Down Under

On our second day Allan and I, oh and the two German girls (Carolyn and Laura) planned to get the train and bus to Bondi beach and do the coastal trek, stopping off at beaches along the way. We set off bright and early (at about 12:30pm and much later than initially planned). We had bought MyMulti 3 passes which at the time seemed expensive at £32 each for a week long pass, but this covered the bus, train and ferry in a large area of greater Sydney district. The girls were getting by just buying tickets as they go. Our deal was definitely more worthwhile for us though.

You'll notice I skipped Brisbane, this is because all we did was sleep for a few hours and then leave for rainbow beach the following morning. Not much to tell really. It was roundabout now I was beginning to realise how much we were trying to cram in and how much we were missing. We didn't even give Byron Bay a chance, some travellers stay there for ages and we weren't even there for 24 hours, same goes for Brisbane.

So we arrived in Rainbow Beach, which was our base for going to Fraser Island the following day. We arrived quite late in the afternoon and with all the travelling from the last few days we were both knackered. We had forty winks, which turned into 80 and then we resurfaced intending on doing a few jobs and going for something to eat later on. Well, this proved difficult in Rainbow beach after 9pm, every kitchen in the town was closed and there was absolutely no way of getting any food (that had been cooked) from anywhere in the whole town. We resorted to having tea from a vending machine that night.

Fraser Island: The Cool Dingoes

Bright and early at 7:30am the bus (to take us on our three day two night Fraser Island tour) was waiting patiently outside the hostel for us. We didn't really know much about Fraser Island other than it was the worlds largest sandbank island. Surely there won't be much there, what can survive on a sandbank island?


At first sight it looked like any other bus, but it wasn't! It was a German made, 4x4, off road, heavy duty, nasty-ass, king of all buses. A bus on steroids! Anyway, we needed this type of bus because most of the roads on Fraser Island were unsealed sand roads. We were all over the place on the bus, bouncing here and there and flying up off our seats. It was a good job we had been warned that seatbelt a were a must, because there would have been heads banging all over. Anyway, it was do much fun and we really loved travelling about in the island this way.


The weather wasn't that great though, it rained the first two days and was sunny on the last day. It's amazing how much the weather played a vital role in the activities. We saw a few perched dune lakes with silica beaches, which were gorgeous but people weren't in too much of a rush to sunbathe or swim in the rain. We didn't let it ruin the trip though because we had a good group and guide and we were in a gorgeous place regardless if the weather.


NB. Fraser Island has the largest collection of perched dune lakes in the world, and it has 700 inhabitants.


We saw quite a few dingoes while on the island. I thought they were going to be in packs but the ones we saw were all loners hanging around humans on the beach. We later heard that when they are juveniles they are kicked out of the pack to learn to fend for themselves. The ones we saw were juveniles. Humans are advised not to feed them though because this doesn't help their learning process, they need to learn to catch their own food and as soon as they become reliant on humans for food they are likely to attack a human for food too.

Warning!!! Nan don't read this next bit.

We saw one that had been hit by a car, this was really upsetting to see. We thought that it was just lying down on the beach as we drove by, but we stopped and our guide got out to see the dingo and it was dead. It must have been really recent too because we saw it on our way back and it was not there earlier.

Ok, Nan you can start reading again now.

We really enjoyed our trip in Fraser Island, and would certainly recommend it to people who are visiting the east coast. We saw sharks from the cliffs at Indian Head and marvelled at the barnacle-ridden Maheno shipwreck. We couldnt swim in the water though because there was a very high chance we'd get stung by an Irikandji jelly fish or be bitten by a shark, it was pretty dangerous waters.

We saw plenty of creatures and even though the weather was crap I managed to get a little bit of a tan (aka sunburn) on the last day at Lake Wabby.

Airlie Beach: Whitsundays Sailing (12/02/14 - 13/02/14)

It has been none stop on the east coast and it wasn't going to change for a good while either. Everyday we've been waking up really early, packing, hauling bags about and catching buses. People at home may be thinking to themselves "oh bully for you being on holiday everyday!!" But I can assure you that there have been days when I've wished that I could just stay in bed with a film, instead of going for an excursion. Thankfully when we arrived at Airlie beach we had a whole day to relax and sort a few things for our Canada visa.


So much for relaxing, I spent the best part of my day trying to rectify the issue I had when accessing my hotmail account (which had been hacked and had all of our hotel vouchers, travel information and visa correspondence saved to specific folders). It was a nightmare and even after a lot of phone calls to a lot of departments I managed to get it reset but I can't access it until mid-march. Anyways, enough about that and back to the good stuff!


We met our crew (and the other passengers) at the pier at 7:30am ready to sail off to the Whitsundays for two days. Our boat was called Hammer and did not look like it would fit 22 people onboard it, let alone crew and beds etc. I'd never been on a sailing trip before and neither had Allan, it was quite exciting. Sailing boats are so much more elegant and beautiful than cruisers, I think, plus there is a lot more skill to sailing and there's more motion too.if you know what I mean??? The boat can lean upto 45 degrees either side when sailing. 

We spent our first day sailing from Airlie Beach to Hook Island to Blue Pearl bay where we snorkelled in the morning. The sun was beating down on us, and the sea was a crystal clear sanctuary from the heat. There so many different types of fish beneath us, all different colours, shapes and sizes it was an underwater rainbow. We had been told to to keep an eye out for Elvis, a big hump-headed Maori wrasse. Apparently some people get a shock when they see him. 

We were taking in all of the little friendly fishies when someone pointed out a larger fish. "Elvis is in the building!" Both Allan and I started to follow the much bigger fish around, he looked solid! We lost sight of it after a minute or so. Delighted we'd witnessed the famous Elvis within minutes of being in the water we carried on swimming about the ornate coral world. We must have been in the water for about an hour before we saw the 'real Elvis' and we knew it was him because he was substantially chunkier and bulkier than his previous impersonator. He was soooo cool! Just bobbing about and checking us out. I dived down to get closer to him and he didn't flinch, he sideways eyeballed me and we shared a tiny moment together. Then he was gone. I tried to follow him but he went off into deep sea and the darker coloured water scared me a little. We carried on sailing to caves cove an snorkelled again (except I just chilled out on the boat and watched). The water was much shallower though which meant there was a risk of knocking the coral. Allan said I didn't miss much, and I was just happy to relax and chat to the crew, who were (mostly) on gap years with a bit of a difference: Simon the tall blonde Dutch guy who was the most recent recruit and Georgie a petite and bubbly midlands girl. She'd been with the crew for a bit longer, but both of them had chosen to come to Australia to learn to sail and then work on a boat for the rest of the time. Quite a different way of spending a gap year, learning a new skill then earning from it. There was also the Skipper 'Mick' and the other deckhand 'Midge' who were both Aussies. 

Another sailing boat wanted to race us, and our boat 'The Hammer' was certainly built to take them on. When we are sailing the skipper will give us a signal to move from one side to the other quickly to assist with the distribution of weight. It was crazy how much the boat leaned and how fast it went too...we won of course! 

We stopped for dinner at Hooks Passage and had a few drinks watching the sunset. it was really beautiful watching the sky change colour from blue to orange to red. We sat up deck with everyone for a while but the events of the day had taken hold of me and We went to bed at about 10pm. It took us ages to get to sleep that night. Everyone was drinking above deck and having (almost heated) debates about whether Andy Murray was boring or not, and playing 'have you ever....' until about 1am (which is not late I know, but we were really tired). Plus it was really hot and stuffy below deck so we tossed and turned most of the night. 

The following day I could sense that there was some slight unease in the air, some of the crew slept top deck and I have no clue how they could have slept through all the bad banter that was going on around them. I imagined them lying there thinking "SHUT UP!!!". Then there was also a strange air between the person who thought Andy Murray was Boring and the other person who was in his defence. It was quite a change from the frivolous atmosphere of the day before. Nevertheless this didn't last long and soon we were sailing towards Tongue Bay on Whitsunday Island and the mood lifted. We were going to be the first people (today) to set foot on Whitehaven beach, the third best beach in the world according to to some touristy travel poll.

 NB. Whitehaven beach is made up of 98% silica sand, which is used by NASA for the Hubble Telescope lens. Cool hey!

We walked up to a hilltop viewpoint first to catch our first glimpses of the fresh morning on Whitehaven Beach. "Wait a minute...there's two people walking along the beach! So much for being first, they must have camped overnight or something because it was really really early and we were first to dock". Anyway despite this it was beautiful and deserves its popular title, I wondered how much more beautiful number 1 and 2 must be to beast this to the top. This beach featured in the film "Fools Gold" with Matthew McConnaughey (I have no idea how to spell his name so please correct me if I'm wrong) and it was in the opening scenes. The sand was like powder, the best sand I'd ever felt. Because its mostly silica the grains are almost completely spherical, not harsh and jagged like the quartz sand of other beaches. We explored the beach for a few hours, but daren't go into the sea for fear of irikandji's. We saw some stingrays in the shallow shady area and a huge washed up starfish too. 

We sailed to Luncheon bay (aptly named) and snorkelled for a while there before lunch. It would take a lot to beat the quality of the waters we'd swam in over the last few days, we had been so lucky with the weather too...blue skies the whole time. We had loved our sailing adventure but it was time to head off to another destination. Some of the people on our boat were also heading to Magnetic Island the same day us so we exchanged numbers and planned to meet. On the east coast people pretty much go the same way, or have been the way you are going. 

Townsville: Magnetic valentines 14/02/14

Our bus arrived in Townsville really late at night, and once again we would see nothing of this town before having to leave early in the morning to go to Magnetic Island. 

NB. Townsville is in fact the Melanoma cancer capital of the world...yes I wore factor 50 everyday! 

We got an afternoon ferry over to the island. A guy from a car rental company was meeting us to drop off our 4x4. Neither of us had driven a 4x4 before so we were excited to test it out on the islands unsealed road to West Point. It was valentines day and we planned to buy some food and drinks and go to West Point to watch the sun set over Australia. 

When the guy turned up I couldn't help but laugh, the 4x4 was from 1993 and looked like that was the last time it had been cleaned too. Nevertheless, it would do perfectly for what we wanted to do with it and it was cheap too. Oh yeah, and the steering was so heavy it gave my arms a good workout. 

We decided to go to the last nature show at the Koala sanctuary. The lady told us all about magnetic island's indigenous creatures. We held cockatoo's, lizards, snakes and a koala near called Thor. His fur was like wool. He was so cute I wanted to take him home. As he posed with each paying customer you could see him getting more and more irritated by being passed from person to person. I was second to last so by then he was moving his head whenever the photographer gave the signal "Cheese!". Eventually we got our pic and it was a good one. 

There was so much wildlife on the island. After the nature show we went to feed the birds, which back home you would get shouted at for doing because they poop everywhere and are seen as vermin, but here it was a different case. The birds where multicoloured little parrot-like birds. We grabbed two handfuls of sloppy bread mixed with water and held our hands out waiting for them to come and eat. They swarmed down from the trees and began feasting violently. It was a strange sensation. Some of the birds were really territorial over my hand and fraught other birds off to feast alone. 

Later that evening after our sunset picnic we saw loads of possums and a weird porcupine-like creature waddling around someone's garden. One of the possums had a tiny joey in its pouch. The next day we did a walk in the sweltering heat, up to an army fort on the hill and we saw wild koala bears munching away on eucalyptus. I was so pleased to have seen them in their natural habitat.

Cairns: Finding Nemo and the Mysterious girl 15/02/14 - 18/2/14

Our first trip from Cairns would be to the Great Barrier Reef, which was going to be amazing. there wouldnt be any other snorkelling trip that could surpass snorkelling in the Great Barrier reef. Uponu arriving in Cairns we were dropped near the night market with our bags and we walked the 2 mile walk to our hostel. As we were walking through the town I could smell a smell I would never forget...bat excrement! It was really really strong in the air, almost overbearing. when i looked above I could see huge black bats slowly flapping trough the sky. They didnt flutter like the bats I was used to, these bats had the potential to morph into night walkers. 

The following day we rose bright and early to catch the first shuttle at 6:30am from our hostel to the dock. Our boat was huge with an abundance of eastern tourists. I was we'll prepared for the photographic opportunities today, and purchased a case to put my camera in. I sat adjusting the fit and checking the seal while the crew went through the usual do's and don't of being onboard their ship. There were plenty of blank faces throughout, clearly the majority of this boat didn't speak any English. One Russian guy decided to move places during the safety speech to sit near a pal (right at the front where the crew were giving instructions) and he talked really loudly and was laughing with his mate throughout the talk. One crew member had to tell him three times to be quiet but he wasn't a bit bothered.

The first reef stop was gorgeous, with loads of fish and great visibility. I got a little carried away with my new bit of kit and used all the battery on my camera during this exploration. Being overzealous resulted in me being unable to record the best coral, fish, giant clams and molluscs I'd ever seen in my entire life. Gutted, cannot describe how I felt! I was close to considering going back the following day just to take photos and videos of the rainbow of life beneath me. 

The following day we had a tour booked to see the waterfall circuit of Atherton Tablelands. It wasn't the best weather for it, it was a bit wet and chilly, but we didn't let this spoil it for us. Our guide 'Josh' turned up in the bus, he had no shoes one (the company was called barefoot tours) and a straw hat. Before we were allowed on the bus we had to give him a hug. Nice way to break the ice. 

We drove around the tablelands all day stopping at lakes and waterfalls for a swim. We stopped at our last waterfall, which was allegedly where Peter Andre shot his video for 'mysterious girl' and was certainly a filming location for one of the Herbal Essence adverts. We attempted to recreate a shot where the girl pulls her long clean hair out of the water and leaves a trail of water behind her. 

On our drive back 'Josh' put Finding Nemo on for us to watch. I had wanted to watch it since we arrived in Australia (I've seen it plenty of times already but it's a classic!). Tomorrow we fly to Uluru in the red centre.

The Red Centre: off the beaten track and the Ghan

After what people had told us about the red centre I think we were both well prepared for the heat and lack of local amenities, but nothing could prepare us for the ridiculous amount of flies there were. They wouldn't normally bother me, I'd waft my hand and normally they'd be gone. Not here! These flies try to fly up your nose, in your ears, in your eyes and some kamikaze flies would even try flying in your mouth whilst your talking. Upon picking up our rental car our next stop was to buy food and most importantly, head nets to ward off the flies. 

The red centre lives up to its title for sure, everything has a tiny of red to it, however, it was also remarkably more green than expected too. We had been warned of the heat rise during the daytime and how we should do most of our sight seeing early in the morning because it was more bearable. We went to one of the viewing point to watch the sun set on Uluru (Ayers Rock as we know it). There were so many shades of orange to red to brown as the sun went down. 

It was dark when we left the Outback Pine Lodge in the direction of Uluru. We had an hours drive before we would reach the enormous rock to watch the sun rise on it. I was so tired at this point I really couldn't be bothered going, and tried to explain to Allan that sunset and sunrise we basically the same thing but in reverse. He was having none of it. So we arrived, the light was just emerging on the horizon and there were plenty of tourists to share the moments with. "Snap, snap, click, click...zooooooom!"

Why can't people just watch and feel the moment instead of taking pictures of every second in time. There certainly weren't as many people spoiling the moment as there were in Angkor Wat though. 

We had decided that we would go for a walk at kings canyon afterwards and then head to Alice Springs. We had been upgraded free of charge to a 4x4 and this meant we could take the Mereenie loop road from King Canyon to Alice Springs (you need a 4x4 to do this as the road is unsealed). By the time we arrived in Kings Canyon it was afternoon, the hottest time of day at 36 degrees. We were mad to walk in it, but we took plenty of water and snacks with us to make sure we didn't get caught dehydrated. One thing I must say, Australia really makes sure you are hydrated, there are plenty of free water taps everywhere for when you need a drink. So we set off and within minutes I was sweating buckets! The canyon walk was only a few kilometres but there was no shelter at all, and the sun belted down on us as we walked through the arid landscape. It was fascinating that this whole area would have been park of a shallow sea bed, some parts were so old that they didn't have fossils...life didn't emerge until much later in earths history. 

I was glad to get back to the car, my head was pounding from the dehydration and I was thankful for the straw hat I'd sensibly decided to wear. We tidied ourselves up and refilled the water bottles and headed off to the Mereenie Loop road, we should be in Alice Springs in three hours.

Three hours later....

We were still driving, and what had once been a beautiful sunset sky of orange and cerise pink had become a curtain of blackness with not even the moon to light our way. The Mereenie loop road began as a thrilling off road adventure through the outback, and became a striving effort to get to Alice Springs before the hostel closed. We had no signal to call them, no radio to listen too and no civilisation if anything were to happen. At one point Allan stopped the car as nature called, and it was really quiet outside, nothing but the faint chirping of crickets in the distance, there were a billion stars lighting the night sky more than we'd ever seen before. As he was preparing himself he heard a rustling of feet along the gravel. He couldn't make out what it was, but it was getting closer. Allan nearly wet himself with fear, jumped in the car and began driving like a mad man. We had just been talking about the plot to Wolf Creek moments before , but I'm pretty sure the only thing outside would have been one of the wild horses on the plains, we saw a group of them earlier on. Yes, we were in danger of being chewed to death by a freaky wild pony! Allan still convinced to this day that it was a monster.

It was past midnight when we arrived in Alice Springs, and inevitably the hostel was closed, this would mark the first time we had ever spent the night in a car. 

Alice Springs: The Ghan Train

Feeling as rough as a badgers bottom we sneakily took advantage of the washing facilities at the hostel, and had a long hot shower before setting off to take the car back to the rental company, then checking in for the Ghan Train. 

The Ghan runs through the middle of Australia, linking Darwin in the north with Adelaide in the south. We were getting on half way, and it would still be 24 hours before we reached Adelaide. It was supposed to be one of the great train rides and certainly one for the bucket list. We could only afford red class seats, which meant sleeping in a seat and not a bed but we had slept in worse position over the past few months. There weren't many people our age on the train either, a lot mature couples making the epic journey through the red centre. It was Allan's Birthday too, and because we're travelling we said we'd not bother with presents but I did make him a card and a fake candle to go in his mammoth chocolate muffin. 

It was strange being on a train for 24 hours, I can't say I slept well either. I needed to be stretched out flat. Allan lay on the floor in the hope that would be better but it wasn't so he got back on the seat. There was an old guy behind us snoring really loudly too. Apart from this it was a cool journey. If I'm completely honest though, it was really samey! Very red and bush like, really dry with hardly anything other than the odd cow to look at. Not sure what all the fuss is about. 

Adelaide: fringe-tastic!

Ian met us at the train station and took us to his home. We couldn't remember what he looked like from his profile picture on Couchsurfing, so we had to ask how we were to know it was him. He said he was an "old guy with a crew cut and a black t-shirt on". We weren't sure what a crew cut was but still we found each other  in the end. We would be staying in Adelaide with him for a few days before collecting our camper van from Apollo. The plan was to see a few shows at the fringe festival and get some our documents sorted for the Canada visa. 

NB. Anyone trying to sort a Canadian working visa whilst travelling be warned, it's an absolute nightmare! Make sure you have reliable people back home to help. 

The fringe was tiny, at least in comparison to the Edinburgh fringe. We saw a few shows on the first night: Sammy J and Randy last album tour and Hot Dub Time Machine. There were a few Aussie jokes in Sammy J and Randy's show that we didn't get because we weren't hot on Aussie pop stars, however, we still laughed. Hot Dub Time machine was fun though, we began in 1960 and a song from every year, right up to the current year was played. I think the 80s and 90s were my favourite decade but the whole thing was so much fun. The Garden of Unearthly Delights had most of the main fringe shows, it was decorated like a carnival come fairy glen. It was especially pretty at night time with plenty of stalls to explore. The atmosphere was electric.