Flew back to Sydney to greet a massive thunderstorm....which has lasted for 3 days! Good old Oz weather! Nothing quite like a day on Bondi beach in a monsoon! So as you can imagine our plans have been somewhat disrupted here, it's a good job Sydney has plenty of entertainment i.e. Aquarium and finally got to see Avatar in 3D, the best film ever! Australia is turning out to be extremely expensive, paying the equivalent of a night in the Ritz for an 8 bedded bunk bed dorm....character building!! No-one ever told us Australia was twice the size of Europe...ignorantly we thought travelling from Sydney to Darwin was like London to Newcastle, but it is more like London to New York....in a bus! So tomorrow we are off to Coffs Harbour for 2 nights and then Byron Bay for 4 nights to do a bit of surfing hopefully and somenbathing and R&R...touchwood!

Got the greyhound bus 10 hours up to Coff Harbour, a little harbour town, didn't do much here apart from chill out on the beach and got badly burnt. Randomly our room mates were a couple from Colchester who were both physios as well and wierdly enough knew people from our work! Small world. After 2 nights in Coffs we travelled a small distance up the coast to beautiful Byron Bay, which is best described as a bohemian paradise. Our favouraite place so far. There was a beautiful coastline with a top 10 surf spot in Australia on the rocks, the town itself was small but packed full of interesting beautique shops, buskers, hippies, backpackers and surfers. It was a world apart from the rest of Australia, very relaxed atmosphere but packed full of things to do. It also helped with the weather starting to improve here. So on our first day we took a long, hot walk up the cliffs to the lighthouse with beautiful 360 panoramic views, the next day it was quite rainy so we stuck more to the town, however the day after we went sea kayaking with dozens of bottlenosed dolphins, getting out through the crashing waves in the kayak was pretty scary and once through it was very choppy and I was very nervous for the 3 hours so wasn't too interested in the dolphins and was just focusing on the waves! Rob did not feel the same though and was amazed by the playful nature of these huge dolphins and thinks he also saw a couple of rays, but sadly no turtles :-( The guide took lots of photos which we will hopefully get shortly. The drama continued on the return back to shore with the somewhat exciting but daunting prospect of surfung the waves back in on our kayak! I wanted to get out a swim back! So on the guide signalling us in it was full steam ahead, "LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT" we were paddling so fast and just when we thought we were safely through the guide stopped us on our kayak and as we turned around to look a giant wave came towering above us! The power was immense and for a split second we were surfing the wave and soon forgot what he told us we were meant to do and the boat quickly span and capsized over us, luckily we had helmets on, I felt I was under the water for so long and I couldn't get up because the canoe was so heavy, we were in shallow water and Rob managed to lift it off. We were supposed to lean into the wave when we surfed it to avoid the boat capsizing on us but we were so caught up in the wave we couldn't remember what to do!

Byron Bay was also the birth place of Robs new obsession with body boarding (a bit like surfing but not standing up and on a smaller board) he spent hours out there catching the big rolling waves. Lots of fun, I managed to catch a few but the waves scared me a little so I stayed up front catching the smaller ones!

We are now in Surfers Paradise, which is a rather ironic name as apart from it's long stretching white sandy beach, it is neither paradise nor a haven for surfing. However the weather is hot and sunny so good beach weather. It's also strange that even though we are only an hour and a half north of Byron Bay there is an hours time difference. Off to Noosa tommorrow, which we are looking forward to..........

wow its been a long time since we updated this blog. Noosa was a great place....for rich holiday makers! it was a lovely resort just very expensive and it wasn't exactly tailored for backpackers! i think on one day all we could afford to eat was fruit! healthy though. we were both suffering from a cold in Noosa and it was awful in the hot weather. We went on a walk in the National Park, we were almost back where we wanted to be until a massive storm approached us....we headed back to the beginning of the walking track completely oblivious that our hostel was closer. We have never been so drenched! That was the beginning of the bad weather..........from Noosa we went to Rainbow Beach which was our 2nd fav place to Byron Bay. It was a small beach town, with only a few shops etc. We did our surf lesson here and it was brilliant, the instructor took us on a 4x4 across the beach to a beach where we were the only ones there and the sea was really warm. We managed to stand up a few times, Rob being the better surfer than myself! We were then told by the instructor that we could go and catch our own waves because we were doing well! I struggled to stand, I think I managed it once, Rob was brilliant at it though. We were out there for ages and it's so tiring. The hardest part is getting out there with your board. We ached so much the next day. After Rainbow we went to Hervey Bay for Fraser Island, Fraser Island is one of the worlds only islands composed entirly of sand, there are only 3 rocks on the island which create over 60 different colours of sand (similar to Rainbow Beach) Rob says his Dad would have a field day analysing all the mineral compounds! Despite it being a desert island there are all kinds of jungle containing deadly spiders and snakes, and surrounded by shark infested sea, however there are plenty of lakes to swim in. One of which contained fresh water turtles! We also swam in "champagne rock pools" which contained tropical fish such as clown fish! Despite the weather being somewhat of a monsoon, it was still a very enjoyable trip. We are now in a place called Agnes Water which is a tiny surfing and biking town. Rob's Birthday showed us the first bit of sun in a week! Today we hired out a surf board and caught some Agnes surf! (a little rougher than Rainbow so plenty of wipeouts!) We are catching the overnight bus to Airlie Beach tonight from which we will hopefully be catching our 12 man sailing boat around the WhitSunday Islands for 2 days. Cross fingers this sunny weather continues...........

So, went on a two day one night sailing trip on a racing yacht with 8 other passengers and 2 crew around the idealic Whitsunday Islands. The 1st day gave us bright blue cloudless skies with hot sunshine and beautiful turquoise waters, not much wind for sailing though but great for pictures and sunbathing! So we had a lovely lunch anchored across from Whitehaven Beach, afterwards we snorkelled Eck Island reef, the water was crystal clear with 5m visability. There were numourous florescent corals of blue, yellow, pink, purple etc, there were also many tropical fish swimming around us. Such as the zebra fish. We had to wear stinger suits to protect us from the deadly box and irukanji jellyfish. Next we went to Whitehaven Beach which is classed as being one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world with fine white sand and crystal aqua marine water. After that we anchored in Tongue Bay for the night eating a lovely meal as the sunset surrounded by turtles popping their heads up to say goodnight! Even though we had the most expensive cabin to sleep on the yacht, it was the worst night sleep we have ever had as overnight a storm started sending terrential rain and gusts of wind rocking the boat side to side! The next day after brekkie the wind picked up to 20 knots and the swell rose to 1.8m which apparently is good for sailing but not for those feeling slightly sea sick (Rob)! We stopped at Mantaray Bay where we snorkelled in what can only be described as a giant fish tank! Once again crystal waters with enormous sholes of tropical fish as well as giant fish rays and a bottom dwelling shark. It was truly amazing. After that we sailed to a final snorkelling spot but the water was a little murky so not much was seen except coral. Finally we sailed back to Airlie Beach where we truly had to find our sea legs as racing yachts tilt horizontally to the wind meaning we were holding on for dear life as it felt we were going to capsize....this continued for 2 hours! Never the less a once in a lifetime experience. You will never guess but we made a friend on the boat who was a PHYSIO! Damn physios, can't get away from them!

We arrived in Townsville the day after sailing which is a navel city acting as a drop off point for Magnetic Island, so after a nights stay in a lovely hostel we took a 20 minute morning ferry across the bay to this island landing at Nelly Bay. It was only a short bus ride to where we were staying at Horseshoe Bay, the bungalows are set back in the forest and as a consequence as well as sharing our dorm with 6 other people we also share it with some resident geckos, spiders, cockroaches, moths and giant mosquiotos! Sounds lovely doesn't it? So therefore despite having one bunk each we topped and tailed in one for safety! Despite all this it really is a lovely place, boasting 320 days of sunshine and it certainly has lived up to this statistic. Our 1st day on the island was spent exploring Horseshoe Bay the island really conjures up the sense of a Tin Tin adventure according to Rob who almost expects Snowy the dog and the professor to come scrambling over the craggy rocks! As usual that evening there was the big decision whether to have beans or tuna for tea! The next day unfortuantely our champagne, gormet breakfast with the koalas was cancelled, however this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as for significantly cheaper we went on a tour around the sanctuary. Here we were able to hold native creatures such as a baby croc, dragon, skink, python and get a kiss from a parot. There were also 2 cuddly critters we could also stroke: the wombat and the koala! Very cute. We refused to pay $14 each just to hold the little fluff balls! As well as seeing animals in the sanctuary here, we have also seen many wild natives such as colourful tropical birds, green frogs and the rock wallibie (looks like a small kangaroo). We ended the 2nd day with a stop off at a hidden waterfall where Rob fell down the path (clumsy as always!) and a nibble at a local asian night market. Leave here tommorrow to head back to Townsville to explore this city for 2 days...........(underwater snorkelling photos and Magnetic Island photos coming soon)