Route Through Australia

Here's a map of our route through Australia ...





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The Well Worn Shorts

These aren't actually my shorts, they're John McCormack's. I'm not exactly sure how I got them but they've served me well. I think now, however, that they approach their end. Sometimes, no matter how good you are, you just can't sow a thing back together.

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Green Shorts, 2000-2007

Brisbane 1st-4th July

Our last stop. We have a couple of days here to get ourselves sorted out, tidied up, meet Nici's friend Shane and fly out! Where did the 5 months go!

Apart from that, there really isn't a whole lot to see in Brisbane - the XXXX Brewery, a few nice going out spots, but nothing you'd cross oceans for.

Fraser Island

All over the country people had been saying Fraser Island was brilliant, so we had to make a stop here on our way down the east coast. The place did not disappoint! Fraser is the largest sand island in the world. The main highway on the island is actually a 75 mile long beach of beautiful powdery sand. My favourite spot there was lake McKenzie - It was a beautiful, crystal clear, freshwater lake nestled in the hills and swimming in it was so refreshing.

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From Australia, Qu...

Fraser is particularly recommended for it pure bread dingos. Here's one digging for a buried fish.

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Surfing

I had always wanted to try surfing and where better than Queensland's sunshine coast. Noosa was a lovely spot for beaches and surf and there was a surfing school there run by a former surfing world champion called Merrick. Myself and Nici took a two hour lesson one of the mornings while we were there and it was absolutely great fun - I never expected it to be such a laugh. I can see why people get addicted to surfing! The instructors were quite good and both us managed to get standing up on our boards in the couple of hours we were there. I really want to try it again! I might even try it at home ... although I might have to suffer colder water.

Back in Noosa

This is the only place in Australia I'd been before. I was sent here with work back in 2005 and it was the reason ever since that I'd wanted to come back to the country. I had wondered, after seeing so many other amazing things along the way, would it still seem as good - fortunately the place still held its own. The town has a national park right on its doorstep, there's several world class beaches, great weather, a lovely town ... and so on. We camped here in the campsite for a few nights and just enjoyed view.

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From Australia, Qu...

The Ron of Argyll

From Airlie beach we set sail for the Whitsundays Islands on the Ron of Argyle. It was a lovely, small, 2 masted Ketch and only had 12 guests on board. It was really special to travel around purely by the power of the wind (although we did have a motor for whenever the wind was too light). The boat is 80 years old next year and hosted famous guests such as King George V and Marylin Monroe. Our crew were really sound too - real stereotype surfer dudes.

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From Australia, Qu...

Whitehaven Beach

One of our stops around the Whitsundays was here at Whitehaven beach. From the lookout its one of the nicest beaches I've ever seen. The sand here is so pure and fine that it was used for making the lens on the Hubble Space telescope and this is still the sand that is used to clean its lens - Amazing!

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The Wet Season that Never Ended

The weather in the planet seems a little topsy turby this year. In Saigon the wet season came 2 months early and here, in tropical queensland, it hasn't stopped raining yet - well in to June. Some of the weather we've had around Cairns and Magnetic Island was cat! Things look like they'll clear up for Noosa and Brisbane though.

Magnetic Island

We were unlucky with the weather here. Magnetic Island normally gets sunshine for 310 days of the year or something ridiculous like that. Didn't like the hostel place we stayed in either - unusually, the fact that we were camping in their campgrounds made it better not worse!

We left after a couple of nights - you really couldn't do anything here with the weather wet!

Cairns

Cairns was an okay place, but it was really all the things that you could go see near Cairns that made the place. I really didn't like the hostel we stayed in there - really big, lots of rules, deposits for everything, staff hated their jobs ... Seems to be the way things are run here on the east coast, and I don't really like it ... no more really cosy, small hostels, lack of atmosphere, companies begin treating you like a child along with the other, younger, 18-20 year old backpackers. Hope things improve as we head down towards Brisbane.

Aherton Tableland

A little bit inland from Cairns you have the Aherton Tablelands - A huge area of tropical rain forest. The weather was really, really wet so it was just how you'd imagine a real rain forest being. We went to see a curtain waterfall there called Millaa Millaa - It was where some Timotei shampoo commercial was filmed as well as the video for Peter Andre's song 'mysterious girl' video. Very nice, and got to swim in around it and even do an imitation of the Timotei ad.

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Great Barrier Reef

We headed out on a small boat to the Great Barrier reef for the day. It was a lot of fun. Despite the cloudy weather the water was still quite warm for snorkeling. The boat parked just off Green Island where we got to hang out for a couple of hours too. All very nice, but the snorkeling was no better than the reefs we saw in Ningaloo or in Thailand. The only difference, of course, was that you were on the largest reef system in the world, but it's very hard to get a sense of scope for this. I didn't get a marine camera this time, so no cool underwater photos. I was hoping to see really brightly coloured corals on the reef, but I didn't and was told why later. It turns out that red colours don't travel that well under water, so everything turns up as shades of blue and green and it isn't until you bring really strong lights down underwater that you get to bring up the colours - in other words the reef will only ever look colourful in photographs ... what a disappointment!

Computer Humour

I spotted this boat in Cairns before we went out to the Great Barrier Reef ... clever!

Cairns to Brisbane 15th June - 4th July

After a few days hanging around Sydney we flew up to Cairns. We'd catch the reef and Aherton Tablelands up here and then gradually make our way down the coast with stops at Magnetic Island, The Whitsundays, Noosa and Brisbane. Looking forward to it.

Bondi Beach

Probably one of the most famous beaches on the planet, so I had to go see what all the fuss was about. To be honest the whole thing looked pretty ordinary - A little bit like Kilkee except in the middle of a big city. Surfing began here almost a hundred years ago.

The Sydney Opera House

I think when you imagine Sydney you think of the opera house. A pretty impressive building ... but that's all :-)

Sydney Harbour Bridge

$160 to climb the bridge - so I didn't do it. Still pretty good to see though. You can see the people climbing the bridge when you zoom right in - they're like little dots. It gives you an idea of how big it is!

Onto Sydney 11th June - 15th June 2007

After dropping our car back in Melbourne we got a bus onto Sydney for a few days. This would be a short stop as we had a flight to catch to Cairns on Friday. We wouldn't get out to the blue mountains, but we'd manage to see the other famous things like the opera house and the harbour bridge.

The Grampians

On the way back to Melbourne we passed through the Grampians mountain range for a look. They were a real surprise - amazing views, great walks and just generally nice.