Sorry it's been so long! (We are rubbish!) Singapore seems so long ago now... but I'll try to remember what we did!

Our first impressions of Singapore were both the huge skyline- everything goes up, and the differences between Singapore and all the other Asian cities we had been to. The city was much cleaner than others we've visited, as well as much more expensive, and an obviously wealthier population. We only spent a couple of days here, one visiting the Singapore zoo- which was actually really good, there were very few cages, with some animals roaming around the zoo free, and others separated by moats and ditches rather than walls. We used a lot of our time taking our last opportunity to enjoy real Asian food, and there was a huge variety. There were loads of street stalls- which looked much cleaner than other cities! We had a really good Indian meal one evening, and saw the most amazing coloured sky just before we ate- there was a rainbow over one way, and the whole sky lit up bright orange on the other side- of course this was one of the only time we didn't have a camera on us so can't show you how beautiful it was. Very annoying!!

Our flight to Brisbane was fairly painless, we didn't sleep much... but watched a hilarious Top Gear episode with them driving mopeds through Vietnam- we'd been almost everywhere they went! Arriving in Brisbane was a bit of a shock, it felt weird to be somewhere that felt so normal (and expensive) again, and a bit disappointing to start with (not so foreign anymore!). Also the lack of humidity really hit us (especially me!) and I spent the first few days being cold in a jumper while everyone else were in shorts and vest tops! I have no idea how I'm going to get used to being home again! Brisbane itself was a really small city with not much to do without going a fair way out of the centre. There also seemed to be a lot of strange people- especially in the train station- and the amount of safe needle deposit boxes worried us a bit.

We headed south, just over the New South Wales border, meeting Danni (who'd just arrived back from New Zealand) on the bus. Byron Bay is a very touristy little town, with loads of backpacker tour shops. We met Amanda (who was in Thailand with us), and spent a few days doing relatively little- Will being very excited by the huge surf and the whistling sand! We were also introduced to goon here- cheap boxes of wine!

Will and I headed back up to Brisbane to begin our campervan search- there were loads advertised, we looked at a couple of rental companies that also do sales, and rang a few people. After a couple of days we found one that looked great, and having spoken to the guy we headed to Noosa Heads to spend a couple of days waiting for the van to be ready. The couple selling it has recently started a company buying and converting vans for backpackers. The time we spent at Noosa Heads was a bit frustrating- it rained all the time and we felt like we were waiting for the van! We spent time shopping, watching dvds etc! What had originally been a couple of days waiting became about a week.

Kin Kin, where the van was, is a small village in the mountains inland from Noosa. The village was hit by a three metre flood wave running down the mountain, which destroyed some buildings and washed the roads away, and left the bridge needing to be checked for safety. Also the guy selling the van went missing for two days. The village was headline news, and was apparently even reported as far away as Indonesia! Luckily the guy was fine, he'd been trapped out of the village whilst helping people out of the water, and the whole area has no mobile signal and phones were down. A few days later, they managed to get the van down to Gympie a nearby town, where we met them and bought the van! Which is lovely!! Speaking to the guy a few days later Will found out that the village had once again been flooded in!

The first night in the van was freezing- we hadn't had time to get to a shop and buy a duvet in time because we'd been sorting out registration etc. So we slept in lots of clothes, under our towels! Needless to say we went and bought covers and pillows first thing the next day! We had some bull bars fitted to the front, just in case of kangaroos, by a guy that looked just like Hugh (mum and dad's friend!).

We started our drive up the coast the next day, stopping at seaside towns as we went. We had our first morning surfing in Agnes Water- very tiring work, and we stupidly managed to get really burnt faces- which wasn't fun! We arrived in Airlie beach a couple of days later. This is a small seaside town, next to the Whitsunday Islands. Danni had just flown up here, having got a job as a photographer on one of the island tour boats. This meant that we were able to go on the boat for cheap rates! We had a lovely day snorkeling and exploring the islands- even being models for photos as Danni was doing some training with her boss! The islands are beautiful, and we were really lucky as it was the first day in six weeks that they had no rain! There's a picture up of the snake that turned up in our campsite while we were here- the people in the tent right next to where it was didn't seem very happy!

Next we headed up to Townsville, the biggest city in the north of Queensland (and it wasn't very big!) Like Airlie Beach, and Cairns further north, it has a really nice salt water lagoon on the sea front, which is free to use. You can't swim in the sea here for half the year, so they provide jelly fish free lagoons- which are really well used. There's also been free bbq areas everywhere we've been, in all the parks and rest stops. We were quite surprised to see that they don't uses 'proper' bbqs here- instead they are all electric hot plates- which we decided was cheating (considering the claims of the Aussies being bbq kings!!) Our highlight of Townsville was our trip to the SS Yongala- a ship wreck that went down in a cyclone about 100 years ago. The wreck wasn't found for 50 years, and has a huge amount of coral, and lots of different fish around it. Some sites on the internet say this is supposed to be the best wreck dive in the world. And it was awesome- we saw a school of lots of different species of big fish, a few sea snakes and a massive bull ray- a stingray that was about 2m across, and looked beautiful as it hovered over the wreck! On our second dive here, we did our first ever dive without a guide- which seems to be something done more in Australia than Asia. We were given a briefing of where to go, when to come up etc and heading down. We were really pleased with how it went- no problems and no underwater arguments about where we were supposed to be going!!

Having been diving again for the first time in a while, one day wasn't enough, so we drove up to Cairns and boarded the Ocean Quest live aboard boat, to spend a night on the Great Barrier Reef. We had our own ensuite room, which was surprisingly nice considering the good value! We were really well fed over the two days- yummy food and loads of it! We had seven dives over two days- which did leave us completely knackered- I fell asleep at about half eight on the first night! All our dives, except the night dive, we went just the two of us, and really enjoyed it- we've found in the past that big groups can be a bit hectic, and being alone meant we could go as quickly or slowly as we liked, and stop to look at things for longer! The diving itself wasn't the best we've been on- there were less colours than on the reefs in Asia, but we still managed to spot some turtles, a reef shark, some rays, and loads of fish. The night dive was an amazing experience, although not as spooky as we'd expected! We each had torches, and we went with a guide for this one. It was strange being cold, and then jumping into the dark water and actually warming up! We weren't actually cold at all in the water. It was strange at night as all the small and colourful fish we were used to seeing were hiding, and there were more bigger fish out hunting- they have adapted to use divers' torchlight to hunt- so if you shone your torch on small fish the bigger ones would dart out from where they'd been hovering underneath to you and try to catch them! I did feel bad for the little fish though! We were sad to have to leave the boat at the end of the trip- even trying to get jobs on their volunteer program, where people can do a bit of cleaning and help in the kitchen in return for four free dives a day for a whole week. Unfortunately they didn't have any available slots when we could both go together! We'll definitely be keeping our eyes out for other deals similar!!

That's pretty much up to date! We're now preparing for our next big adventure- we've decided we need to see the outback, and are planning to drive across to West Australia, and hopefully find some jobs for a bit! So here comes about a week of driving!

We'll try to update this again soon- and not be as lame as before!!