After dropping Scotty off at Brisbane Airport we spent the day getting to a free campsite for the night, felt very strange to be just the two of us again.

We had a week to get from Brisbane to Sydney so decided to take our time and stop wherever we wanted to along the way. The next morning we drove through a "Scottish" town called Maclean - every lamp post had a different tartan cloth wrapped round it and a big flag on entering the town said that it is twinned with The Isle of Skye! The toilets in the rest stop there were even marked "Lads" and "Lassies"!

Over the next few days we found some lovely walks to do through the rainforest, spotting skinks and different birds. We saw some very picturesque waterfalls and even got to walk behind one, a first for both of us. The picnic areas where the walks started were fully equipped with bbqs and even plug sockets so we could have toast in the morning. We drove up one dirt road quite late in the day and found an old log cabin with a fire place. No one was around so we decided to risk staying there, it was really nice in the day light but a bit scary at night so the goon box was bought out again and after Matt lit a fire and Gem won Uno again we actually got quite a good nights sleep despite the wildlife noises in the pitch black.

The next morning we made it to Coffs Harbour and had lunch on the beach. A nice Australiain guy pointed us in the direction of a nice place to swim that had warm showers so we followed his directions and bagged ourselves not only a nice swim but also a hot shower - all for free, very pleasing! We were just drying off our towels when a guy came to the table and started preparing some fish he had caught. We thought he was going to cook them for himself but within seconds about 20 pellicans arrived along with seagulls and other birds. The pellicans were massive and we watched almost as wide mouthed as they were as the guy chucked fish in the air for them to catch.

We found another free campsite to stay in that night (why not, we´d had a free shower after all) and Matt set to finding fire wood. Once night had fallen and we were sitting near the fire chatting there was a big rustling in the forest. Gem went to go and see what it was with a torch but chickened out, Matt (acting very manly) got up to see and jumped 5 foot in the air when it rustled right next to him! Once we had both calmed down and found the confidence to once again shine the torch in the general direction the noise was coming from we saw....wait for it....a frog!

The next day we made our way to Tuncurry and had lunch by the rockpool there. We noticed there were some people looking at our van and they started taking family photos of them stood by it, we thought it was quite funny that we took a photo of them doing this!

We stayed just outside Sydney on our last night and Matt built his final fire, we ate dinner and had an earlyish night. The following morning we spent an hour or so getting the camper back into it´s original condition ready to return it. We made boiled eggs and soldiers for breakfast and just about managed to get to the camper office in the centre of Sydney by 4pm.

Our flight to Santiago didin´t leave until the next morning so we spent a night sleeping on the floor in arrivals before finally catching our flight!

In all Australia was a great experience, the only (huge) downside was how expensive everything is. We hardly went into any pubs as a pint of beer is about 9 dollars, a packet of normal cigarettes was 16 etc. So expensive! We managed to do everything as cheaply as possible but our budget is still more depleted than we had planned. Hemce changing our flights to Santiago rather than spending the next 4 weeks in New Zealand which woul dbe similarly expensive. The positives from Australia are definitely the people, we didn´t come across one rude or irrate person while we were there and all the time people were helping us, giving us advice of where to go and geniunely interested in what we were doing there etc. The wildlife is absolutely amazing and the country itself is so varied and beautiful with no bad parts like most countries (including England!) has. It was definitely worth every penny, 6 weeks that we will remember for the rest of our lives.