Ok, so here we are at the end of our time in Oz, now is the time to collate all our experiences and write about our highlights and lowlights!

Australia is basically the country that Andrew has always dreamed of seeing. When we first planned a trip our first and only consideration was Australia. It was Emma who really wanted to see Asia and managed to extend the trip to include South East Asia and Bali - although Andrew was keen to see these places too!

Anyway when we arrived in Sydney after having such a fun time in New Zealand and were greeted by rain and a long wait to finally get to check into our hostel we were slightly let down.As the weather picked up so did our experiences in the great Sydney. A definate highlight was doing the backstage tour of the Opera House. Yes it cost more money than anticipated - but we got a cooked brekkie thrown in and despite getting up early to get there we learned some really interesting facts about how the theatres are run and Emma even managed to sing on the stage!

Emma also managed to purchase a beautiful digeridoo that she is hoping she will be able to play when we get home. It has been so long now since we packed it up and sent it home that we cant really remember what it looks like! But we are sure its lovely! We were also about for Australia Day. When you ask most Aussies they do not know why they celebrate Australia Day, but it was an awesome day anyway - the fireworks over Darling Harbour were just incredible!Our trip to the Blue Mountains was also an amazing day - although our legs really hurt for the next couple of days from all the steps!

From Sydney we moved to Melbourne which has been by far our favourite place. It was here that we got jobs as extras on The Pacific, here that we moved into a little flat for a couple of months and here that we saw all the Neighbours we could manage, plus the tour and the neighbours nights!

Melbourne is the area for all the arts and although we did not see any theatre we did watch a performance from the International Comedy Festival. It was not amazing, but it was nice to see some more theatre and performance work!! We did do the Neighbours tour and a couple of Neighbours nights though so we met some characters we knew pretty well from our childhoods watching Neighbours! We were also around for the Grand Prix which took place in the middle of South Australia's heatwave - it was 40 odd degrees that weekend, rather too warm for the likes of us!

The highlighs of Melbourne would be woking as an extra and living in our own place for a couple of months - having our own space and a proper kitchen! The low light was Emma getting caught without a validated tram ticket and being fined $168 - 78 pound!!!

From Melbourne we stepped up the pace considerably and headed on the overnight bus to Adelaide aka retirement central. There are so many retired British people hanging around, we truly felt like we were at home! There was a definate change of pace as soon as we arrived in Adelaide! We managed to see a couple of decent performances and took in some more beach atmoshere at nearby Glenelg - wich had signs in the banks asking for British to come in and transfer their pensions over to them!

The highlight of Adelaide was probably seeing Mandy again after 6 months of travelling. We met Mandy in the cook islands and she had returned home for Christmas and was back out in Oz working at the Winery she worked at the year before. She took us on a tour of the winery and then on a mini wine tour of the region, sampling some more wine...as you do! I guess the lowlight, if you had to say one was the complete change in pace that we encountered just as we were ready to step up a pace and start travelling in earnest again!

A couple of days later we were off again on the bus for 22 hours up to Alice Springs. We did not see much of Alice really, just the main central area- but that was enough. The Aboriginal people intimidated us quite a bit and we never knew quite what to expect! We stayed overnight and then were picked up for our tour of the Red Centre. We did a three day two night tour that took in the Olga's, Kings Canyon and of course Ayres Rock. It was an amazing experince to sleep out under the stars next to a blazing camp fire - but awful cold in the night! All the places we visited were spectacular too, but the highlights have got to be seeing the sun set and rise over Ayres Rock and laying in your swag at night looking at the millions of stars up above you and wondering why you never see that many at home! The low light was spending 4 days having to get up before the sun rose to be picked up, travel to our next place and then wake up as the others in our dorm caught a 6am flight. We do not operate well when tired - you may or may not know that!

We decided to fly from Aice to Cairns and save some time! Our time in Cairns was also limited to our exploration of the Barrier Reef, which was an unbelievable experience. We have both agreed that although we preferred the experiences we had in Fiji and thew Cook Islands it was a truly unforgettable experince to jump into the ocean from the back of a boat for the first time and snorkel over some of the most famour reef in the world. We cant think of anything bad to say about our experience - except that Cairns is designed for gap year students who want to drink and party!

Fed up of buses we hired a Campervan to take us down the East Coast as far as Brisbane. This was another one of Andrews dreams and eventually Emma caved in and allowed him to rent one. It was a bit scary the first time we drove our big van with Billy Idol spraypainted all over but we got rapidly used to it. The most frustrating part was realising that we were cruising along the highway at 60mph...no wonder it takes so long to get anywhere in Australia. It was a fun experience sleeping in our van and stopping off whenever we felt like it! Favourite stop off was Mission Beach!!! We hit Australia Zoo with enought time to realise how comercial it really wasbut we still had fun.

Brisbane....arrived and seen in a day pretty boring stuff, well just another city and it rained haha. We really enjoyed the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary and our hug from the koalas was special! Main reason to go to Brisbane was to meet our crazy fun friend Tamara!!! Hired another wicked van (no-idea what it said on it!) and off we went to Byron Bay! Byron was nice but any longer than a day for us none surfers would have been tough. Nice lighthouse and fish and chips!!! Also part of our mini road trip was Nimbin - Oz's Glastonbury equivilant and Movie world Theme Park! We stayed an hour in Nimbin as we didnt want to get stoned or have magic mushrooms....we stayed a whole day at Movie World because the rollercoasters were quality - Superman by far the best!

Virgin Blue transported us from Brisbane to Perth in 5 hours! 5 hours on a no frills aircraft was painful...made more painful by the annoying woman next to Emma who like a good old chat!!!

Perth....so much was promised and so little delivered! We enjoyed Scarborough Beach - nice fish and chips again!!! But Perth itself was a wee bit small and expensive. It says something when our most memerable event was the taxi ride to the hostel!

Prob missed loads out but hey you should have been reading as we went along!!! That said we are a bit behin sched on the blog (I blame the slow internet!) and will hope to update fully soon as Bali and Asia is calling .....