent the day snorkelling amongst nature at its' best. We saw a shark, stingray, starfish, barakuda and our personal favourites; turtles!!! We hired an underwater camera so we spent a long time stalking them trying to get a snap! We also saw Nemo and Dory amongst the colourful coral and many other beautiful fish we are not familiar with! We were fed a massive buffet lunch half way through the trip and had wine, cheese and crackers on the way home as we layed in the sun on the deck. Stunning day and an incredible memory. When we returned to the campsite, we were cooked dinner by two guys we had met, staying next to us. It was Max's 32nd birthday so we had a couple of drinks to celebrate and shared a few stories. The men were setting up a stall for a few forthcoming festivals so they were currently getting ready for it all! It was their aim to get to every op-shop (second hand store) in each town they drove through! Really cool.
Whitsundays: Our next stop was the Whitsundays! We stayed on a campsite attached to a hostel and the town was very lively. We did a little souvenir shopping in the village and spent a couple of days at the lagoon in Airlie Beach. It was gorgeous even though we could not go into the actual ocean because of the 'stingers'. We made friends with two English lads who were parked next to us and went out for a few drinks with them one evening. They were very funny and we even got them playing the game 'freeze' which was great entertainment! We had also allocated ourselves a 'Sunday treat day' as a reward for our diet so we spent one afternoon at a local pub eating steak and chips with ice-cream for pudding! Yum. On our last day, we took an excursion to White Haven beach on the Whitsunday Island. We bumped into a couple we met in Fiji who were also on the same trip!! The boat took us to a remote location first to start the day with some snorkelling. We rented stinger suits and Laureen spotted a jelly fish so we didn't hang around in the water too long this time. In the afternoon, we were sailed to White Haven Beach which is possibly one of the most beautiful things we have ever seen! The sand is made up of silicon and feels like warm snow beneath your feet! It is the whitest sand we have ever seen and the water is crystal clear blue/green. Look it up now if you can :) truely incredible. We were given a barbeque lunch on the secluded beach amongst large lizards and sipped on beer as we sun-bathed throughout the afternoon! Can't do much better than that.
Rainbow Beach: We later worked our way down to Rainbow Beach where we originially had the intention of visiting Fraser Island. As we had taken a couple of trips lately, we decided against this one as the big bucks weren't really fitting into our traveller's budget. We did however stay the night and spent the following day exploring the little town as well as visiting the famous Rainbow Beach itself.
Noosa: That evening we made our way down to Noosa, which was probably our most problematic journey to date. The satnav took us down rocky abandoned roads that we had to drive 2mph along! After one nasty bang on the unstable surface, we turned the van around to make our way out and our own way there (assuming our tyres were still working that was). The rest of the jounrey was reasonably similar where we took a second chance with the GPS and went 5km down a county lane until we came to a dead-end at the entrance of a woodland walkway. It was pitch-black with no sign of life and as we reached the top, the satnav said to carry straight before flickering and turning into a white screen. It felt like we were the main characters of a horror movie and one of us was about to say "I think we should split up, you stay here". We eventually made our way to Noosa, traipsing for a good few hours through gravelled roads in the dark and we even came across a huge snake in the middle of the road with its' head up!! Absolute wilderness. When we arrived, we met Reece and Luke who were renting a penthouse suite that had room for us to stay! There was a kitchen, big double bed, jet bath and even a hot tub! We had just stepped into traveller's heaven. After the evening of driving, we just wanted to sleep but boys being boys, we were handed glasses of goon and told to get ready. We went out for the night and had a little dance, which actually turned out to be very fun. The boys then gave up their bed for us and we had a lovely lie-in the next day! We spent the weekend relaxing and having a little break from living in the back of a van! We rented movies (including Marley) and all cooked for each other at some point or another. The weather was awful for the first two days but once it cleared, we had a little look around the town and even made it to Noosa Beach which was really fun! We found a jelly fish that had washed up on the shore so we had a little stroke! Other than that, we just ate lots, chilled in the lounge, went in the jacuzzi and Sarah even had a couple of jet baths!
Brisbane: As we journeyed down south, our next stop was the big city of Brisbane! We parked up at a campsite on the outskirts and planned to head into town that evening for a few drinks. This was until we woke up from our naps in the pitch-black realising we had missed the last bus! So the next day we got up early and headed into the city. We looked around the centre, took a walk through the park and then headed over the bridge to Southbank. We wandered around the tourist destination admiring how stunning it was all layed out and eventually made it to the City Lagoon with views of the skyline. We had a couple of beers at a local pub and headed back to our campsite in the evening. The next day we drove back to Southbank and checked ourselves into a hostel so we were a little closer by! We worked our way back down to the river and had another explore. That afternoon, we then headed to the local cinema (cheapest we had come across by miles!) and watched Argo, which was very good. In the evening we got dressed up and headed into the city centre to a roof-top bar. We danced a lot. We didn't get much sleep before getting up early the next day to move further south once again.
Gold Coast: Sarah didn't feel entirely sober as she drove to the Gold Coast. And Laureen was recovering from being sick and so wasn't really looking at the direction we were heading. We are asumming that it was a combination of these two factors that then drove Sarah (literally drove) to head towards oncoming traffic on the highway!! Luckily the cars were approaching in the distance which gave us time to swerve through some cones but it was a bit of a tight escape! We parked up shortly after at a lovely campsite and spent the afternoon relaxing and recovering. The next day we drove into the main town 'Surfer's Paradise' and had a little look around. We saw the main beach but as 'Skoolies' was on over that week, the town was rammed with drunk youngsters. Brought back many memories of Newquay! In the evening, once 4 hours of ridiculous rain calmed down, we headed out for the night back into Surfer's. We were driven in by a 'Skoolie' lad who had taken down his 'P' plate so he could get away with driving more than two people in his car. Bless? Our old Director Mark is Australian and his brother owns a club in the centre so they sorted us out with $100 drinks cards each for the night!!! Needless to say, we bought shots for us and the bartenders and even got champagne... We were not ourselves by the end of the night, to say the least, and rolled back to our campsite at 10am as families were sharing breakfasts together... It was one of our best nights to date. We spent another day sleeping and sobering up.
Byron Bay: Once again, we carried ourselves and our lives down south in our little campervan to a town called 'Byron Bay'. We stayed in a quaint tourist park where we met lots and lots of 'Christmas Beetles'!! We were told they were harmless but they were huge and flew/hopped around everywhere and always seemed to aim for you (two hit Sarah in the face)! But we soon got used to them with a little pep-talk from one of the manager's at the park. She was a mad lady in her 60's who was telling us all about her bucket list which included driving a tractor and a golf buggy! Sarah: "Hang on, were you the mad driver who was speeding around the in the golf buggy earlier tonight in the dark?!" The lady smiled; "I tend to give it a little rev". Turns out she had already gotten her way with the tractor too... We had a little look around the town which was very quirky and had a real surfer-hippie vibe about everyone who were wandering around. The clothes shops were so cool too! We spent the first couple of days exploring and relaxing on the huge beach, filled with surfers. As we were coming to the end of our campervan road-trip, we decided to cook a bg barbeque as a send off. We had sausages, potatos, pastas, eggs, sweetcorn... you name it, we had it. It was incredible until we realised that our eyes were bigger than our tummies once again and we didn't feel too healthy! It was a lovely night though, even if we did go a bit mad in our van!! On our last day, we took surf lessons! It was awesome. There was a small class of only 5 of us which we meant we got 1 on 1 time with the instructor and we both made it up onto our board riding a surf several times! It was the best feeling and something we would even love to do more of! It's a shame the Devon Sea isn't quite as warm... Towards the end of the class, we were cocky enough to think we could take the waves by ourselves. We picked up a nice, small approaching wave but didn't notice the much larger one behind it. Laureen got sucked back before being pushed off and Sarah tried tried to brace herself but ended up in the air as her board vetically lodged itself into the sand. The instructor was watching us - fail. We ended the day by having a swim in the huge tea-tree lake that was black with oil. Gorgeous.
Sydney: To end Australia, we made our way back down to Syndey for our flight out. On the way down, we made an overnight stop in a small town where we headed to the local cinema. Bond had been released that day (a month after England) and we were so hyped! When we reached Syndey, we had intended on visiting the Blue Mountains, Bondi Beach and Manly but time cut us short unfortunately. We headed back to our couchsurfing friends, returned our van and spent our last weekend out drinking with the boys and preparing for Thailand. We ordered pizza on the last night for a chilled one in and got bombarded with the boys coming home wasted with their mates before heading back out again! the house was always filled with morning-after girls still in their dressed and new lads getting a breakfast barbeque going. It was a buzz and Australia as a whole, you will be sorely missed!!!
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