Hello everyone,

Since our last blog we have been on the pirate boat around the whitesundays!! This was great fun and although the weather wasnt always the best we had enough sun to make the trip. In addition to this the sometimes rough conditions made it quite a fun ride and meant that we could sail using 100% wind, using only the sails! This was great fun, and although we werent able to climb the riging we got to help raise the sails etc! In addition to this the boat had netting at the front of the boat which meant that we could chill out over the ocean whilst we were sailing. We visited a couple of places on the trip including whitehaven beach, which was an amazingly beautiful beach! Also we got to snorkle around some of the southern great barrier reef. Whilst waiting for the food we often got to swing out off the boat on the rope swing, this provided hours of entertainment for me and nath who were often the only ones going onto it! Unfortunalty it is stinger season here and so we had to don some rather attractive looking stinger suits.....im sure pictures shall be put up of them!

After the whitesundays we headed down south to frasrer island which is the worlds largest sand island!! Here we spent 3 days and 2 nights camping on the islands beachs! Here we visited Lake Mckenzie which was voted one of the top 10 beachs in the world....from it was this beautiful blue water that was amazing to swim in, it was the clearest water we have swam in and it was fresh water so it didnt matter if you swallowed any!!
The last day on fraser was nathans birthday so we celebrated that in the beautiful sunshine and on the beautiful island that is fraser! I think he would agree that it is going to be hard to beat the day he had on here!

Following fraser island we headed down to noosa heads unfortunatly it rained the whole time we were here so we just chilled for the couple of days.

After this we arrived in byron bay unfortunalty with it still raining, here we took a day trip to nimbin (a little hippy village) which was eye opening with small kids and old grannys offering every drug under the sun. Also we took a 2 day surf lesson which was great fun and we both stood up on the board if only on the smaller waves...it has given us a taste to try it again! Finally in byron we visited the mostly easterly point in mainland eastern australia.

Now we are in melbourne where eventually after 10 days of solid rain it is beginning to brighten up. Since we have been here we have been to watch the international world rip curl surfing championships which was pretty awesome and we went to the MCG to watc our first aussie rules footie game, it was a night kick off, big rivalry, a very close game and with a crowed of 70,000 it was quite an electric atmosphere, and it has to be said it is actually the most entertaining sport I have ever watched with something going on all the time!

Anyhow that brings us up todate, hope everyone and everything is good back in the UK!

Much love Lloyd and Nathan