Hi all!

Again we have been incredibly slack with the blog entries but anyway - here is our month in Australia in a nutshell...

We had a nightmare flight from Denpasar airport in Bali - we flew to Darwin arriving at 4am, then had a connecting flight at 7am to Alice Springs which is right smack bang in the middle of Australia. Then we flew Alice Springs to Perth which was weird as we went from hot outback country in Alice Springs to the cold wet and windy Perth. Australia is the size of Europe which I had never realised before. In a word it is HUGE!

When we arrived in Perth we had a very bizarre reverse culture shock. We were so used to the craziness of Asia and nearly being run over by mopeds the whole time that it was really weird seeing people wait for the traffic lights to change before crossing the road!! It was just too orderly and civilised for us! The sightseeing in Perth was a bit limited, we went to the aquarium, the market to get some warmer clothes and went to see the parrots in Kings Park. It was a real surprise to see hundreds of really brightly coloured parrots in the trees. So we had 5 days in Perth in total which was enough to be honest. The prices of everything were a real shock to the budget. Think London prices plus 20%!!

We flew all the way across Australia to Cairns with a stop in Ayers Rock for about ten minutes. The rock was really big and orange and impressive. That's all there is to it really!

Cairns was nice and warm and full of backpackers. We had 11 days to get from there to Brisbane for our next flight so we had to move seriously fast. We did a tour to Cape tribulation where we saw massive 5 metre crocs in the wild and many other cliche australian wildlife (kangaroos, wallabies, koalas). We also did a few dives on the great barrier reef. We did our second and third dives on our own (without a guide) - the second one we managed to get lost and come up next to the wrong boat. Fortunately our boat spotted us and came to pick us up. The currents were really strong and it was quite hard to keep track of where we were without a compass. The third dive was better, and we definitely learnt from our previous mistakes. The reef was beautiful as you can imagine, but we didn't see as many fish as we were expecting.

We took the Greyhound bus and then a ferry to Magnetic Island. It was a really beautiful island with loads of kookabaras, koalas, rock wallabies, possums, and parrots just roaming around in the wild. It was really fun spotting them and we did a few nice walks on the beaches and through the bush land.

We hopped on the Greyhound again down to Airlie beach where we caught our Whitsunday islands day sailing boat. It was a 45ft yacht and the crew were incredibly enthusiastic! To our surprise we were the only other backpackers on the boat, it was mostly elderly couples. There was one big problem - there was no wind. We motored for the whole day. Thankfully the sun was blazing and the snorkiing was fantastic which made up for the lack of actual sailing.

The next trip we did was by far the highlight of Australia - a 4x4 self drive trip to Fraser island (the largest all sand island in the world). We went with a group of 7 in total and made some really good friends. We camped on the island and cooked our meals all together. Getting the car stuck was a great team building exercise, although we had some good drivers so didn't get stuck too often! The island had some huge freshwater lakes with white sand and the water was crystal clear. Just like a beach but without the saltiness! We had fun there taking underwater team photos with sunglasses on. Don't knock it until you've tried it! A german guy was driving the car on the way off the island and managed to get us stuck on the ramp adjoining the ferry. We were the last car on so had the pleasure of the whole boat load watching whilst we piled out of the car so that the ferry warden could help get us unstuck. Embarassing to say the least!

We only had one afternoon in Brisbane before our flight so couldn't really see much. We had a nice walk round the park with the german guy who got the car stuck a.k.a Toby! He was a really nice guy and we would have liked to carry on travelling with him but he was only on holiday.

Once in Sydney we had 3 days to make the most of the city and catch up with Howard my old Uni friend. He let us stay at his apartment which was really nice and it was certainly a welcome break from hostels with no cutlery or fridge space!! Howard lives right next to the beach so we had some nice walks around there and of course visited the Sydney Opera house. Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad most of the time we were there. We had fun meeting his housemates, made them all a big lasagna and played "rock band" in his lounge.

That brings us to New Zealand. One piece of advice I would give to anyone is that 3 weeks is nowhere near enough to see even one coast of Australia!

Rich and Zoe