Feeling surprisingly awake after getting up at 4am to make my flight from Cairns I arrived back in Sydney and decided to head straight off to the Blue Mountains about 2 hours away by train. This is a trip I really wanted to do the whole time I was in Sydney over Christmas but somehow never got around to it... The train journey was really beautiful, coming up through the mountains and we eventually arrived in Katoomba, the main town in the Blue Mountains area. Al...

After the slightly hectic visit to the Whitsundays I decided to treat myself to a well-earned day of chilling out in Mission Beach - between Airlie Beach and Cairns. There's almost nothing there apart from miles of tropical beach and then rainforest and cassowaries inland so is a perfect place to do nothing in! Unfortunately it's stinger season so all that beautiful blue sea was out of bounds and with temperatures well up into the mid 30's the beach was a lot les...

And so once again someone sonewhere is keeping a fab eye on the weather on my behalf! Despite cyclones, floods, closed roads and general carnage I made it on to the overnight bus and all the way to Airlie Beach in time to catch Condor, my yacht for a 2 day 2 night trip around the Whitsundays. Not only did I manage to catch it but managed to catch it on a beautiful hot and sunny afternoon completely unlike anything in the weather forecast! On our first afternoon ...

Someone is definitely looking out for my weather on this trip! Last week the whole of Fraser Island was evacuated because of a cyclone - all the campsites were flooded out - so I was sort of expecting to get a bit wet. The day before my trip I arrived in Hervey Bay to meet my group and plan our trip and was greeted with torrential rain the entire day and night so we were starting to panic a bit! Then, 6am the next morning when we were due to get up and start pac...

Brisbane was a really cool city just to wander round and chill out in to prepare for the hardcore next few days on Fraser Island. I got myself out to the koala sanctuary which was amazing and refrained from stealing the koala I cuddled - they're incredibly cute close up and smell all eucalyptusy which is quite bizarre! They also have kangaroos, goannas and other animals there including some emus who seemed to be able to get out of their enclosure at will and wand...