The Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane is where our journey takes us after departing the disappointing capital of Queensland. We arrive in Surfers Paradise and our pre-booked accommodation only a short while after leaving Brisbane and unfortunately pay for our car parking ticket ($26) for the duration of our stay when we first arrive. If we'd waited until we checked in, we would've discovered that parking was free in the hostel car park!

The hostel is a combination of a hotel and hostel as it is a tower block with hotel rooms as well as a few hostel type dorms at the bottom and, unfortunately for us, it's filled with schoolie's! These guys are obviously all out on a week long drinking binge and not to enjoy the area (are we sounding old already???) so we don't mix too well!!

Surfer's Paradise is excellent for just a few things: getting drunk, shopping and surfing! We stay for 3 nights and i get a few hours on the surf - basically remembering how i'd done it 4 yrs ago. It took me a day to pluck up the courage and the rest of the time we managed to occupy ourselves with searching for accommodation in our next location but to no avail!

We shared our room with Gemma, from the UK, who was really friendly and chatty and wanted to stay and work around this area but the prices of renting around here is high and work is hard to come by. We get the impression that this area could also be a bit of a millionaires playground due to the high number of supercars cruising around.

The only other activity worth a mention is the Minus 5 ice bar where all the furniture is carved out of ice as well as various sculptures, the bar itself and even the drinking vessels. You pay a lot to enter, get a free drink and you enjoy half an hour in the freezing cold wrapped up in winter clothes! An interesting and unique concept.

After dragging (!) ourselves away from Surfer's, we stepped into New South Wales in the way of Byron Bay. We couldn't get anything booked prior to our arrival so we tried a few hostels - all booked up - before going for a campsite and we were lucky enough to be camping metres from the beach on an otherwise full site. The location was excellent and the town had an immediate chilled out and relaxed atmosphere - much to our liking. The history of Bryon is entirely of a hippy nature and that still shines through today.

We couldn't do anything until 2pm on our second day here because of the terrential downpours that threatened to flood us out. When the rains finally stopped we enjoyed some amazing burgers, phoned home and watched a busking band on the seafront as the sun set.

Byron Bay is home to Australia's most easterly point and we walked for a few km to get to it enjoying great bay views, watching the many surfers and admiring the lighthouse along the way. We were careless today as there was thick cloud cover but we still got a little burnt by the imaginary sun!

We did very little in Byron Bay but it's a magical place that leaves an everlasting effect on you that you'll never forget. There's something about it that is very unnatural but very likeable at the same time. A world apart.

We had just one more place to stay before arriving in the tourist capital of Australia and that was a remote sea-side town called South West Rocks. We couldn't have chosen a better place to camp as we were seconds from a tiny, but ideal, bay with a perfect little beach. The weather had brightened up a little after leaving Byron but by nightfall the rain clouds threatened and a thunderstorm struck in the distance. We were watching a film in our tent (on our tiny ipod screens!) when we couldn't resist getting out and viewing the sky show for a while.

Returning to our film, the rain really started to hit s hard and we couldn't hear our movie even at full volume. Within a few minutes of marvelling at how loud it was, Sam noticed a bubble under the tent and we soon figured out that a large amount of water was happily swishing around underneath us and soon began to seep through the material whenever something with enough force, i.e. our bodies, put pressure on the canvas. This meant only one thing. Tonight was the night we first relied on Dora to put us up! We took anything of any value from the tent and happily slept the night away in the car.

The next day, the guy camping next to us asked if we had a good night sleep in the car and, chuckling to himself, mentioned that he'd been there 3 weeks and that was the only rain that he'd seen the whole time! It seems it's following us!

That day was a complete contrast to the night before with beautiful weather and a day we decided to spend almost entirely on the beach. Dinner that night was worth a mention because Sam indulged in her new found taste for steak - tried recently but now it was confirmed. She's coming on leaps and bounds with, not only trying, but enjoying new foods.

We had a fairly long drive down the coast to Sydney so we started the day with breakfast from Fredo's pies. This place is infamous for it's variety and quality of pies and it certainly didn't let us down.

Before arriving in Sydney we stop off at an upmarket coastal area called Palm Beach - otherwise known as the setting of Summer Bay in the soap Home and Away. Clearly not for my benefit, but it really is a nice area to visit with vast beaches and excellent views.

Sydney welcomed us with rain! We were actually very lucky because we found out the next day that not 20 mins after we'd left the car and made it into the centre, huge hailstones the size of golf balls crashed down in an area we'd not long driven through! Our second stroke of luck came when parking. Somebody advised us to park by the Glebe hostel so we found that and found a free road to park on but it seemed the nearest train station was miles away. We decided to pull away and find somewhere else and as we drove off, we saw a station at the end of the road we had parked on so there we stayed. We left Dora and carried our stuff into Sydney.