Up the east coast

We left Sydney bright and early the day after we finished work. We left at 6.15am; just as everyone from the Kings Cross area was going home (not a very pretty sight if you've seen Kings Cross at night time). Our first stop was sunny Newcastle. We saw the beach, Nobby's Head and the city buildings. It was a pleasant enough place where everyone seemed to be walking a dog along the beach. If the owners looked friendly, we asked if we could stroke their dog (Lins misses having pets a lot now). Everyone so far has been more than willing to oblige. It was dead in the city centre though and we went to the most surreal cinema with psychedelic carpets and tiny speakers on the wall, which produced hardly any sound throughout the film!

We then had a week of heavy rain, the worst in Australia for years! Some of the places that we visited had a month's rain in one day! Great fun when you are travelling and have to walk everywhere with extremely heavy bags on both your front and back. We stopped off at Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour, both of which had lovely beaches, but we just saw stormy seas and grey skies. We spent 3 days in Byron Bay, where we had lovely weather for one of the days and grey skies for the remainder. We did the long walk round Cape Byron and were lucky to see a large pod of dolphins that came about 50m from the shore line.

After Byron we went to Surfers Paradise for 4 days. We went to Dreamworld and Movie World theme parks; each of which had a few good rides each and torrential rain. We didn't warm to the high rise buildings too much all over the city but it was a bit more happening than Byron. We then arrived in sunny Brisbane and stayed for another 4 days. Brisbane is nice but there didn’t seem to be a lot to do there. We did the city walk, the Botanical Gardens, and looked at all the buildings on a boat cruise. We walked all along south bank, which was really nice. We also did a day trip to Moreton Island (about 75 minutes away). It was a gorgeous island and we had beautiful weather. We sat by the Tangalooma ship Wrecks and we practically had the beach to ourselves.

After Brisbane we stopped at Maroochydore for 2 days and visited Australia Zoo. We stayed in the hostel from hell! We got rudely awoken at 5.15am both days by travellers going fruit picking! ARRRRHHH! They were so noisy that we woke up completely startled, not knowing whether there was an earthquake outside! However, Australia Zoo was very excellent. All the animals seemed to be well looked after and the grounds were really clean and spectacular to walk around. However, it was also very sad as there were pictures of and tributes to Steve Irwin everywhere.

An hour up the road was Noosa; a much nicer place where it felt like we were on holiday rather than backpacking as it was quite posh in parts! We did a 2 hour surfing lesson, which was fun and we both stood up lots of times, although Lins struggled with the sea going in her eyes with her contact lenses. We also did a 2 hour kayak trip round the lagoon....nice houses!

We then arrived in Hervey Bay, where we were doing our Fraser Island tour from. We were so excited to be going to Fraser; the biggest sand island in the world. We ended up going with the YHA tour, which was quality. We had great food and accommodation (including no cooking or washing up for 3 days, woo hoo!). We were really lucky with our group. We only had 8 of us, but on the second day we joined with the group that started the day before us, which made 20 people in total. Everyone got on really well and we had a laugh with all of them. We went out quite a few times with a really funny and knowledgeable German guy from our tour up the coast. Our tour guide was also sound, but we think that most of them are over here. Our accommodation was at the Wilderness Lodges at the hotel on the island and we went out both nights to the Dingo Bar, very funny times. Highlights were: Basin Lake, Wanggoolba Creek, Lake Mckenzie, driving up 75 mile beach and the endless dirt tracks in our 4x4, swimming at Eli Creek, sand boarding down the dunes into a beautiful clear lake at the bottom (SOOOOO much fun!) and Lake Wabby. The sand at the lakes was so fine that it worked like it had some kind of cleaning powers so we all scrubbed our rings and they came out sparkling. It was such a great 3 days.

When we returned to Hervey bay, we did a Humpback Whale watching tour...infinitely better than the sea sick boat from hell in Sydney. We saw about 8 whales, including a mum and a calf. The mum and calf were sleeping on top of the water (called 'logging') about 50m away and we watched them for about 10 minutes, which was pretty awesome. We also saw some whales breaching a bit further away from the boat and one spy hop (where they 'stand' vertical in the water and stick the top quarter of their body out of the water) about 100m away from the boat. Hervey Bay is the best place in Oz to do whale watching trips. Lots of people were lucky enough to get the whales coming right up to their boats, but we were pleased with what we got.

From Hervey Bay, we had a 12 1/2 hour coach journey up to Airlie Beach. We loved it there, apart from the numerous tourist adverts and shops etc that line the main street. We did a sea turtle kayak trip round the Whitsunday Islands, which was great fun. We saw a white tip reef shark, which was brilliant! It swam right next to our kayak for about a minute and then swam off incredibly fast. We also did a 65 minute scenic plane flight over the Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef, which included a sea landing on the water out in the ocean - surprisingly smooth! It was brilliant to get an overview from the air and a better grasp of the scale of the reef. We also flew over heart reef, which was very cute! We were both fortunate enough to have a window seat. We were even luckier to see a Humpback Whale with a calf and 2 pods of about 8 dolphins! It was well worth the money.

The highlight of the east coast was probably our 3 day / 2 night sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands, which left from Airlie Beach. We went on the Derwent Hunter boat, which was a classic tall sail ship. The boat was beautiful: made from classic timber with huge sails and a lot of space. We had a private double room with a shared bathroom with one other couple and the food was good.... lots of fresh fruit for breakfast. The food for vegetarians is pretty poor in Australia, so it was nice going on tours as the food is usually good quality. We were really lucky with our tour group, as we have been on all of our tours; we had 14 people on the boat and most people were in their late 20 - 30's. We had 3 crew and they were all really nice too. The skipper was into his stars, so we had a star talk both nights. We had perfect weather; it was so calm that we only had the sails up for about an hour over the 3 days, and even then we didn't move very far! This suited us fine though as with the wind would have come choppy water and the dreaded sea sickness! The boat only rocked a few times so no-one felt sick thank goodness.

Our trip consisted of eating, cruising along, snorkelling, visiting beaches and some more eating. We had to wear stinger suits when snorkelling, which are a million times easier to get on than wet suits and they keep you a little bit warmer too. At one of the snorkel sites that we went to (Blue Pearl Bay), the fish were being fed so there were literally hundreds of them swimming around, right into us. It was really funny! Out on the sea, we were so lucky to see about 14 humpback whales. We saw some mothers with their calves, and we also saw some adult males breaching in the distance and a young male breach quite close. They are so remarkable. We also saw lots of sea turtles (some really up close), quite a few dolphins and a young sea eagle dive fishing from about 30m in the sky, which was pretty spectacular.

It was sad to leave the beautiful Whitsunday’s, as we continued north to where it got hotter and hotter and we started to sweat as soon as we got out of the shower! Nice. The sea was a lovely temperature though. The beaches continued to get better and more impressive. We went to Townsville (nothing to do there), Mission Beach, Dunk Island (a water taxi ride from Mission Beach, great day), and Cairns. We didn't warm to Cairns very much. It is a bit of a dump to be honest with not much to do apart from go to the pub. It is not very pretty.

Before we arrived in Cairns, we both had our medicals to do our PADI diving courses. We were really gutted to find out that Dave cannot do diving over here due to his asthma. After our medicals, the Doctor was adamant that he should not do it as quite a few people with asthma have died after diving. Lins couldn’t decide whether to do it or not, and in the end decided that she would just keep doing introduction dives as it would be cheaper and take less time out of our trip.

From Cairns we hired a car for a week to go north. Along the way we stopped at Cairns' Northern Beaches (Holloways, Yorkey’s Knob, Trinity, Clifton, Ellis, Palm), which were all really pretty. We spent our first few nights at Port Douglas (beautiful), where we had a day on the gorgeous 4 mile beach and did a day's snorkel trip to the outer Great Barrier Reef. We did the Quiksilver trip to the pontoon based out on the reef, which was not what we had booked on to, but typically the boat we wanted to go on had broken down. However, we got the upgrade to the pontoon free and it was nice to try something different to what we were planning on doing in Cairns. It was a brilliant day and the food was gorgeous. Lins did an intro dive and snorkelled for about an hour and Dave snorkelled for ages, seeing lots of huge fish.

We then continued to Mossman gorge where we swam in the clear but freezing water, and The Daintree River where we did a crocodile boat cruise. We went on an electric boat, which was very quiet and also had a camera that zoomed in on all the crocs sunning themselves on the banks. Before arriving in Cape Tribulation we stopped at some more lovely beaches along the way (Cape Kimberly, Cow Bay and Thornton beach), which were all stunning. We stayed at two fabulous hostels in Cape Tribulation; they were right in the middle of the rainforest and we were literally surrounded by trees, lots of creepy crawlies, possums, cassowaries and birds that are amazing in the day time, but not when they wake you up at 4.30am! Our rooms were huts that consisted mostly of netting slightly thicker than mosquito nets, so we could hear all the wildlife outside as if it was in our room. It was very special waking up and looking round the room to see rainforest all around us.

We spent one and a half days on the beautiful Cape Tribulation beach....extremely relaxing and the water was a perfect temperature. We did jungle surfing too, which involved swinging from tree to tree in the rainforest on zip wires like flying foxes (like ‘Go Ape’ in England). We also stayed at Myall beach (round the corner) for a while and then headed back down south. It was great having a car as we got to see lots of lookouts and more beaches along the way. However, rather than dodging huge kangaroo's every 50m as in northern WA, we were trying to avoid cassowaries (big birds similar to but smaller than emu's with a blue, yellow and red head), snakes and goanna’s on the road!

Back in Cairns, the weather was not in our favour so we had a couple of days to catch up on dreaded admin and tax forms. We then did a boat trip with Quiksilver again to the outer Great Barrier Reef and visited 3 amazing sites. Lins did a dive at the first site and then snorkelled at the remaining two. Dave happily snorkelled at all three and was always the first one in and the last one out the water! He is now quite a competent swimmer after all of Lins’ coaching sessions! We saw some beautiful fish, including ones that had very striking colours and some simply huge ones. We were extremely fortunate to see two turtles. The second one gave us our own private reef tour for a whole twenty minutes! There was no-one else around. It was quite happy to swim along about 5-10m below us and we both dived down a few times to swim alongside it! We saw it munching on the coral, having itself cleaned by other small fish and swim along effortlessly. It even came up to the surface for air 2m in front of us. It truly was a wonderful experience.

Up the coast we have mainly been staying in YHA hostels. They have generally been of a higher standard for facilities and cleanliness; the hostels vary so much over here. Some are like hotels, and others are so gross that they attract people that have not washed for days or even weeks and have all sorts of horrid bugs. YUK! To be honest, we are a bit fed up of hostels now and severe lack of sleep.

The Greyhound bus continued to be a pretty good way of travelling and cheap. For most of the journey's we got two seats to ourselves and a film. Although we did come across several rude and grumpy drivers! We only had two buses that were delayed, amazing when you think of what 'Australian time' means.

We have seen lots of uncanny 'doubles' of our friends from the UK over here. It's quite surreal seeing these people as we have had to take several looks at them, which probably makes them feel extremely paranoid! The following people, we know where your double lives: Kate Ruszala, Graeme Stevenson, Nick Carroll, Jenny Pater, El Shaw, Paul WIlliams, Jo Edwards and Cherry Cheeseman.

After 6 months exactly, we have just left Oz to go to Fiji for 3 weeks, NZ for 8 weeks, followed by Bali for Christmas and NY. We have loved Australia, it is amazing to think that we have been to every state and driven so far. However, we would never live here, which is funny because we thought we might do one day. Although it's a great lifestyle over here in many respects, there are so many things different to England that are quite annoying and would stop us emigrating. But most importantly, it's just too far from our friends and family.

Today we arrived in Fiji early evening local time. We flew from Cairns via Brisbane, where we had the pleasure of waiting for four hours for our connecting flight. Both flight's were pretty good and the food was edible. About twenty minutes before the plane landed in Fiji, the hosteses came round with an insect spray and sprayed the whole of the plane! We felt like we were being gassed; it was really strange and lots of people held tissues to their mouths. On arrival in Fiji we were met by Fijians singing and playing the guitar. We were then taken to our hotel by a guy who thought he was Fiji's answer to Lewis Hamilton, although he didn't handle the bends too well! We were quite petrified as everyone seemed to be crazy drivers and not take too much notice of the road markings. Anyway, we are really looking forward to the next three weeks.