Arrived in Alice Springs the day before our 6 day trip through the outback. Suprisingly it was not nearly as hot as Queensland. Good news no biting sand flies. Bad news swarms of house fly type things. We got used to these over the next 5 days - you had to or you'd go mad with them.They might have got in your ears/mouth/nose but at least they didn't bite and in fact there were no biting insects at all. Alice Springs is a strange sort of town. Hundreds of miles f...

On the way back to Brisbane to catch our flight to Sydney and on to Alice Springs we did a slight detour to take in the Glass House Mountains - so named by Captain Cook ( this bloke got everywhere ! ! ) as they apparentley resemble the glass kilns in his native N.Yorkshire. We thought it was a more like the set of Jurassic Park ! Had a nice lunch with a view. The heat was unbelievable. Queensland that day was the hottest place in Australia.

Our short flight up to Brisbane from Sydney went very smoothly but then the wheels sort of fell off everything. We were first of all delayed in picking up the hire car and then set off north out of Brisbane expecting the roads to be fairly empty - WRONG ! ! We spent 2 ½ hours in a traffic jam travelling…………56km due to an overturned « road train » ( huge truck + trailer). By then it was getting dark and we'd not booked anything in advance so abandonned ...

We arrived ok in Sydney after a 4 ½ hour flight across the continent and a +3hr time difference. Our friends Frans & Gemara (originally from Holland but now very australian) kindly picked us up at the airport and took us to their amazing house which borders on the national park to the north of Sydney. As well as the 18m X 9m swimming pool, tennis court and architecht designed house which is a certified national « monument » it has two seperate guest houses...

Well here we are in Australia( in Perth NOT Rottnest Island - but the blog software has decided we're in Rottnest even though we're not and it won't let me change it ! ! ) and by popular request (following the resounding success of our NZ blog ) this is the beginning of our Australian blog. After a very comfortable flight via Dubai we arrived in Perth about 20+ hours after leaving Newcastle, with both of us feeling ok on the Monday evening. Next day we visited...