The Great Barrier Reef: 26-31 July Our diving adventure began with a 6am alarm call to check out of our hotel and walk round the corner to the dive shop. We haven't done any diving since completing our PADI open-water course in Thailand, so wanted to do a multi-day trip to the reef to get some more dives under our belts and to be able to see stuff without having to concentrate too much on remembering what to do. We chose to go with Cairns Diving Centre, primaril...

Gold Coast to Cape Tribulation. 9-26 July. With John & Bernie heading up the long road to Cairns ahead of us, we didn't cover too many miles initially and pottered up the road to the start of the Gold Coast - “Australia's Playground” - where we stopped for a couple of nights to relax by the beach and feed the amazing variety of bird life from our van: Kookaburras, parrots, cockatoos, wild turkeys and storks. The days were warm (though not quite sunbathin...

Port Macquarie, Coff's Harbour, Byron Bay and Burleigh Heads - 5th to 8th July After our day of wine tasting we were (somewhat surprisingly) up bright and early and on the road heading north in search of warmer climates. We were heading for Port Macquarie and decided to take the scenic drive to see some of the beautiful eastern coastline of Australia and catch our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. We decided to drive through Myall Lakes National Park and w...

Sydney, the Blue Mountains & Hunter Valley - 28th June to 4th July G'day mate! So here we are in Australia after 5 ½ months of touring the weird and wonderful that is Asia. We stepped off our plane at 6.40 am to be greeted by my (Sue's) parents who had just landed 1 hour before us having left Glasgow 1 ½ days earlier. It was a surreal moment seeing them standing in the arrivals hall of Sydney Airport but it was so good to see a couple of familiar faces a...