G'day, g'day.. how ya goin?...

...What do ya know? Well, strike a light!! As the Slim Dusty song 'G'Day, G'Day' goes.

Yes I'm trying to keep up to date now guys so here is my latest post from the home of the cork hat, the didgeridoo, the koala bear, and let's not forget the Aborigines (even though most Australian's do): Australia!

Yes I'm in Oz now (I've actually been here for 6 weeks but don't let that spoil a late blog). I'm currently in Adelaide but I'll start at the beginning and talk about Sydney and the East Coast...

I arrived in Sydney and got a free airport transfer to the Base hostel. You get that when you book more than 3 night's accommodation - nice! The dorm was what you'd expect from Base - comfortable dorms in The Sanctuary (the female dorms). I met some nice German girls in the dorm, as well as a lovely Canadian called Leah who is a tour guide. She was invited to the birthday party of some well off customers she met on one of the buses and ended up dating their son - nice one! I hope it worked out for you Leah - keep me posted! ;)

In fact it seems to be Germans all along the way here - it must be a popular destination for people from Deutschland. Sydney seemed quite daunting to me when I first arrived. I met my Danish friend Anna for dinner on the first night (even though I was stuffed from the food on the flight - the film was The Devil Wears Prada) and the city seemed like a rather large bustling, scary metropolis - well, compared to the relatively small cities in New Zealand. But in the light of day the following day it didn't seem to bad. The first day (Sunday) seemed to be a bad day for communication (my phone wouldn't recognize any numbers, even my mum's, and I was supposed to meet my Irish friend MaryEllen for breakfast but wires got crossed and she had waited for me the day before!), but a great day for finding things Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant-related (went in an excellent book shop that spanned an entire second floor of a mall - heaven!).

It proved a great day for the weather too (really hot) and I met up with Stefan, who is currently working in a bank in Sydney, and he very kindly showed me around for the day. We took in the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the botanic gardens (complete with crowds of large bats living in the trees!!?), the ferry to Darling Harbour, and an area called The Rocks. He very kindly bought me dinner and we had a drink in an English-style pub (which oddly shut at about 8.30pm - Sydney, party capital!;))

What they fail to mention in the guidebooks are the BLOODY FLIES!!! I now know what it feels like to be a cow - they land all over you!! On your face, clothing and even up your nose - arrrrgh! Not nice.

I think the Aussies go to bed early on a Sunday so that they can get up for work at ludicrous hours of the morning because when I set off to the Oz Experience office on Monday morning at 06.45 the city was already alive and buzzing! These Aussies are craaazy as man: their $2 coins are smaller than their $1 coins - what's that all about?!! And you have to dial 0011 before you can make an international call - it's true you know, everything si sdrawkcab ereh!!!

The Blue Mountains was nice - see the shot of the Three Sisters rock formation attached. Apparently the blue haze is formed from the oil evaporating in the heat from the Eucalyptus trees. I must say though, they looked like hills to me. You want mountains, go to New Zealand - they have PROPER mountains!! ;) The railway going up the hill at Scenicworld was possibly one of the scariest things I've done. Our guide Sarah kindly said that the front was the best seat - yeah, right!!! There was no barrier at the front and HUGE gaping hole for you and all your expensive camera equipment to fall straight through! It was a vertical railway - yes, VERTICAL!!! Still, the Tim Tam chocolate biscuits she bought us all on the way home kind of dulled the trauma for a bit.

That is one good thing here - Tim Tam biscuits made by Arnotts. MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm. Kind of like Penguins back home but sooooo much more chocolatey. You can get all kinds of flavours too: latte, chewy caramel, chocolate fudge, etc. It's making me hungry just typing about them..... may have to post some home for people to try. Especially good with a hot chocolate (not that you want one of those in this weather). They seem to add marshmallows to hot choccies over here and in New Zealand too. Nice but a little sickly after a while.

The Oz Experience bus up the East Coast has certainly been an experience! Not a fantastic one, but certainly an experience! The organisation is nowhere near as good as the Kiwi Experience and I've heard horror stories of people being left behind - and not being able to get back on the bus for a week if the buses are full. Not a good advert for them really, considering the price you pay. They didn't even give me a bus timetable - I had to ask for one. I've also had to pre-book all my buses right the way round to ensure I get on - kind of defeats the object of the hop on, hop off gimick they promote it as.

Highlights of the Oz Experience so far have been: the fire-cooked pizzas at Barrington Tops cattle station (where the time is always 17.10, therefore always time to drink!); surf camp (more of that in the next blog entry); Byron Bay (nice choccie shop with green tea chocolates, a nice walk to the lighthouse and ace kayaking with whales and dolphins); Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary outside Brisbane (see photo of me and my new friend Nivea - she was soft! - they had wombats too. I wanted to smuggle them all out. They weren't fenced in and there were different areas for each age-range of koala: kindergarten, pensioners, mothers and babies etc - soooooooooooooo cute!); the shipwreck on Fraser Island (see photo); Arlie Beach (ace sushi shop called Sushi Hi with boats that float on a stream, rather than a sushi train!); Magnetic Island (nice place to chill and I ran into Franziska for a few days); and Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island (turtles and beautiful white sand).

I've met some lovely people: Carrie the Canadian from Calgary (my ace kayaking buddie - we made a FAB team); Justin the Canadian also from Calgary (there's a pattern emerging here, can you tell what it is yet?!); Dave the Canadian etc. I also hung around with a couple of UK girls for a while, Tracey and Rosalind (from near Oxford and Northern Ireland). They're now somewhere around Melbourne. They weren't very used to backpacking, bless, but I think they're getting the hang of it now. Chelsea (guess where she was from - yes, Canada!) was also a really cool chick. I shared yoga, pilates and sushi with her in Airlie Beach. Hey there Chelsea - hope you're having a fab time and hope to see you before I leave Oz.

Kayaking in Byron Bay was awesome. It was scary too though. It was a miserable day and the waves were rather large. There were 2 of us to a kayak (me and my fab teammate Carrie) and we had to negotiate the large waves (I was on the receiving end of these at the front of the kayak) to get out to the open sea. We saw several whales though, about 300m infront of us. These were humpback whales; they were jumping and showing their tails - truly magnificent. The instructor was so busy chasing the whales that we only saw a few dolphins on the way back (I think we'd missed most of them) - they were about 100m away from the kayaks. Amazing. Then it was Tim Tams and hot chocolate on the beach afterwards (one of the instructors is like me - hates coffed but loves coffee-flavoured things, which is why there was hot chocolate - a pleasant surprise). My whole body ached. It was hard work but so worth it. Your arms break through the pain barrier eventually...

I also tried snorkelling off our boat around the Whitsunday islands. Sadly I failed. My mouth was too small to get round the snorkel spout and the mask cut off my nose which didn't help my asthmatic chest etc. Needless to say I swam out quite far and then panicked. I tried to swim back to the boat but the current was much stronger and the boat just didn't get any closer. Thankfully I got to a girl with a 'noodle' (a foam float thing that looks like a draft excluder) and she signalled for the dinghy to come and get me. I got rather upset as I'd really wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef. Oh well. At least I tried and know for future reference. :( The other thing about that boat was that there were no showers. We were on one called Broomstick and spent 2 nights on it. You can imagine the yucky mess after 2 day's worth of sunscreen, salt water from the sea etc. You've never seen people run so fast for the shower in the hostel when we got back to Airlie Beach! I got to see a couple of shooting stars though and the food was excellent. I'm discovered an allergy to Dijon mustard though. ;) I eat it and thick head cold here I come!

The best place, however, had to be Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns. Once you get to Cairns you're in the Tropic of Capricorn which is tropical. The heat definitely soars once you pass that point. We passed through Port Douglas on the way to Cape Tribulation, which is where the rich and famous apparently stay. It was very nice and I kind of wish I'd had the chance to stay there really. I almost had a brush with Hollywood too: we'd just missed filming of a new Hollywood movie called Fool's Gold starring Kate Hudson and Matthew Mconaughey - darn! Just a few days too late. Apparently it was doubling as Florida and they blocked off all the roads to re-route the traffic on the opposite sides of the road, one lady at the hostel I stayed in told me. Ok, so it's not as good as Shari and Andy being near a film set in Ecuador, but I'll keep trying! ;) Cape Tribulation Beach House was a really nice hostel. I shared the shower with a large spider, beatle and a gecko. The gecko was the cute one.

The beach was beautiful and practically deserted (apart from the crocs, which thankfully we didn't see). The rainforest was stunning too. A really nice remote location to get away from it all and I even managed to catch up on my journal - shocker! The Dragonfly Cafe and Gallery was beautiful - the only place for miles (it was a 45 min walk from my hostel and near the only other hostel, PK's) and the gardens were lovely, complete with dragonflies everywhere. Beautiful. The large wooden cafe was nice too. Really idyllic and there was hardly anyone around. Apparently it's rainy season up this end around Xmas. Nice to chill though.

Sadly I got eaten alive when I got back to Cairns - something decided to live on me for a few days and the bites were all over me. It looked like I had chicken pox again - not nice. I've got rid of it now though - I declared war with bug spray at least 3 times a day all over me. It won't take me alive! ;) Cairns was a nice town. Got some paltry free meals from the hostels I stayed in and met up with Franziska again - yay! :) She pulled the captain of her dive boat and I managed to pull a really sweet guy off my Oz bus called Richard - then I realised he was 19!!!! So that was the end of that. Still, it was flattering to be noticed for once. :)

Other interesting animals I've met along the way include some snakes (see photo with my other new friend) and crocodiles. We visited these at a crocodile farm outside Cairns. I didn't really think much of crocodiles until we got there - now I really don't like them. They are so BIG!!!! They can grow up to 7 metres long - horrible, horrible things. I guess they're the closest relatives we have to dinosaurs. Yuk. Snakes I can handle - as you can see from the piccie of one around my neck. It was really soft and smooth - I wish I had skin like that!

So how should I sum up the East Coast? Well, lots of beaches (sadly the more beautiful they get further north, you can't swim in the sea) and a real surf culture. Ok but not amazing. Scenery wise New Zealand is far more spectacular, although Cape Tribultion was definitely worth seeing.

So the centre of Oz here I come. Stay tuned for the next instalment!!!

Later dudes! x