Another week on the road and another 1,500 k's under our (seat)belts!! After our last entry we hit Byron bay Hippie Coastal town of NsW. Very chilled out here and a bit like Glastonbury by the beach! We stayed at a hostel called the Arts factory in the camping ground and then it really did feel like Glasto festival! Tents were literally bumper to bumper. Loved Byron but this hippie camping field got a bit much and we are now sticking to the caravan parks when we can! Stayed there 2 nights then it was onwards to surfers paradise via Mt.Warning national park. Nice bit of natural scenery befre we hit the plastic fantasic Golden Coast. Australia you should be ashamed!! Full of skyrises, hotels and tacky pubs we thought we'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in Las Vegas. Instead of letting the culture shock get to us too much we thought when in Rome and went out on the lash. The next day we headed off to Wet N wild O's biggest water park, great fun but no photos for obvious reasons!!?

Drove straight through Brisbane...didn't see much point in stopping so headed to the Glasshouse Mountains for the night. The next morning it was off to the Famous Australia zoo, down Steve Irwin Way - the highway to the zoo has just been renamed after the croc hunter. Infact the whole zoo was a bit of a Steve Irwin memorial place but it was a great day out. They show loads of footage of him and they still run the croc shows in his famous crocoseum by the croc team he hand-reared. Didn't feel like a zoo as most of the animals were out and about...not the crocs obviously!! Plus all the animals looked happy- especially the turtles!!!? (See pics)  Followed on up the coast after that to Noosa Heads a gorgeous place and lots of drinking holes but unfortunely we hit it on a rock n roll weekend so only managed to find a camp site out of town that had space for us so it was another happy night sat by the Barbie and drinking some beers in Duchess. Decided to head out of this place asap as it was so overcrowded and headed to Torquay/Harvey Bay passing through a town called Gympie on way. True to it's name the place was full of gimps...well hill billies that all looked a bit special. Inbreeding is obviously a favourite pastime here. Probably our scariest encounter so far on our whole trip! We headed out as soon as we could feeling very normal...Now we're in Bundaberg home of Australia's no.1 spirit Bundaberg Rum. Went off to for a tour round the distillery today and sampled some product.

We've now covered about 2000 miles, just another big stretch to go before we hit our final destination where we're hoping to settle down for a while by the Great Barrier Reef.

Catch up soon....Mark & AlaineXxx

P.s Have you noticed the Aussie/Our craze for big things? we're loving the tackiness!!!