Australia

We were sad to leave Byron Bay on Saturday, the weather had been fantastic and we made some good friends in our dorm on the last day. However, all backpackers are just about doing the same thing over here so we may well meet some of them again in Sydney or somewhere even further south.

From Byron we had a four hour journey to Coffs Harbour, a small green city (basically a spread out town) on the sea. We're at Aussitel Backpackers, undoubtedly the friendliest place we've stayed at yet and quite clean, thoguh there are baby cockroaches popping out at me when i least expect it. However, I'm even getting used to them, this morning I picked up the tea towel and one popped out of it, iIdidn't even scream or drop the tea towel! Not that I picked it up and gave it a good meal and a comfy place to lay it's head or anything. The hostel put on big barbeques and a cheap activity every day and night so we've been making the most of these.
The first full day (the only one when it didn't rain) we made use of the free kayaks at the hostel and had a jouney down the large creek running through town. It was fantastic, fish jumping a foot or so out of the water, herons and other long-beaked birds trying to catch them.

The only things to be heard were the cicadas, the occaisional bird cry and the swish of our oars. Wonderfully peaceful.

We decided to book a horse riding trek through the forests for the next day, and regretted it slightly when it started to chuck it down during the night! Unfortunately it carried on for the whole of the next day and it seems it will be for all today, i'm running out of dry warm clothes. The horse trek still went ahead, and it was amazing, but very very wet. I had quite a tempermental horse who would refuse to trot along with the others, and cantered off when they slowed down again. Great fun! Will definitely be doing that again.

We've got a day to hang around today as we're getting tonight's night bus to Sydney to save us a nights accommodation. Proper skimping backpackers we are now! Though David did go out yesterday and buy us steaks that literally cost a night's accommodation! I was annoyed with him but the meat was fantastic. Haven't told him that though! So yeah, we're chilling out, watching loads of strange films, drying off and eating a lot today. We've found an interesting hostel in King's Cross (the names of places in Australia are half English, half Aboriginal, making an interesting contrast) of Sydney and are celebrating Valentine's day with the hostel's free wine and cheese evening, then going to find a nice restaurant and stuff ourselves! Hopefully not as expensive as the steak though.

Ta ta

I have got a litle bit more behind myself, so i will have to do a quick catch up on what i can remember. Brisbane is a fantastic city, very sunny and laid back, like most of Australia i'm finding, but there were lots of sparkling skyscrapers and tropical gardens thrown in there too. There seemed to be loads of great alternative nightlife but i kept being too tired to make the most of it! We ended up spending almost two full days chilling in the botanical gardens, which was full of yet more new creatures. We were even spectators to a garden wedding which was lovely, although they did play westlife! got to be something inherently wrong there.

Oh we went to see In The Persuit of Happiness while we were there and whoever told me it was very sad (anna i think) you were so right! Glad i saw it though.

I keep getting distracted by mother charly and jen so i may not write about everything i want to today, am getting a litle hungry! So i will just tell you about the big things...

Australia Zoo! Orignally started up by Steve Irwin's parents as a reptile sanctuary and later taken over by Steve and his wife Terri, it is now massive and still growing. There are endless amounts of animals there, and it is more like Dalton wildlife park than the zoo, though i am happy to announce that the emus are one of the few animals that aren't let loose there! they prowl along the fence making hollow threatening noises like underwater bombs. The whole zoo has such a friendly open atmosphere and wombats and suchlike are wandering around on leads for you to pet. The Kangaroo enclosure is amazing, acres wide and the kangaroos are very happy to let you pet them, unlike the wild ones we see crossing the highway every now and again. Less legs for you Charlotte:

The workers hold displays and feedings all the time with all the different animals, the tigers are amazing. I really want a pet tiger in my country mansion when i'm a millionaire, then i wouldn't have to worry about robbers and rapists so much! They held amazing bird snake and croc displays in the Crocoseum, The birds are so well trained, they freefly around the arena will land and move anywhere they're directed. I also want a macaw! The whole park is filled with pictures and memorials to Steve, and it is very obvious that everyone is still feeling the loss keenly. The zoo was not just an investment, he and his wife and children live on the zoo grounds and have/had a very active part in the running and development of the place, so the staff all knew Steve very well. Our bus driver worked for him for a good few years and got very emotional just telling us about him. The atmosphere of loss conveys Steve's passion for conservation of the environment yet further when visiting.

The elephants were beautiful:

We're now in Byron Bay, the Autralian surfing equivalent of Newquay, only more chilled out, and containing many less drunken yobs. Nice. The hostel we're in is great, right next to the beautiful white beach (which we went on last night in the dark, big crabs were running in and out of the sea - never again!) and the people in our dorm are fantastic company. We went a few k down the coast today to lennox head to try a bit of surfing. Dave had done it before and is getting quite good, but i am yet to master the sport! I'm not too bad at getting up on the board but once i'm up there my falls are spectaular! I have grazed both my knees badly today, but it's all part of the fun! Well i am starving now, so I think i'll return to the hostel and my sausage butties! I'll add the photos on a another day for you all.

Just a quick photo for Anna

I've been rather bad at updating recently, partly because everywhere i go the seem to be welsh chav's downloading porn on every available computer, but mostly because i'm lazy.

Rockhampton: a quick walk into the city told us that there was lots of steak, lots of threatening indigenous folk, and very little steak. The hostel we stayed at however was a highly pleasant experience. It was run by a short and jolly lady called Robby who calls everyone Lovey, "cause you're all my Lovey's," and who spent the whole day cleaning up after you, untill you felt utterly guilty for not getting up to help!

We decided we'd seen much too much of the civilised Australia by now and not nearly enough of the Outback, so we booked ourselves on Capricorn Dave's Beef n' Reef tour, as recommended by a good few of the Jackass boys. As soon as we met him, we understood why - this guy was mental! His minibus was (at the start of the tour) white, with notes of thanks from past customers scrawled all over every available inner surface. We started to worry when we read comments such as "I licked an ants anus!" However, we needn't have worried, apart from Dave's driving - it was raining properly for the first time in a year, so he drove into bogs as fast as he could, turning the steering wheel from left to right lock until the mini bus was so badly stuck that all six of us had to push him to few hundred feet onto vague tracks. He drove so fast over unset road that the whole bus became an all over clay paintjob.
First thing he did was take us to an American live shooting range in the middle of the outback! A heavily-armed guy told us to shove off, so he drove 200 metres down the road, parked up and led us in his bare feet to a place where we could easily scale the fence! We wandered around for an hour or so lifting up logs untill we found something. What did we see...hmm....Oh! we found a little scorpion, dave tried to annoy it until it attacked him, we found the coolest jewel spider actually a lang crab. It looks kinda like a tiny hermit crab except its shell is covered in the typical aboriginal pattern, it was very beautiful. We found mammoth meat-ant hill and did the Antdance of Pain, In which you stand in your bare feet on the hill getting thick ant-socks for as long as you can until the biting becomes too bad to stand! Out of all Dave's customers, the record was six minutes, and that guy had to spend a night in hospital!

After that we wandered round a tea-tree forest for about half an hour looking for snakes - it smelt fantastic - but there were no snakes to be found that day. Ten minutes later we found a very recently dead one on the road it was stupidly long, about 30cm longer than me probably. We stopped to have some lunch and friendly banter and then drove a few k to an abandoned barn where dave immediately started looking for massive spiders. While we were waiting, a very sweet tree frog hopped onto one of the guys shoulders and generally kept us amused for a while.

After a while i got a bit bored and started searching in this big gnarly tree - and found a massive toad! I told Dave but immeditaely regretted this as he started cursing loudly at the toad, grabbed it violently by its hind leg and flicked it very hard a few times behind the eye - of course it was a cane toad. For those who are new to them the cane toad was introduced to Queensland from abroad to keep down the numbers of pests that attack crops, but in practice the toads choose to live in open spaces instead of crops and kill/outcompete all kinds of precious native creatures, They're also very ugly! He was flicking it to show us the poisonous parts of it that kill any creature which tries to eat it. After telling us about it and generally abusing this creature, he carted it behind the tree and we heard the grusome sound of a cane toad being whacked mercilessly in the head against a stone. I felt very guilty.

After this epiode Dave went back to searcing for spiders and eventually after shocking it out of a hole with the flash from my camera(!) brought us a huntsman spider.

As you can see it's pretty scary looking and when asked if i would like to have it on my hand, i came out with the lamest excuse ever - "I'm not scared of it, i just don't see the evolutionary benefit of picking it up!" As ths drivvle escpaed from my mouth i realised how wimpish it sounded so just decided to get on with it; this was the kind of thing i had come to Australia for anyway! And it was loads of fun, for such a big spider it felt so delicate on your hand, really quite a nice sensation! So of course i put it on my face...

Steve, one of the guys in the group was a big arachnaphobe, but after seing us all with the spider faced his fears and after some serious girding of spirit held it on his hand and eventually ended up wandering around with it sitting on his hat, very proud of himself!

It really stared pissing it down by this point, so dave of course took us to an isolated billabong with a half-metre deep mud base to cover ourselves in mud and swimm with turtles, not that we could see them. It was very warm and a pretty fabulous feeling.

It was such a brilliant day!

By the time we left Rockhampton it was raining heavily further north of us, flooding so badly that no-one could get higher than Mackay, about 200km away. Not sure if that has turned into a cyclone yet, haven't been near a tv since then. let me know if there wwas anything on the news! Luckily we were going south, and after a twelve hour overnight journey we arrive in brisbane, where the weather has been fantastic! I love this city but i've been on the computer for almost an hour and want to keep the costs down! Also Woolies (Woolworths is a full scale supermarket over here!) will be closing soon and we want to get some food to make tea with.

Hope you're all well and have enjoyed the entry!

x

My brain is hurting, i've read three dean koontz's in less days, and am now on the 'Dean Koontz Companion!' Charly if you have forgotten the name Dean Koontz is the 'Urgh Urgh Urgh Urgh!!' guy. Even for a hardened Koontz fan, i think so many so quickly are a bad idea, the walls are starting to speak to me and kitchen knives are floating towards my head from the ceiling, so i've decided to take a break, my next book is going to be Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome. Bit of a change! Dad, is Swallows and Amazons the first? I should probably be reading them in order.

So many products have different names here. The Vauxhaul Corsa is a Holden Barina, and what seems to be the Vectra is a Commodore, though it could just be that they haven't stopped the Cavalier range as there are some very old Commodores. The Yaris is an Echo. Walls is not Frigo, or Walls, but Streets! and Walkers is not even Lays but Smiths. Very strange. I wonder why particular names make a product more marketable in a particular country.

Well as my brain is so fuzzy (every time i write brain i get brian) i won't do a proper entry,will tell you about the trip down to Rockhampton and my first steak tommorrow. Oh, and i will also tell you about Crazy Capricorn Dave's Reef n' Beef Outback tour! It sounds mad.

Thank you everybody for your comments and amusing emails. Frankie I absolutely promise you that David and I are both well, and he has both his arms! I certainly don't remember him wailing your name last night, so it must have been your overactive imagination. Unless it was a premonition...ooooh! Let me know about the tattoo, i want details! And your placement of course - how are your 'pretty crazies'?

Umm...where was I? Mision Beach? Well we left there late morning yesterday, Sunday, after a massive downpour. Serge gave us a lift kindly in his grandpas-like cavalier, even did that dodgy thing of rumbling itself forward when it's in neutral. Ooh he also told us something very comforting about the Cassowary/Sophie he said "it could tear you to pieces if it wanted, but it doesn't really bother - unles you stroke its face or something." I assume he didn't know from experience!

We took the Greyhound right down to Airlie Beach, about 8 hours journey, which was highly relieving as it was so cold. We both got very burnt despite wearing t-shirts and sun cream in the sea, you really don't realise how burnt you can get under heavy cloud in Australia until you wake up the next morning with youer face so burnt and inflamed that you don't recognise yourself!. I know, it's not very nice, but I moisturised and after-sunned literally all day all over my burnt bits and it's starting to look hopeful. My arm is going to look very silly once my leeds band come off!

Airlie Beach is pretty beautiful, a long main strip which combines a couple of zante-like bars and clubs with trendy bars and cafes, fast food joints, backpackers and generally every kind of shop you can think of. All this runs along the esplanade right next to a long but narrow beach, whcih looks over to the beautiful Whitsunday Islands. Every person who we've met has automatically said 'when are you going over to the whitsundays?' and then been very shocked when we've said we porbably aren't, but we've thought about it and decided we would rather do everything they could offer to us in other places on our trip. Though Whitehaven(!) beach does look simply stunning. There is also a lagoon here similar to the one in Cairns but open 24 hours, we paddled in it yesterday and will probably go for a dip tonight once the sun gets easier for our poor carcusses to handle!

There are so many cool critters here! There are still the same little geckos, but they are now joined by bigger very cool stripy black-and white lizards with red heads, and also even bigger salamanders with a black and brown diamod pattern, wandering along the esplande. There are loads and loads of little parrots in every tree! Most of them have green red and blue blotches, and they all fight with each other and make such a noise! There are also a couple of massive snow white parrots if you look carefully, who look pretty evil really, but still quite novel. There are gigantic fruit bats hanging from every tree, and they are so fun to watch at night. The have like a metre-length wing span, very massive. Unfortunately i have seen a few cockroaches which annoys david as every time something moves at night i scream and jump around.

We are staying in Magnums, a huge but very cheap backpackers at the centre of the strip, perfectly friendly but i wouldn't want to be in somewhere so lively most of the time. It's rather loud at night, though our dorm is far enough away from the action. They have a big outside bar and a club, last night they were having bucking bronko competitions. Rather amusing.
In fact most of Airlie Beach is lively at night, last night there were people on the beach with fire baton-thingies, moving them in time to the music other guys were making with various instruments, saxaphones and drums and didgeridoos and other interesting thingemybobs. Most of them were probably on acid but it was fun to watch, might join in tonight.

Tommorrow we're onto Rockhampton i think, steak capital of Australia! Yum yum. Think that's basically the reason we're going, apart from to break up the very long haul down to Brisbane, but will let you know if there's anything else to it!

Ta Ta x