Our last night in Australia called for a special meal – and after three months of seeing it on the menu, I decided that I should try one of the “Bush Foods”. At the café of the Aboriginal centre in the Grampians they offered a ‘triple treat’ of Kangaroo Steak, Emu kebab and Crocodile burger […]
Read more "I feel like Skippy tonight…like Skippy tonight…"Another day of sightseeing today – our last day in Australia – before packing our rucksacks ready for them to be thrown around an aircraft hold (or is it on the tarmac they do the damage?). Whatever, we had a great last day. The sun shone. The sky was kind-of-blue (when the clouds parted). And […]
Read more "Fantastic Sydney!"It’s great to be back in Sydney again, and to be somewhere we are familiar with. Yesterday was spent shopping and replacing some more of our worn-out clothes – new bikinis for all the girls, new boots for me! And today was exploring day – walking around and about the city to see the sights. […]
Read more "Around and about Sydney"Finally, after 14 hours driving, we drove back into Sydney. Although it wasn’t strictly necessary to drive across the Harbour Bridge, we did it anyway to mark our return to the city! It had been a long, very hot drive, and we were all relieved to arrive. In the campervan the girls had enjoyed the […]
Read more "Back in Sydney"We’ve seen quite a lot of wildlife in the wild while we’ve been in Australia – kangaroo, emu, eagle, dingo, parrot, crocodile, tree kangaroo, platypus, wallaby, cockatoo, blue tongued lizard, koala, snakes, monitor lizard, iguana, possum, shark, whale, brumby (wild horse), turtle, dolphin, tree-frog, cane-toad and probably others. But today the highlight was spotting an […]
Read more "Wildlife-tastic!"Today we left Pambulla and drove around the south coast into Victoria, and to a village called Lake Tyree. We’ve just gone through 8,000 kilometres of driving here in Australia – added together with all of the other driving we’ve done on the trip so far, it works out at 11,000 miles. That means we’ve […]
Read more "Driving round the world"We’re sitting in the seaside town of Pambula Beach – well, it’s a village with a shop and a petrol station, but here in Australia that counts for a town (you should see what counts as a city!). The good news for us is that the weather is improving, and although its still cool, the […]
Read more "Going south"We’re convinced that Australians and Americans are the same thing – sure their accents are a bit different, and their countries are in different hemispheres, but there are waaaay too many similarities to them. Remember I wrote that nobody ever remembers who came second. Well, that isn’t quite true. In the table of “Countries clearing […]
Read more "Coming Second"According to the Guinness Book of Records, we’ve been staying on the “Whitest Beach in the World”. But sadly we’ve been staying here (Huskisson in Jervis Bay) on the greyest days of the year – it has rained virtually non-stop for three days (There, that’s a bunch of you smiling with a very smug grin, […]
Read more "The whitest beach in the world – not"Well, although we’re not the biggest rugby fans in the world (I don’t even understand the rules), there seemed to be only one thing to do today, after all of the Pom-bashing in the papers. We decided to go completely overboard and put our head into the metaphorical lion’s mouth – by painting our faces […]
Read more "Like Christians to the coliseum"Tired and frustrated with all the Pom-bashing going on over here for the rugby World Cup final, we thought we’d get in the spirit. So today we’ve tarted up the van with a nice logo and tomorrow it’ll be the turn of the face paints. Oh, and a nice official England RWC T-Shirt and hat […]
Read more "C’mon England"In one of those curious coincidences that turns into a treat for the girls, we drove back into Jervis Bay this afternoon (where we’ve been staying since Thursday night) at the same time as the official weigh in for the “White Beach fishing competition”. They were catching Meiko sharks, and when we arrived they were […]
Read more "Shark!"We continued to drive south, through Dubbo (nope, don’t think there’s a town with that name in the UK), and stopping for lunch and sightseeing at Parkes Radio Telescope. Perhaps, if we’d not seen the film “The Dish”, we’d have driven straight past, but who could resist visiting a film star, and the place where […]
Read more "Dishy!"We woke up on Monday morning (the 17th) to strong winds and grey clouds, and the forecast of rain for three days. So we packed up, and instead of staying for a few more days at Arakoon, set off inland. Before we left the coast we called into the local library in Kempsey town to […]
Read more "Still inland"We’re staying in the Arakoon State Park, which is a great place to stay – the campsite is spaced out, and pretty quiet normally (although its busier today because it is the weekend), and there’s plenty of space for tents, plus a dozen spots with power for caravans and camper vans (basically, we pull up […]
Read more "A Prison, a park and a beach – what more could you want?"We’ve now driven almost 4,000 miles in 5 weeks, so the picture on the left is what I’ve been looking at for a long time now. It seems amazing to both Sarah and I that Charlotte and Emily have adjusted so well to travelling around so much. They seem happy sitting for hours in the […]
Read more "Still driving"Since visiting the zoo, we’ve been driving down the coast again, leaving Queensland and heading into New South Wales, covering a further 400 miles. We’re now at a campsite at Mount Warning, inland from the coast. The site is in a field bordered by the edge of the forest, and is basically a big open […]
Read more "Mount Warning"Today we moved from Byron Bay, to the Glasshouse Mountains, north of Brisbane. Before we left Byron Bay we drove up to the lighthouse, and had a run around at the most easterly point of Australia. Our original plan was to move 100kms north, but in the end we moved 350kms, past the Gold Coast […]
Read more "Zooming past the Gold Coast"We’ve now continued up, to the town of Byron Bay. There’s a couple of beautiful beaches, and a lighthouse on Cape Byron, the most easterly point of Australia. On our trip 10 years ago, this was the first stop we made on our trip north on the bus, after an overnight trip from Sydney. Then […]
Read more "Byron Bay"Just one night in Yamba, waking up to the sound of the sea crashing onto the breakwater. There’s something magical about sleeping near the sea – the sound of the waves all night long, and the fresh air blowing over the campsite – mind you, a bit too fresh last night! We took a slow […]
Read more "Yamba to Byron Bay"We left Bonny Hill this morning to continue our drive northwards, towards the sun and some warmth (Bonny Hill, 18 degrees and rain; Cairns 30 degrees and sunny). During the night we were woken by two terrific thunderstorms, which managed to find ways to penetrate the campervan and drip onto ‘my’ side of the duvet. […]
Read more "Moving up the coast"Last night we arrived at Bonny Hills, a small village south of Port Macquarie. We’d turned off the Pacific Highway to take a smaller coastal route, and the Lonely Planet had told us that the campsite at Bonny Hills had the ‘best views on the east coast’. This was more our kind of place – […]
Read more "Bonny Hills"Aah, “the Pacific Highway”. What kind of image does that name evoke? I could see it in my mind – a delightfully quiet road, with the sides lined by swaying coconut palms and little shacks beside the road serving ice cold cokes in a bottle. Of course, its nothing like that – but then we […]
Read more "The Pacific Highway"This is the day that the girls have been looking forward to for the last 3 months – the day we collect our camper van. After packing everything up into our rucksacks, for the last time in 2 months, we carried them the ½ mile to the van rental place. After 45 minutes of paying, […]
Read more "Camper Day!"No, this isn’t as bad as it sounds, but the miserable weather (maximum today of 17 degrees, and on-and-off rain) mean that we’re not doing a lot of sightseeing in Sydney. As we’ve been here before, we’ve seen the big sights, so we’ve decided to take the girls to them when we’re back in Sydney […]
Read more "Sydney – well, might as well be in London"We have been confidently telling everybody that we’re going to buy a campervan in Oz – it’s the cheapest way for four of us to get around and it will provide an exciting part of the whole adventure for the girls. We’d even decided what colours we were going to paint it if it needed […]
Read more "The Campervan"Whoa – just before you get too excited I’m NOT 41, and I’m not committing fraud. But over the last couple of days I’ve started to wonder how people are looking at us as we travel around. The 41 year old bit comes from a conversation one evening in Fiji, when one of the other […]
Read more "A 41 year old committing fraud"Arriving in Sydney was a bit of a homecoming. It’s the first part of our trip that is similar to the one we did ten years ago. So arriving at Sydney airport was very familiar, and we weren’t at all worried that we were arriving with nowhere booked to stay. Well, actually I will admit […]
Read more "Sydney – back somewhere familiar"