Its been a while since the last journal so this might be a bit of a long one....

Having left Coffs Harbour we drove up to Ballina to drop our rental car off. We spent the night in Ballina which is a completely nondescript place before moving on up to Lennox Head which is listed as one of the top 10 surf destinations in the world. It was a great place with a massive beach, unfortunately our surfing ability didnt really do the beach justice.

Next stop Byron Bay. The best way to describe Byron is 'laid back'. The town is made up of hippies, surfers and backpackers. Its fantastic. The beach is beautiful, the waves aren't too terrifying and the view from the lighthouse at the top of Cape Byron is breathtaking. We even spotted dolphins and stingrays in the sea!! We spent about 5 days in Byron. Most of the time was spent either by the pool in our hostel or bodyboarding down at the beach. A friend of Graces called Cat arrived in Byron while we there so we teamed up and had a few brilliant nights out. I also randomly bumped into one of my teammates from my Uni football team called Mario Bignose so we spent a couple of days with him....all in all Byron gets a big thumbs up and we loved it there.

From Byron our next stop was Surfers Paradise. I cant put into words how much we didn't like this place. The beach was lovely, really white sand and it went on forever but I think thats the only positive the place had going. The sea had such a strong current that you could only go waist deep, whats the point in that?? The place itself was hideous, it was like Blackpool on steroids. Definitely not what we came to Australia for. Anyway no point moaning so after a couple of days Gem and I decided to move on, leaving Grace and Cat in Surfers Paradise.

We jumped on a bus and came up to Brisbane. Its a bit of a weird place. We went exploring when we arrived yesterday and walked for about half an hour without seeing another person, very strange. There are some really nice parts, theres a man made beach down by the river which is good fun. Think we might go to a koala sanctuary tomorrow so Gem can have a picture taken of her holding a koala. We've already been to a koala sanctuary down near Melbourne but its illegal to touch Koalas in Victoria whereas its ok to touch them in Queensland. Theres some interesting koala based trivia for you.

Gems getting very excited because Laura arrives on Wednesday. Once Laura arrives it should be fun all the way.

The plan is to go to Wet 'n' Wild on Thursday which is a huge water park then on Friday we're going off on a bit of an adventure. We're heading up to Fraser Island which is the worlds biggest sand island, exciting hey? We're going to spend a few days 4 wheel driving around the island and much to Gems dismay we're actually going to camp out in the wild for 2 nights where we'll be at the mercy of the many dingo colonies that live on the island. Incidentally we're not allowed to swim in the sea at Fraser Island as the water is shark infested!!!! If we make it back from Fraser we're then going on an overnight bus up to the Whitsundays to go on a sailing adventure around the Whitsunday Islands for a few days. It should be amazing and with a bit of luck we'll find time to go scuba diving with the fishies.

Think thats about all for now, turns out this journal wasnt so long after all. Hope everyones well and I expect your getting very excited about our not so distant return to the UK. Ciao for now xx