Our last ever blog in australia guys

So to Lauren's delight and my despair we arrived to our hippie camper not knowing what it was going to be like. It was like magnetic island all over again but instead of bright pink bumpers I was greeted with nice bright purple flowers decorated all over our van. Once we got all the paperwork sorted we set off on our 1,200 mile road trip whooooooo hoooooo.

I wanted to get a sat nav but the bloke said it's straight all the way and only an idiot could get lost on the way to Brisbane so with him saying that I had to not get one. Anyway we set off and planned to get 9 hours under our belt in one day and get to airlie beach where we know it was a lovely place and a bar and grill with decent cheap food. It started off so so well but about 6 hours in we come through a town and with Lauren as map reader she failed to tell me the way to go and within no time we were lost and had no clue how to get back on the highway. Tempers were soaring and this put us back nearly an hourly ......yes an hour.

Getting lost for an hour made us have to change our plans on going to airlie beach and instead we decided we would stop at a place called Bowen for the night. We made a terrible mistake at arriving after dark and trying to find rest areas for free were impossible. It was so dark and we had no maps or anything. We found a woolworths and went in there to try and find somwhere for the night. We couldn't find the place this woman was going on about so we found a local caravan park and paid for the night as by now it was getting late and we were both so so tired from driving all day.

We set up for the night and thought we would be able to go straight to sleep but the temperature in the back of the camper was unreal. It was like laying in a sauna so we decided we would go outside for some air and lay our body's on the metal of the motor for coldness. Eventually we crashed out and got a good 8 hours in for ourselves.

We didn't have anytime to stop and look in Bowen we had to get back of the road and make our way down to rockampton, that was going to be our next stop for the night and a decent amount of miles travelled for the day. We made good progress in the day and was at rockampton by three so we decided we would carry on and get to a place we found on the internet which was a free caravan site in a place called calopie. Soon upon arriving at calopie it was heavy heavy rain and yet again we couldn't find the free campsite. It was like we were the most stupidest people there. They all made it sound so easy to get to but we could never find it. I think they make it up as they go along it really wound me up haha.

We carried on the main road and eventually found a rest area with showers and toilets for the night which was free. We set up and went straight to sleep no problem I parked us under some trees which would shade us from the sunrise In the morning and we slept a lot better. We had travelled just over halfway in two days which was really good so we decided not to leave too early the next day.

Our last full day in the camper was going to be a nice easy ride. We decided we would only drive 5 hours and go to a place called gympie. We arrived at gympie at about 2 ish and was going to go for lunch in the town once we had found a base for the night . As we started travelling through the town the gearbox snapped on me. I couldn't believe it , so we had to pull over on the hard shoulder and call for assistance. After a couple of hours the van was repaired and we were back to camper life. We knew it was going to smoothly for us it was just a matter of time before something went wrong haha. We grabbed some lunch and decided to go to our camping site as we didn't want anything else to go wrong with it as we were so close to brisbane now. We were gutted as we wanted to go into noosa for the day and surf again but we were limited on the miles. And after getting lost a couple of times it was no possible which was a shame.

Our last day in our camper was a nice little drive only three hours to take us into Brisbane where we were dropping it off. We were both waiting for the next disaster to happen and thought trying to find the location in the city would be it. But we found it with no problem and had it back by 12 which we delighted about. Best of all there was no damage on it which was a great achievement with Lauren at the wheel. After dropping it off we couldn't wait to get to our apartment we had booked for two nights as we were both dying for a proper shower and a good clean up. It was a lovely place called midtown apartments right in the heart of the city.

We were lucky enough to get an early check in and couldn't wait to see it. We didn't want to leave our apartment it was so good but we knew the Dutch and dutchess of Cambridge , William and Kate were in brisbane for the day and were doing a walking tour in the city. We wanted to go and see them so we ventured down to south bank near Russell street to see if we could see them. It was rammed with the locals as you can imagine. There were people that had been standing there since 5am In the morning that's pure dedication. We got as close as we could to the expedition centre where they were coming from. We didn't manage to see them in person so we could only get a picture of them coming past in there convoy of motors and lauren was happy as she was waving to Kate. After that we rushed back to get to our lovely apartment and make the most of that. I enjoyed using a gym for a long time before using the sauna and going for a swim.

It was a lovely place to stay to get all our stuff ready for our next travels which will be the lovely FIJI we take a late flight but it's only a short 4 hour one. Australia has been a fantastic place and we've had some great memories here we hope we can return one day and re experience them once again. The pictures will appear once we can get wifi and a computer at a reasonable rate haha

Speak soon guys xxxxxx