HI All Well we have arrived back from the road trip today - a fun filled week spent travelling up to Brisbane in the deluxe motor home! We set off last Friday after picking up our home for the week. All very luxurious and the thing was massive! Needless to say Dave did the driving as Em and I were a little nervous of driving the beast out of Sydney! The weather in Sydney has been pretty cool so we decided to head up the coast as far as we could get in the week away. We took the Pacific Highway up the coast, first stop Diamond Head - a beach where Em had been told there were Kangaroos. There werent. We then powered on to spend the night in Port Macquarie and stayed in a delux caravan park where we plugged into the electric and made the most of all our fancy equipment in the van consisting of gas for cups of tea and the tv! The next day we visited the Koala hospital - only a few patients there but they had some nasty injuries from blindness to being burnt in bush fires. Quite sad but very cute. Managed to get to Byron Bay and parked up in the town for the night. Went to the Beach Bar (owned by Paul Hogen of Croc Dundee fame) and the Railway pub and enjoyed a few jars. Weather in Bryon much warmer than Sydney which was good. Spent the next couple of days in Bryon - went to the beach, visited the Tea Tree Lakes (Lake Ainsworth) and had a massage (very painful I nearly cried!). Bryon was great, had a really laid back feel with beautiful beaches and a pretty town. We decided to move on however after the Ranger knocked on our door and asked us to move the van on. Dave told them we had just arrived, the Ranger said he knew we had been there for two days. Gutted. This prompted the decision to head further on up to the Gold Coast where Dave met up with a friend for the evening (had to have a few beers to get over the trauma of the Ranger incident!) and Em and I stayed at a trailer park - a very real trailer park with permanent residents and a man who sat on his balcony watching the gate for intruders. With a gun. Very reassuring! Em and I then went to the water park the next day - Wet n Wild, a great day out despite it being a little chilly! Em persuaded me to go down a properly scary vertical flume where I was genuinely screaming out of fear as I went airborne! Personal challenge achieved there - thanks to Em! Unfortunately this was also the day that our delux motor home broke down and we had to be towed to a garage and sort out a replacement. It all worked out well as we ended up staying at some friends of Em and Daves who very kindly came to pick us and all our stuff up. Enjoyed a roast dinner and comfy sofa at theirs and picked up the new van the next morning - a better model in fact! We then went to Australia Zoo - home of the mighty Steve Irwin. This was an excellent day out - we saw Crocs being fed, parrots, a giant tortoise, patted a Koala and got to stroke Kangaroos and watch Bengal Tigers being fed. It was brilliant. The whole zoo is geared up for conservation and its really well done. Em and Dave even held a python - mum dont look when that pciture gets put on! Spent another night being well looked after by some other friends of Em and Daves in Brisbane then headed off to Nimbin the next morning. Nimbin was good - a total time warp really where you get offered weed by people all the time. Really colourful though with a fantastic Italian restuarant where I enjoyed the best meal of my travels. Also had a cracking fried brekkie the next morning before wandering round the town, checking out the Hemp Embassy and repeatedly declining cookies and chocolates! From that point onwards we hit the road back to Sydney and spent the next 2 days driving pretty much solidly - only stopping for food, numerous pit stops and to stay in a rest area for the night. An excellent road trip - great company - it was excellent to spend some time with Em and Dave. Now back in Sydney I am planning on heading down to Melbourne and possible Tasmania if I have time before flying off to New Zealand in a couple of weeks. Will put the road trip piccies on then xx