ALICE SPRINGS Hotter than the fires of hell and we are staying in a Caravan!!! We have finally become official full-on 'van dwellin' pikeys - white trash, moi?! surely not. Anyway, accommodation aside we are well impressed with 'The Alice', not just as the jumping off point for The Rock but as a great town in its own right, there is loads of stuff to do and it has a lot of character, partly due to the aboriginal population who hang around the t...

THE BUS JOURNEY: Darwin to Alice Springs After arriving back for a quick re-pack in Darwin it is time to embark on our next Greyhound journey but this time it is the big one. 23 hours solid on a coach, deep joy. Have you ever played spot the freak? It turns out to be so hilarious that it is hard to know where to begin, we don't want to sound too offensive and rude about our fellow passengers - but hey you know us, what the hell, they were a right set of ...

DARWIN The flight did not get us off to a good start. Flying through an electrical storm (which you could see out of the window of the plane, about 100m away!) and then being told we will have to circle Darwin for 30 minutes as it is too dangerous to land... then getting re-routed and landing in place called Katherine in order to refuel... By which time we have both fall asleep and the next thing we know there is a huge crunching noise and we look at each othe...

CAIRNSAs with Airlie Beach, the recollections of Cairns are somewhat hazy but as the last stop on the East Coast where everyone meets up with the mates they have met along the route it's always gonna be an interesting place. We have allowed ourselves 5 days here, supposedly to get some R&R before tackling the north and the Red centre, yeah right! Other than shopping, we spend our time drinking. We did manage to get out of Cairns for a day and scarily we d...

MISSION BEACH - RAIN RAIN RAIN We arrive around midnight and it is absolutely tipping it down! Doesn't look like we are going to get to see the amazing Mission beach here as it is still teeming down when we get up the next day. Thankfully we are staying at a great hostel Scotty's - can't say enough good things about this place and the guys that own/run it - and we have arrived for BBQ night, bonus! We also meet up with Karen who was on Fraser Isla...