Our journey so far continued...Australia – Western Australia, Northern Territory, New South Wales & Queensland.

April 2011

28th – After a night spent at Christchurch airport amid the excitement of the grand opening of the brand new international terminal building, we flew to Melbourne. Dodgy flight times secure us a day spent in Melbourne airport until our flight to Perth to spend another night at theirs. Cost of food? $32. Cost of hot showers? $10. Cost of research in preparation for ‘The Terminal 2’ film auditions? Priceless.

29th – Picked up campervan and explored Perth city centre, which, considering it is the biggest city on the west coast, was surprisingly quiet. Stopped at Fremantle, the second biggest city after Perth and home to the late ACDC frontman Bon Scott and which, incidentally, was decidedly busier than Perth. Found an expensive but shite campsite where we were asleep by 7pm, exhausted from our airport escapades.

30th – Explored Coogee beach and moved up the road to Rockingham to spend the night. Just after cooking dinner and settling down by the beach, mad eccentric Kiwi woman walking dogs offers us her driveway for the night and free hot shower in the morning. Nice lady. Crazy, but nice.

May 2011

1st  – Spent the day in Rockingham. Found sweetshop selling English sweetie fayre, including the English pub staple (apart from beer of course), Scampi Fries. Get in! Cadburys Fudge for dessert completed a taste of home.

2nd – Drove a 700km round trip into the bush to visit Wave Rock, a rock formation shaped like a giant wave by rainwater running off the top of the rock over God knows how many years. Pretty cool. Obligatory photo pretending to surf it secured.

3rd – Spent the day on Coogee beach and Fremantle.

4th – Returned to Perth to fly to Alice Springs and spent the first night in a real bed for weeks in a hostel whose expensive rooms would have afforded us five star luxury in Asia. Walked to the food store and witnessed the drunk Aboriginals we were pre-advised we would see on the street on the way home but we decided we liked them and their jolly demeanor, possessed despite being the recipients of a sad and turbulent history. Disappointed to find yet more Aussies not drinking Fosters, mind, native or not.

5th – Picked up campervan and received a free upgrade which included a microwave. Welcome to the 21^st Century. Explored Alice Springs, which we really liked, and got on the road toward Ayers Rock around 3pm (see related Roadkill blog). Stayed at Curtin Springs, where a mice infestation had taken over the place and all doors couldn’t be opened for more than the time it took to dive in or out.

 6th – Day at Uluru (Ayers Rock). Seemingly just a rock, Uluru has sacred significance for Aboriginal peoples of the area and it didn’t disappoint both as a spectacle and hallowed ground from which we learned so much historically. Great place that we highly recommend, if only for the drive from Alice Springs, which satisfies the pre-conceived image of Australia we all have.

7th – Woke at sparrow’s fart to see a dud sunrise at Uluru and hit the Olgas, another huge, interesting and culturally significant rock formation nearby, before heading back to Alice Springs. Drove as far as our eyelids would allow and were finally ordered by them to stop at Stuarts Well campsite, where the on-site bar is home to Dinky, the famous ‘Singing Dingo’ – a Chaz and Dave style act who has previously starred with none other than Michael Caine. My name is Michael Caine…

8th – Drove the 90km back to Alice Springs to hand back the campervan and flew to Sydney to spend another night in an airport.

9th – Collected yet another campervan and hit the classic tourist trail of the Australian east coast which included Bondi Beach, the Opera House and Manley via the ferry, at which time it decided to piss it down and stifle those much heralded world class views of the harbor. Great. Thanks very much. Where's Ron Burgundy when you need him!

10th – Went back to Sydney Harbour and visited the botanical gardens for classic postcard view of bridge and Opera House. Luckily the sun had his hat on. Drove up the coast to Palm Beach, a beautiful area reminiscent of those seen in American made-for-TV Danielle Steel productions. Also known to those of you more culturally challenged as the setting for the famous Australian soap Home & Away.

11th – Drove all day and tried to do the Pacific Highway some justice. We felt that we did just that by visiting such important and significant sites as The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour and Big Prawn at Ballina, just two examples among a number of Australia’s strange and odd, but much photographed, ‘big things’.

12th – Continued north on the Pacific Highway and hit the stunning Byron Bay, Australia’s most easterly point. Notably, it was named so by Captain Cook after the Poet and renowned Navigator Lord Byron in the 1760s. Also hit the start of the Gold Coast and visited the essential, gaudy, built-up Surfer’s Paradise, home of the Quiksilver Pro surfing competition. Drove on flyover through Brisbane, which afforded great night views of the city we wished we had time to see.

13th – Paid 80 squid (yes 80 pounds!!) to gain entry into Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. Sadly, as we all know, he wasn’t there to greet us but Helen hugged a Koala instead and we both hand-fed Kangaroos, which was great. Incidentally, we both observed, since their fur is so soft they’d make great rugs. Sorry Skippy. Met the appropriately named Croc, and Steve’s ‘baby’, Aggro, who has the distinction of destroying 4 lawnmowers to date while handlers mow his compound. Good work Aggro. Also visited upmarket Noosa Heads where backpackers didn’t belong so we high-tailed it to Rainbow beach for the next-day trip to Fraser Island.

14th – Day trip to Fraser Island. Created by over 800, 000 years of drifting sands, it is an “ecological wonderland” and a World Heritage-listed site that consists of a 120km-long area of lush rainforest, ruggedly beautiful beach, 200m high sand dunes and mineral-rich pools of freshwater. Respect has to be paid, though, to the fierce undercurrent of the shark and croc-infested waters, which is why a swim in the stunning waters of Lake McKenzie, among others, is obviously preferred. The Dingoes here are the purest of their species too, having not had the chance to breed with anything else. Interestingly, Dingoes are a wolf, not a dog, since they howl and not bark. Bet ya didn’t know that. Neither did we.

15th – Went to the excellently-named Tin Can Bay to feed dolphins at breakfast. Ever since an injured dolphin was brought to the bay and nursed back to health, it has been visiting every morning for free food. Lazy bugger. One day he brought a friend along and they have both been turning up for breakfast ever since. Visitors pay $5 for a small fish to feed them and the small café does a roaring trade. It is a small marina and this is a small daily event, which is incredibly refreshing that something has remained as such, given that most everything else that has commercial value gets too big and turns into something just for the wonga. Drove to Rockhampton.

16th – Drove to Mackay, start of the Whitsunday coast and arrived at Airlie beach, the conventional base for exploring the Whitsunday Islands.

17th – Spent a well-earned day relaxing at the campsite. Decided to hold off on going out to the Whits until the following day since the weather was not looking too clever. Slightly alarming was the sight of a massive black and yellow reptile climb down from one of the trees not more than 20ft from our pitch.

18th – Hit the Whitsundays and were glad we chose a motorboat rather than a yacht as it was incredibly choppy.  However, we couldn’t hide our disappointment when we discovered that the white sand swirls for which the Whits are famous were covered by a very high tide of 4 metres owing to a full moon (high tide is apparently usually a max of 2 metres). We concluded, just like practically everywhere on this trip, that it is best seen from the air. We did meet two very nice girls from New Zealand, Cathleen and Megan, who salvaged the day.  We enjoyed their company so much we met them for dinner too.

19th – Drove to Bowen, Australia. Where the hell is that, you ask? Why would you want to go there, you say? Well, Bowen has a rather recent claim to fame as the place chosen to represent Darwin for the film Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. If you’ve seen the film, it was plain to see by the buildings that still stand as regular banks, hotels and shops. They were simply given a temporary makeover while tons of red sand was shipped in to make it look authentic. The jetty, used to represent the bombings on Darwin harbor, comes alive with a little imagination too. After our brush with Hollywood, we headed up to Townsville for a pit stop before making tracks.

20th – Visited Tully, the wettest place in Australia, where the height of a big gumboot illustrates the obsession of building ‘big things’, as mentioned earlier, and is predominantly used to show how much rainfall the town receives each year - the most in Australia. And it was pretty big. It didn’t rain while we were there though. Imagine that – the Brits didn’t bring the weather with them. Arrived in Cairns, our final destination along the east coast of Australia.

21st – We went on a trip to see and snorkel the Great Barrier Reef that actually turned out to be anything but great. Obviously we had high hopes for viewing the world under the sea at a reef you would imagine is the ultimate place to do so, but it turned out to be colourless and, frankly, we’ve seen better reef and fish from the beach. Disappointing.

22nd – Spent the day in Cairns and explored waterfront and surrounding area. Flew to Brisbane to spend night in airport on some really comfortable leather sofas so we actually got some decent sleep. Bonza!

23rd – Flew to Auckland to catch connecting flight to Rarotonga, Cook Islands. Weirdly, thanks to the Dateline, we flew on a Monday evening from Auckland and arrived at twenty past midnight in Rarotonga…on a Monday! Great. As if Mondays aren’t bad enough.