So i realize i haven't wrote anything for ages and i have a lot to catch up on but going to try and quickly write about Australia.
Me and Debs hired out a campervan from wiked -which had a rather funky paint job- for the first 2 weeks of our trip to drive from Cairns to Brisbane in - funny since i haven't drove since i passed my test 3 years ago!
We first headed north of Cairns to Cape tribulation to see the amazing rain forest up there - on the way we saw the most amazing things - Baron Gorge which on the photos is the brown mucky colored waterfall, and we pulled into a place called mossman gorge and spotted a wild crocodile! All the while it rained which was a bit rubbish but it is still absolutely boiling up there!
After this we headed back down towards cairns along a different route stopping at the most amazing waterfalls and driving through national park on top of national park which was amazing. It really is beautiful up there!
We arrived into oz just after the cyclone had hit and basically destroyed the Whitsundays islands but we still got to do a trip out there on the nicest sail boat - the islands had some of the most amazing beaches i have ever seen but the debris left behind from the cyclone was everywhere which is such a shame. All the while we got to go on a sail boat for 2 days and learn a bit of sailing which was fun!
Oz has the famous Steve Irwin Australia zoo which we went to of course - they have a kangaroo pen as such which you can go into and strong the kangaroos! Also we found out that the number of koalas left in Queensland is the amount that got run over last year so it's not looking great for koalas!! They still do their famous crocodile show there which is awesome!
After this we did a few more sights of oz stopping along at beaches and pretty national parks then onto Brisbane, from there we did our fraiser island trip -- you basically get given a 4x4 car for 3 days and drive around the island which is full of amazing lakes and views then camp out at night (keeping a close eye out for dingos which are everywhere!). This was one of my favorite parts of Australia - it was brilliant, camping on the beach with lots of other people, spending the day in lakes that you could drink the water from and seeing amazing sand dunes everywhere -- incredible.
From here we went to Newcastle to meet up with a couple of girls we met in Vietnam - the girls live on the lake there so we got to go out on their boat and do a bit of knee boarding off the back which was awesome!
I have a cousin who lives in Gunnedah which is a bit inland from Newcastle so I went to visit her for a couple of days which was incredible - i saw so many kangaroos in the wild and even spotted a koala in a tree! Her and her husband run a farm so i even got a fun ride in a tractor while there! It was nice to get away from the East coast for a bit and see inland Oz which really is different!
Sydney was my final stop and i was on my own for a while which actually turned out to be great fun. I did a bit of standard sight seeing (even spotted the RBS building overlooking the botanical gardens!), and met a lot of great people. I really loved Sydney and is definitely somewhere i will return to!
That's about it for Australia -- loved the whole country even though is was ridiculously expensive (more so than England!) but happy to currently be in New Zealand and ready for exciting adventures here!
