Hello everyone, I am now back in Sydney after an amazing couple of weeks. As you all know my friend Sarah from Twickenham is over for a well deserved holiday so I decided to do a spot of travelling again. So I packed my backpack and headed down to Melbourne to meet Leanne and Nikki. When we arrived at our hostel we made friends with the people who we were sharing a room with and went bowling with them. The lads were showing off and were surprised at how well us girls could actually bowl… pure luck, but we didn’t let them know that. It was a great night and after a few drinks at the bar we headed back to our 10bed dorm! The next day we met Nikki and Leanne and we picked up our two week old baby Matilda ….. a Nissan Tilda which we used to drive along the great ocean road. Our first stop was Nenagh in Bundarra Street Melbourne. This was the house where my Gran lived before she left for Nenagh, Co. Tipperary when she was 11. It was really emotional and all the girls were really excited too. We then continued our journey along the magnificent Great Ocean road, stopping off at the main attractions. We all got a chance to drive Matilda and whilst Leanne was driving early one morning she hit a magpie! I’m sure you will all be pleased to hear that I didn’t get her to stop the car so I could rescue it, in fact I didn’t even shed a tear! I’ll tell you the reason why. One day when Lisa and I were staying in Noosa I got an early morning phone call from Brendan so I went outside to talk to him. Suddenly a Magpie flew straight into the back of my head and landed on the grass below. I thought it must have just crashed landed but no he was just staring at me with his evil eyes and then flew straight into my face. Brendan at this point was laughing his head off and didn’t realise the seriousness of this bird’s mental state and told me to chase it off. As I did this the bird stood its ground and didn’t take his eyes off me for a second. So I decided to make a run for it and the little rascal chased me down the street whilst I was in my Pjs! So needless to say that’s why I kept my composure during the hit and run incident. Our road trip was absolutely brilliant and we had so much fun. We stayed in cute little motels and had great laughs along the way. We went to a place called Ballarat where there is an old mining town and we got to see gold being smelted. The man doing the show asked the audience if they knew anyone who had held a piece of gold worth $80,000 and nobody put their hands up and he said that if he did let anyone hold the gold he would get the sack. He then said a young girl had caught his eye and she could hold the bar of gold… yes you guessed right that girl was me. So I had to go up to the front and hold the bar of gold and you can just imagine how red my face went. After everyone left the man said that we could stay and he got the bar of gold out of the safe and we all got to hold the bar of gold. After, we went for Devonshire tea and began looking for our accommodation for the night in the lonely planet. We came across a place called Robin Hood but when I called to make a reservation all the girls got the fit of giggles, it was so embarrassing but hilarious at the same time and all of you who know me know how hard it is for me to stop laughing once I start! When we arrived at Robin Hood’s it was a pub which had rooms upstairs so the guy asked us if we wanted to have a look at the rooms first. So we went up and had a peak and it was awful and dirty but we all just looked at each other and were thinking the same but the owner was there so it was hard to know what to say. We all headed down stairs and the man said he had to go and serve someone so Nikki said “shall we do a runner?” at that point we all ran for our lives towards the car with me as the get away driver, it was like a clip out of Thelma and Louise! The next day we drove to the twelve apostles where Leanne and I went for a helicopter ride. It was amazing and the views were breathtaking. We pretended to be Charlie’s angels and our pilot was lovely. We went back to our motel and cooked pasta and then we went back to watch the sunset by the twelve apostles, it was magical. On our last night we stayed close to Avalon airport where I thought Sarah and I would be flying from the next day to get to Alice Springs where our tour would begin. That evening we spent hours trying to find accommodation and most people said that we would be lucky as it was a Saturday night and everywhere was booked! Then suddenly we came across a comfort inn which had 2 vacant rooms but the price was double our budget. So we booked one room and snuck in all 4 or us into a double room. We were very lucky as the room had a single bed in it too which we managed to make two single beds out of. The next morning we got up early to catch our 9.45am flight but when I double checked the tickets I noticed it had terminal 1 on the ticket and Avalon Airport only has 1 terminal which meant it was Melbourne Airport which was miles away but we gave it our best shot with an hour and a half to get there. Nikki was our driver and she did really well sticking to the speed limits a doing her best. We all kept our fingers crossed but we had missed the check in time so I called the airline and they said just to get there as quick as we could. With 15 mins until our flight was due to leave we ran to the Quanta’s desk and the lovely lady said she would see what she could do and then said it was ok but we had to run to the gate. Because check in was closed we had to take our backpacks on as hand luggage but after they were x-rayed they found a pair of scissors in my bag and took Sarah aside to check her for explosives. I was just thinking today of all days you stop us! But we managed to catch our flight and fell fast asleep on the plane.