Well as I write this, the grim hand of reality gives me a monstrous slap around the face as it dawns on me that this will be the last entry on our epic adventure. As you know we were making our way back to Lindeman island for another stint working for Club Med. After an early morning flight from Perth to Brisbane, Brisbane to Hamilton Island and then a ferry to Lindeman Island, we stepped onto familiar shores to be met by our mate Graham the bus driver. We settled back into life on the island in no time. Ash was returning to her old job as a house keeper and I had a new role to tackle. Instead of being hidden in the back like an ugly kid at a bonnie baby competition washing dishes I was to work in the main restaurant, looking after the needs of the paying guests. The job was great and the time would fly by as there was always something to do. The best part of my new job had to be the people I got to work with. My lovely German b****es, Saskia and Theresa brightened up any dull moments by being generally daft. Their humour was right up my street. We worked hard and laughed hard in between feeding our fat faces with any food that was going spare. Ash slipped straight back into her role and was over the moon that our French friend William was still working in house keeping along side her. Life on the island was a bit different to the first time round as 90% of the people we knew had left and we had to get to know a new group of people. The ghosts of Matt (AKA Banana), Philippe and Zoe and our adorable Danish girls Simone and Mia haunted the cafeteria as we always expected to hear Matt's welcome of "Hello my little fruit" or expected to see the original gang huddled round a table watching Deal or no Deal at meal times. But as a little consolation our favourite sausage eater Markus and our friendly German giant Robert were still on the island to offer a friendly face alongside the Frenchie's William and David who were still on the island from our first stint on Lindeman.

Island life ticked over at a rate of knots and it took no time at all to fit in with the new people on the island. Saskia and Theresa were a particularly bad influence on us convincing us to hit the disco practically every week. Instead of having to work 6 day weeks like last time, I was actually getting my two days off a week which was great as me and Ash got to spend our days off together doing as we pleased. One of our favourite days had to be the day we spent on coconut beach. Taking a picnic with us, we sat on the deserted beach pealing the husks from coconuts that we had only moments before knocked out of the palm trees. It was a good haul too, five coconuts in total. There's nothing better or more refreshing than drinking the sweet cool milk of a fresh coconut whilst sat on hot white sand. Using a rock to crack open the coconuts to reveal the soft white flesh was a treat. After gorging on our free feast from nature we offered the rest of our coconuts to a hungry bush turkey who happily pecked the shells clean of any remaining flesh. With the coconuts we had left over I tried to teach Ashleigh how to juggle before giving up on the circus school as it was inevitable that if we continued, a coconut would find itself smashing into one of our heads. So to keep the coconut fun flowing we opted to strip off on the beach and take a number of shots using the coconuts to cover our bits. We never thought we could have so much fun only using a few coconuts.

Time on the island second time round seemed to be going a lot quicker than the first time that we were there. As the weeks past and the wages were paid into our account we planned the last leg of our travels and booked flights back to Perth, flights to Phuket and flights to Hamburg and planned to finish our trip off in Amsterdam before getting the ferry home to good old Blighty. We were in our penultimate week on the island before we were due to head back to Perth and we received news from home that not all was good. It was a no brainer and we decided to call an end to our travels as we both had the desire to get home as soon as possible and see our families. We had to quit our jobs and left the island the next day and started a 35 hour trip that would eventually touch down in Newcastle on the 22nd November. Walking through the arrival doors to the sight of our families was a surreal one. Due to the epic hours spent in the air, waiting in airports for flights and the 3 hours sleep we managed to get we arrived a shadow of our former selves. To top it all off they had lost our bags somewhere along the way. Due to the number of flights we had been on our bags could have either been in Brisbane, Singapore, Dubai or London. As long as our guitar showed up that was all we were bothered about as we were sick of the sight of our backpacks after living out of them for the past 15 months. After cuddles and kisses in the airport we slumped into Big Ern's car and were en route to Washington to walk through the front door of home. Since we have been home we haven't took any time out to reflect on what we have achieved throughout our travels as we have been far to busy organising family occasions. We renewed our wedding vows in front of our immediate families, ran all over doing Santa's job over the Christmas period and organised a party to celebrate our wedding/welcome home for our family and friends. All in all it has been great yet exhausting as it feels like we have been running around at 100mph for the past month or so.

Looking back on our time away, we find it rather remarkable what we have achieved within those 15 months. We sometimes forget the things we have done but it is quite a pleasant surprise when you go "Oh yeah we done that...". Our time away was amazing and we wouldn't change a second of it. We met some amazing people, a lot of who we will remain in touch with and be friends with for the rest of our lives. Not meaning to sound cheesy but we are both different people to the people we were before we set out on our great adventure. We both have a different out look on life now and our horizons have well and truly been broadened. Nothing lasts forever and our adventures would have to come to an end at some point. Doing everything we did made it easier to draw things to an end as we are both proud of all we have done and achieved. Travelling has been the greatest thing that we have ever done and we are so pleased we had the love and support of our families all the way through. It's nice actually seeing our families instead of seeing them on the other end of a Skype screen. With travelling you get a hunger to go out and explore and there are many more countries that we want to visit and some day I'm sure we will get there. Even though travelling has been the greatest thing we have ever done we are pleased to be back. As Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz would say "There's no place like home!"

Hopefully we will see you somewhere around the world on another adventure...

Thanks for reading.

Love Peter and Ashleigh x