Hi all. We have had a busy last few days, travelling from Townsville to the Sunshine Coast. Our first stop was Bowen, where Smiley had lived for a few months as a kid. I thought Bowen was a lovely little place and we chose to stay at Horseshoe Bay, which had a nice beach with close access to part of The Great Barrier Reef. The kids and I hired some snorkeling gear and had a dip. Unfortunately the water was quite choppy so we couldn't see a lot of fish but we did...

Today we made a snap decision to head over to Magnetic Island for a look. It's just so close to Townsville, only a 20 minute ferry ride, so it was too good an opportunity to miss. The kids didn't know we were surprising them with a trip over there and were so excited when we told them. Our island package deal for the day included return ferry trip and the hire of a topless car all for $149, which was a bit of a splurge but still excellent value for money. We se...

2500 km's from Darwin to Townsville in 5 days....madness! We were very excited to finally hit the East Coast and so happy to be back in civilisation after 2 months of patchy and sometimes non-existent mobile and Internet cover. I'm usually not that dependent on my mobile, but when you have a car which is prone to misbehaving and you are in the middle of nowhere in the heat, well it would be more reassuring to have mobile cover. Thankfully the car went well and we...

DARWIN.....again! Ok, so we have had an eventful few days, to put it nicely. Off we headed last Tuesday to Kakadu NP. It was a stinking hot day, temperature pushing 40 degrees. We sweltered on the way there, wanting nothing more than a swim and a cold drink. Problem was, the car decided to start sweltering too. We had just made it into Kakadu when the Beast started simmering and boiling...great, just a few days after we had it serviced! Smiley and I made the dec...

We finally made it to Darwin and we love it! This place is awesome and the weather is brilliant - low 30's during the day and low 20's during the night, so it's shorts and singlets from the time you wake until the time you go to bed - perfect! It's so nice to be back in civilisation too after being out in the sticks with no phone/Internet/good, fresh food. Adz the carnivorous teen has tried another couple of dead animals, namely croc and camel. He gave both the ...