Well guys, we're gonna have to keep this fairly compact as we've been majorly slacking on the blogger front. We're almost back to Sydney now, so as you can imagine we've travelled a fair distance from Hervey Bay.
After Fraser Island we stopped at a few small places as overnight stops on our way to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands. We did a 3 day 2 night sailing trip on a Maxi Racing yacht called "The Card" and had a fantastic time. We met some really cool people (you know who you are) that we have managed to meet up with a few more times in Oz and hopefully again when we get back to England. If you have checked the photos then you will already have seen the photos from the Whitsunday’s so I won’t bother going into too much detail. We did a lot of sailing, snorkelling, eating and drinking - see photos. The snorkelling was fantastic around the Whitsunday Islands as it’s so close to The Great Barrier Reef. We saw the most enormous fish that we’ve ever seen in our lives!! His name was Elvis and he was a 1.5m long Maori Wrasse. It gave us a bit of a shock at first, you don’t expect to see a fish nearly the same size as you swimming straight for you!!
Next stop was Mission Beach which was a very small town right on the beach, lovely place but tiny. Then off to Townsville for a night as a stopover on the way to Cairns. Nice town, nice beach, nuff said.
Cairns was next and we stayed here for just under a week in a 5* campsite with loads of cool stuff. Australia’s largest jumping pillow for one, mini golf, outdoor cinema, free pancake breakfasts, free aqua aerobics (which was the 1st bit of exercise we’ve done in about 2 months!!) and loads more. Great place. Cairns was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be and also a lot quieter. We took a couple of days out in the middle of the week to drive up to Cape Tribulation via Port Douglas to do a snorkelling trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. We made the effort to do the trip from there because the coral is really grey and sun bleached in Cairns, and a lot is dead from the thousands of people that snorkel there every week. Where we did it from there are only 2 boats that go with a max of about 60 between the two, so loads less crowded and the coral was brilliant colours and the fish were amazing.
We were actually quite lucky with the time that we got to Cairns as a few days after we were there a cyclone hit. It rained alot anyway as its pretty high up in the tropics, but it absolutely bucketed down just after we left.
I've got a fact for you guys, Cape Tribulation is the only place in the world where two World Heritage sites meet. The Rainforest and The Great Barrier Reef. That’s just a little trivia that might come in handy one drunken night down the pub! :o)
We really didn’t want to leave Cairns, and not because it was an amazing place, but because we knew we had a 5000km drive to do through the outback and Ernie doesn’t have aircon!
Our first trip was to Charter Towers which one guy from the outback referred to as the "Big Smoke" which has a population of 150,000 so you can imagine just how much hustle and bustle this place had. It’s the second largest city in Queensland and has the population that equals Ipswich!!! Not exactly what we’d call the big smoke!
We basically just stayed one night in each place on the way through outback as we wanted to get through as quickly as possible.
Our next stop was Richmond which had the worst flies in the history of the world. We had to sit in our van in 40 degree heat as the flies were just so overwhelming and annoying. It also didn't help that we drove through a plague of grasshoppers on the way and had (literally) 1000 dead grasshoppers plastered ALL over the van! Next stop was Mount Isa which is actually a fairly large and commercialised place (it had a McD's!) considering its over 1000km's into the outback. The first thing we did here was to get a McFlurry! :o) True Brits!!
We were supposed to drive to Barkly Homestead Roadhouse after Mt Isa as it was just over 500km away, but as we got there we were totally overrun with Abo's and insects. The place was pretty scary as there were Abo's sitting around everywhere under trees getting p*ssed. To top things off, as I walked across a piece of grass about 3 square meters, about 500 grasshoppers decided to jump out of the grass and started flying around me. This pushed Jade over the edge as she was already petrified of all the insects there, so we had to get back in the van and drive another 230km's (taking the total to around 700km's that day) to drive to the next place which was Tennant Creek. This place wasn't any better on the Abo front but there was actually a nice (ish) campsite with a lot less bugs!
By Tennant Creek we were about 2000km's into our 5000km drive with Alice Springs as the next stop. Ernie's friend Clive became infested with ants in Tennant so we stayed 2 nights in Alice Springs so they could empty the van and kill the little blighters!
Alice wasn't a bad place but I certainly wouldn't go back. Actually that applies to pretty much the whole outback!
We drove to Kings Canyon next and spent a night here before attempting the sunrise 7.2km walk through the canyon. For those of you who haven’t heard of this place (and we hadn’t until about 2 days before got there) it’s a mini Grand Canyon. We all nearly died from exhaustion walking up the first part, which felt like a vertical cliff face! We had to do lots of rock climbing to get to the summit where we could lie down looking over the edge. We then walked through the Garden of Eden to a natural swimming hole in the canyon before hiking the last few km’s back to the car, for the drive to Uluru. We visited Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the afternoon which is a rock that used to be like Ayres rock but has been split into 36 huge bright red rocks and is much more impressive than Ayres. We didn’t do the walk here as it was 40 degrees and too damn hot for an 8km uphill hike, so we took some photos and headed back to Ayres rock for the sunset photos.
We then had another early morning the next day for the sunrise pictures at Ayres followed by the 10km walk around the base. Really good walk but got bored about half way around as it’s all the same! Ayres Rock is totally amazing when you 1st see it, it’s just unbelievable that this giant red rock is just in the middle of desert! But, I think we actually preferred King Canyon over all 3 sites, it was the most spectacular to see up close and walk around and definitely the most interesting.
We then headed out of Uluru on our way out of the outback, stopping at Marla, Coober Pedy, Cadney and finally Port Augusta. Coober Pedy was the only place of any interest as they filmed Mad Max and Pitch Black here and the most of the town is underground as it can reach 50 degrees regularly in the summer. The place was actually a dive but the underground stuff gave it a bit of novelty. We also got a bit harassed by the Abo’s here as well which was a little bit scary!
After Port Augusta we finally came back to reality when we reached Adelaide which is a really nice city. It’s really laid back, clean and generally a nice place. We could’ve easily stayed longer but had quite a few people to see in Melbourne so soldiered on to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road. Saw lots of cool things along here, like the 12 Apostles (there are only 8 left) etc and spent the night in Mount Gambier and then Apollo Bay. Both nice places and worth a visit. We had a bit of a nightmare on the drive through the Great Ocean Road because Kyle locked the car keys inside Ernie!! We were just going to check out the view so didn’t take any money/mobiles when we got out the van! So we both started trying to break in with the only tools we had-my hairclip and Kyle’s sunnies!! I don’t actually know how he managed to do it, but Kyle hooked the wire from his sunglasses through my door and pulled up the lock to open the door!!! Nice to know that Ernie is so secure! Kyle was very chuffed with himself after for “jimmying” his 1st car!!
We are now in Melbourne and have been here for about a week catching up with various people and being kindly put up for about 5 days by Stu and Josefin in their flat. It’s been really good staying with them and being so close to the city as the closest camp site is 10km outside the city and was costing us 40 bucks a night to sleep in our own van!!!
We’ve seen loads of stuff since being here and even caught some of the Commonwealth Games action. We went to see the boxing which was brilliant, and Leah even saw me on TV in the UK – how strange is that! I must admit I was chasing the camera to get me on, but it worked! :o)
We met up with a couple of our girlfriends from the Whitsunday’s one night and hit the casino together. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but decided to have a go on the pokie machines. Our friends put in 3 bucks and won 380!!! We couldn’t believe their luck, Kyle was telling us all off for screaming and drawing attention to ourselves! Me and Kyle had a go straight after and had convinced ourselves that there was no chance we would win after their luck. We put in 12 bucks and won 350!! It was so funny-what are the chances?!! By this time we had a big crowd around us cheering us on because all of us girls were very over excited by this time! So in about 10 minutes we spent 15 bucks and came out with nearly 800!! I keep wanting to go in again and bet more, but Kyle won’t let me!
We’ve also seen a soap star while we’ve been in Melbourne! I spotted him near to the casino, it was Ned from Neighbours (Stu’s brother btw). The girls were excited by this, but I don’t think Kyle was v.impressed! (Kate and Kerry - you would have appreciated it!). We were also very sad and went on the “Neighbours” tour which was so tacky but loads of fun! We went to Erinsborough High School and Ramsey St and got all the pics of us at all the different houses and holding the Ramsey Street sign!! Kate and Kerry again-you would have LOVED this!! Unfortunately it was a Sunday so there was no filming going on-I had my hopes on seeing Dr Karl and Harold!
We’re heading out of Melbourne tomorrow and will be sad to leave Stu and Josefin, but Ernie is feeling neglected. We’re off to Philip Island to see the Penguins (smallest in the world!) and have one final night out with Laura, Paul and Clive as we will be parting ways after travelling round most of Oz together.
Anyway, I think I have waffled enough for the time being and hopefully you guys get the jist of what we have been up to.
We hope you are all well and that the weather is getting better for you too.
Take care
K&J
xxx
