Images from Australia. Whales, sharks, people, places, pictures and information.

Well, We finally made it home, flying into the UK on the 14th of February from Sydney on a long, dull badly serviced Lauda Air Flight.  The cabin crew was miserable, i had to have "The Fish" because they had run out of the pork by the time i got there.  Having mentioned to Julie before we flew that non of us were to have "the fish" after seeing Airplane the movie.

Our last few months in Australia consisted of driving to Cairns and back via a long lost relative who very kindly put us up in Brisbane in a lovely air conditioned apartment during the hottest period of our Holiday.  The temperature got to 35 degrees with 100% humidity which was incredible,  couldn't really do anything except dodge from one air-conditioned building to the next. 

Some of the highlights of the last 2 months were:
An incredible 3 day trip on board "Schooner Friendship" a 10 berth Wooden Schooner which took us round the Whitsunday Islands. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef, we got within 30cms of a a sea turtle grazing on the coral.  The Rainforest inland from Cairns were truly special, lots of BIG spiders and other insects, lizards, birds, crocs but alas no snakes.  A great time was also had in the Eungella National Park, where we went platypus spotting and saw two late one evening which was really special, swimming in a stream amongst the sub-tropical rainforest of the park.

We capped off our tours with a two day trip to Fraser Island which was sensational.  Some of the colours and scenery were remarkable, the most photogenic place on the entire trip.

Very sad to be back in the UK after such a great trip, leaving behind some great pals, especially those in Perth. 
Hopefully I can earn some cash so i can run back to Australia & Asia soon.

A little bit late I know but still.  Happy Christmas from our current location of Narrabeen in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.  A pretty crammed in campsite but a top beach and some excellent whiting to be fished for close by.

Since our last email we have seen rather a lot but covered a similar distance to that covered in the first nine days.  No more are we doing 900kms between stops as we were in the Eastern side of WA or our Ceduna to Coober pedy in South Australia bit.

A full review of events will emerge when we get the chance but basically we have a done a loop round the south of Australia from Adelaide to Melbourne in Victoria via the great Ocean Road and then up through the mountains and then to the South of Sydney, then a big loop round the western & Northern sides of Sydney before Sydney itself. Taking in some other sites along the way.  We stayed for 4 days in Melbourne ( a very busy interesting city with a balmy Mediterranean feel to it (although it was 36 degrees when we were there.)  from Melbourne we drove 400kms inland up into the Snowy Mountains and the Kosciusko National Park. (pronounced kous-e-oss-ko) We bush camped a night in the national park next to a very cold stream, then 2 further nights on the shores of lake Jindabyne which borders the national park.  I took the time to do some trout fishing and bagged a nice specimen which I undercooked. From there we drove to the south coast of New South Wales, working our way up slowly towards Sydney, stopping at several great beaches.  It was at one of these beaches that we saw a group of 14 or so Dolphins surfing in and out of the waves all the way along the beach. (see photos).

From there we went east of Sydney and into the Blue Mountains, (see photos)  These were nice but very touristy and overdeveloped.  Because of this we decided to head north of Sydney into the Wollemi National Park where we spent 2 nights Bush camping at an old mining town (now 1 building) called Newnes and Dunns Swamp.  These were interesting affairs as they involved miles of dirt roads, some good some awful. We also got to see some interesting native wildlife such as possums, wallabies, roos, wombats but alas, no snakes(I WILL see a snake before I leave).

From the Wollemi we went to the Hunter Valley 150km’s north of Sydney near Newcastle, famed for its wines.  We spent a day wine/cheese/honey/olive tasting which was nice and a good way to get lunch without it costing too much.

After the Hunter Valley we drove down to Umina on Christmas Eve via the shops(for xmas provisions) and then spent Christmas day on the beach and next to the BBQ in true Aussie style. From there we went to the west of Sydney for a couple of un-inspiring days at a place called Parklea and now we are at Narrabeen getting ready for new year.  Sydney is a beautiful city in parts and a bit like Birmingham in other parts, taken some great photos today with our NEW digital camera (thank you Santa) but these are yet to be downloaded onto the PC.

Think that is all for now, have a happy Christmas & New Year all.

End of day 9 on our travels round Australia and we have so far completed 5,800km's, been in three states (Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory) and seen hundreds of prime pieces of roadkill. 

It's been mainly driving so far as we needed to get up to Uluru (Ayers rock) and there is very little in between Perth and it except desert and well... desert. Our current location is 270kms from Adelaide in South Australia which means the pace will slow down as things to see and do are a little more tightly bunched from now until Cairns, 2.5 months away.

We blasted our way from Perth across the lonely Nullarbor Plain in 3 days as we wanted to get out of WA as the feds were on our case(not really).  We spent one night in the middle of the Nullarbor in the back of the car as the ground was so hard (i.e. gravel on granite ) we couldn't get the tent pegs in.  After that we made our way to Ceduna in South Australia, a nice little town on the coast with delicious oysters.  We stayed there for two nights because we knew the rugby was going to be on the tele and wasn't it grrrreat.  We survived the locals beating us up by standing and singing god save the queen(they were actually very sporting and thought it was a great game).  While in Ceduna we caught(and ate slurrp) the biggest crab in the world.  It was a blue swimmer crab and it was thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.  No picture of it on the digital camera, only on film so you'll have to believe us(honest gov.)

Next stop was Coober Pedy in the Northern desert of South Australia.  Scenes from many films such as Mad Max 3 and others were shot here as the desert around resembles that of the moon.  The town exists purely because of an opal discovery back in the 1930's, lots of people still come and dig themselves a hole to see if they can get lucky today.  Many places in the town were actually built underground(backpackers, churches etc) in order to escape the heat.  We toured one little museum that was in a cave and contained amongst other things, three opals worth over 90000 pounds.

From Coober Pedy we went to Ayers Rock where we spent a couple of days touring the area.  The rock is very impressive and we climbed to the top in death defying circumstances.  Also of interest there are the Olgas which were once part of a rock 10 times the size of Uluru. The highlight of our trip to the area was a 8km walk around a place called Kings Canyon, 300kms from Ayres rock. This is a large canyon which conceals a place called the 'Garden of Eden' within. This is a stream and large pool that supports palm trees and other flora and fauna that could not survive the harsh desert environment without it. We took full advantage by taking a swim as it was 37 degrees and we were in need of break.