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…
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 h…
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…
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 ever…
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…
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 coast…
We left Bonny Hill this morning to continue our drive northwards, towards the sun and some warmth (Bonny Hill, 18 degrees and rain; Cairns…
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…
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…
Today we moved from Byron Bay, to the Glasshouse Mountains, north of Sydney. Before we left Byron Bay we drove up to the lighthouse, and…
We are now officially in ‘the Sunshine Coast’, which is the strip north of Brisbane. And this morning we woke up to blue skies and a littl…
We’ve been in Tin Can Bay for two nights. It’s a very small town on the coast, surrounded by mangrove forest and mud flats. The main reas…
We’ve just returned from Fraser Island, where we’ve been camping and driving around. Fraser Island is a bit special – it’s the world’s lar…
Camping mornings start early, with the dawn – and tea was on at 6am. As we surfaced we realised that we were definitely in backpacker corn…
Today we’re at Rainbow Beach, halfway up the East coast of Australia – in fact, we’re almost exactly halfway on our drive between Sydney a…
Okay, there’s no avoiding it. I’m going to have to talk about Caravan Parks. What has my life come to that I’m reduced to this? Some…
We’re involved in a bit of a mad dash ‘up north’ at the moment, to get to Mission Beach in time for Charlotte’s birthday. That’s involved…
Townsville is a pretty boring town – its main attraction is the trips to the offshore islands, such as Magnetic Island, and it acts as a b…
Today was Charlotte’s 8th birthday. She’d been looking forward to it all month, and counting down the days the minute she woke up each mo…
For the last three days we’ve been at the Treehouse hostel, in Mission Beach. Its one of our favourite memories from last time we travell…
We’ve now driven 2,800 kilometres, and arrived in Cairns, nearly the most northerly point of our journey – with a combination of long driv…
Over the last week the Australian newspapers have been writing about David Blaine’s experience in a box suspended over the Thames. We can’…
We’re staying in the Pinnacle caravan park, in Wonga Beach (yes, really, there is a village called Wonga Beach), where we arrived on Sund…
It seems fashionable these days to publish private correspondence between yourself and your friends. So I thought I’d follow the trend by…
Today, temporarily, we moved away from the coast, and headed up into the Atherton Tablelands, which is a raised plateau just inland from C…
Today was a day full of activities. We started with an early morning canoe trip, starting at 5.45 am on Lake Tinaroo near Yungaburra. S…
I just found these photographs on the camera from our visit to the tropical fruit farm a couple of days ago. Charlotte is doing a project on tropical fruit – h…
We’re finally back at Mission Beach after 9 days, which means that we’re heading back down south to Sydney after driving North for the first month – so far we…
Today was a chance to ‘pause’, to recharge our collective batteries, and catch up on some sleep. Every now and again we get to the point of needing a rest for…
Today was an antidote to yesterday – a day full of excitement and a bit of adventure! We’d booked a trip to the outer Great Barrier Reef from Airlie Beach. Run…
Heading through the Outback For the last day we've been driving through the Outback. Although our drive up north was entirely along the coast, we wanted to see…
Today was spent driving from Emerald to Roma. On the way out of Emerald we found yet another example of the 'Big' phenomena - the Big Easel. The small picture…
This morning we woke up to Emily's birthday - and like Charlotte she was excited to open her presents and cards, including some from home. We've had to choose…
We’ve finally arrived at the Australia Zoo, home of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter. The visit was part of Emily’s birthday present, but just before going in…
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 a…
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…
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 beca…
We've been playing around with some more video editing, and have finally edited some of our Fiji video and one of our campervan (so that you can see just how sq…
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…
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…
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 Thursd…
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…
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)…
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, bu…
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 s…
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 drivin…
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…
We called today "TomDay" in honour of our good friend Tom, who thinks that this year is just one long holiday, and who sees nothing arduous at all in our year o…
Well, for the first time in 2 months we're in a big city - and a confusing one at that! We bypassed Brisbane, so this will our first 'real' city since Sydney…
We've heard the line a few times in the last week - once when we re-met somebody we'd originally met in Fiji; then yesterday when we met a…
By 6:30 this morning, we’d all roused ourselves from bed, got dressed, packed up the camper van and driven out the Melbourne Airport to me…
Last night, when I called the hire firm to arrange to drop the van off earlier than booked, at the end of this afternoon, I discovered…
Let me explain the situation – I've arrived back in Melbourne a day early, having driven 600 miles in the last 36 hours, and flying back a…
We all left Melbourne behind us today, and headed to the coast near Geelong (30 miles south of Melbourne, sandwiched between the sea and…
It definitely feels like we're on a seaside holiday! Today we went sightseeing to the surf beaches, watching the locals ride the waves wh…
We're starting the drive along the Great Ocean Road, the world's second most beautiful drive (according to the literature from the local…
What can we say – birthdays can't get much better than this, can they? Surrounded by the ones you love, and who love you, spending the day…
Over the last five months of travel, I have mostly been myself, but I've begun to get used to having a few aliases. In Canada, when we w…
For the next couple of weeks we're going to be driving the Great Ocean Road, which was built by unemployed ex-servicemen after the First…
When you're travelling around Australia with a group of six people, you have to work a little harder to find the right kind of accommodation, at the right pric…
We're staying in Merango, a mile from Apollo Bay, which has got the sea on one side, and the Otway State Park on the other. The coast here is lovely – sandy be…
Today was another day of rainforest and walks. After a picnic lunch and a short trek, we went to the Otway Fly, about 40 miles from Apollo Bay. This is a treet…
Melbourne has a reputation as the "changeable weather capital of Australia", and now we've been in the area for a couple of weeks, we know how true that is. Eve…
When it rains, and we're confined indoors, the cabin can seem a bit small – especially if the children decide to play a noisy game. But when the rain stops, a…
Finally, after seven days at Marengo Headlands, we're heading off up the coast. After feeling that my feet were growing roots, it was a relief to pack everythin…
Like almost everybody else, we spent the last Saturday before Christmas doing the shopping! In Australia, most smaller shops close around lunchtime on Saturday,…
With the weather improving each day, we headed out to Tower Hill Nature Reserve today, which is inside the crater of an old volcano along the coast. Along the…
We left the coast today, and headed inland to the Grampian mountains. A month ago we'd booked a cabin on the shores of Lake Fyans for Christmas and New Year – w…
Happy Christmas from Down Under…
Well, after spending a day in and around the cabin, we thought we should go for a walk today, and work off the excesses of Christmas (how many people at home w…
We got out and about in the cars today, to see some of the sights of the Grampians. We drove up the top of a couple of mountains to the viewpoints (talk about…
Although we've been in Australia for 3 months, we've not really seen very much about the Aboriginal culture, and so we went to Brambuk Aboriginal cultural cent…
It seems that it was only a few weeks ago that we were leaving home, and setting off on our trip. And then, when we think back to our time in Canada, it seems…
Note to self: Don't ever, ever have another New Year Resolution that is "Try something new soon". Well, it’s a new year, and we're keen to do new things and e…
We've made it!!! We've all successfully survived a month in a cabin as an extended family together. For Charlotte and Emily, it's meant that they've had their…
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…
Following absolutely no outrage by the international media, I feel I need to apologise for this photograph which I inadvertently took and used on this website…
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 -…
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…
