after setting foot on dry land after Moreton Island was to hire a car and then drive down the coast to Sydney, which is roughly 920kms, with stop offs along the way. It had to be done - the first stop was Surfers Paradise. A mini vegas on the beach. The waves are high, and the surfers are a plenty! To get some orientation we went up to the top of the observation deck, which is apparently higher than the Eiffel Tower. It gave great panoramic views of the strip an...

Hooray!! Just an 1 hour and 15 mins ferry ride from the sodden mainland and we were greeted with blazing hot sunshine - yay! Moreton Island is a lesser known island on the backpacker trail - which is a good thing, because although there is a resort there, apart from that it is an unspoilt island with a white sandy beach all the way around it. The resort was fun and friendly, and our beachcomber apartment was really nice, a great view of the beach and sea and s...

Brisbane was about 2 hours from Noosa, again on the backpacker bus! We were interested in seeing Brisbane, as we had heard it called 'Brisvegas' and we wanted to experience another city. The writeups about Brisbane say that it has everything Melbourne and Sydney have, with more sun. Hmmmm. I cant say we agree - it was ok, the southbank has a beach -which is pretty nice, juxtaposed with skyscrapers, but apart from that its a bit souless. But due to all the floodi...

Noosa was a damp squib - literally. Noosa is a leafy place, with good looking and rich people, with gorgeous houses with private beaches and boats, with coffee shops frequented by tanned surfers. We fit in perfectly as you can imagine. However, when we hit Noosa, is when the rain hit Australia - we were more or less forced to stay in our hostel and watch the rain come down. We did have a 3 day camping trip organised, on which you kayak through the everglades, w...

Hi everyone, We finally did it! We finished our 6 month work stint and have now hit the road until end of April 2012! We left Melbourne on the 18th Jan, and flew up to Hamilton Island via Brisbane. From Hamilton Island, we took a picturesque ferry ride over to Airlie beach on the mainland where we checked into "Backpackers By the Bay" a quirky little joint, with a snoozing dog you have to step over and a salt water pool Airlie beach is a real backpacker town, ...