G'day mate! Bruce and Shiela here!

Sorry we haven't been 'blogging' for a while but we've just been so busy and haven't had the time. As we've done quite a bit I'll give you the shortened version otherwise it'll be time for us to come home by the time I finish writing it all!

First of all, from now on I'll be writing in normal font and Andi will write in italics- just so some of you more simple folk don't get confused!

So we left you last year in Sydney, and as you've probably seen the photos, you'll have guessed that we made it to the fireworks. Although they were pretty impressive, I don't think those 14 minutes were quite worth the 6 hours sitting on concrete in the heat waiting for them! Oh well, at least we did it and the atmposphere was good. The transport organised for getting home after midnight was very efficient, even if it did take ages for the roads to clear!

So on New Years Day we got the overnight bus to Byron Bay.....where we watched a great big storm for 5 days! I've never seen rain like it, but to be honest it was nice to have a few days off just reading a book. On the one good day we did get we hopped on the bikes and headed up to the lighthouse, where we stood on the most easterly part of Australia. Here you can see humpback whales migrate, but it's not the right time of year unfortunately. Byron Bay reminds me a bit of Blackpool on a Bank Holiday - full of young drunk British people. If it wasn't for the tourists, this would be a lovely little place, I'm sure the locals aren't too pleased. People seem to go there simply for drink and drugs! So being the old boring farts that we are, we decided to skip Surfers Paradise (as it's apparently worse than Byron!) and headed straight to Brisbane - to stay in a hostel with 8 people in a really tiny room where the air con broke - that was great fun, not! Met up with my friend Alison who showed us about a bit and of course went for a few beers (great night in the Pig and Whistle - a British bar this time not an Irish one!). We also spent have a day making boomerangs which was great fun. The workshop was really funky and the aboriginal artist guy, Russell, was as mad as a box of frogs, but great fun. To appear intelligent, we also went to some museums and art galleries, but we weren't kidding anyone and soon headed back to the bar. There were lovely walks around Brisbane and we also went swimming as we haven't done any exercise for ages - most of the pools are outdoors over here so it's weird. The pool we went to was an old fashioned one with the changing rooms around the edge of the pool, very quaint. All in all we really liked Brisbane, and actually probably prefered it to Sydney.

From Brisbane we headed to Noosa. We weren't going to go here but I'm glad we did, it's a gorgeous little place with nice beaches, posh cafes and a national park area. We walked (in the rain again!) through the rainforest national park trying to spot the wild koalas. We got to a stretch on the trail were we smelt them but couldn't see them. After a while of staring up in to the trees, more people joined us and some locals said that there was definitely a koala up there but he was hiding well. So we accepted defeat and went back to the hostel for a beer - well, we had to console ourselves didn't we? Our hostel was a massive converted old Queensland house which was up on stilts and all made from wood. Very cool. I wasn't too upset about not seeing a wild Koala cause from Noosa we caught the courtesy bus to Austalia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter, Steve 'Crikey' Irwin. On the bus they show videos of Steve doing his thing! I'd forgotten how 'animated' and 'dramatic' that guy was. Was quite sad though as he was saying things like 'I'll remember this experience for the rest of my life' and 'this is the most aggresive animal I've ever seen' and everyone was thinking 'poor guy, he didn't know what was just round the corner'. To be honest I was expecting the zoo to be massive, but it had started out just as a reptile centre and just grew from that. Obviously there were loads of crocs and snakes, but there were also animals native to Australia like wombats, kangaroos, lizards, cockatoos, dingoes and even Tasmanian Devils but my favourite had to be the koalas. Andi said this was only because they were just like me....I like to get a cuddle, have some food and then spend the rest of the day sleeping. I couldn't argue with him to be fair! I actually managed to hold one. Me and my new best friend Jafa, didn't want to part (even though he did poo on me! And he weighed about 7 kg!). However, his smell lingered on me all day so I couldn't forget about him. In fact his smell stayed around for a few days - it's a very strong smell - a sort of mixture of animal and eucalyptus! While we were there, Bindi was there doing her little show. Her and her little brother Bob are definitely following in their fathers footsteps - and they seem to be loving it. There are massive picture boards showing everything Steve did and displays of the things people have written and made and sent in after he died. It's really sad actually and you start to realise what a huge impact the guy had on Australia folk here and the amount of work he did for conservation that us Brits just never knew about. But all in all, we had a great day out. Funniest thing was when we got to the elephant enclosure. We both looked at each other and said 'you bothered about the elephants? No? Shall we just move on then?' Get us! We're such expereienced elephant safari goers now that domestic elephants are just so beneath us! Ha ha!

And after Noosa, where did we go....oh yes, up to Hervey Bay, before arriving in Bundaberg, where we are now. Now from Hervey Bay we had the most amazing adventure. It was 'awesome'. We are due to go on a trip in a few days time that will hopefully be just as spectacular as the last few days. However, you are just going to have to wait until the next installment of the Jarvis' Journey to find out what we got up to.

Oh, and last night we spent the night in a prison cell....but you'll have to tune in next time to find out more about that too!