Australia Trip

We were off to Australia, staying with Mads & Rick and hiring a camper van. Working and playing all the way up to the departure date we were finally glad to be on the way. Flying with Quantas, it was a fairly pleasant journey even if it was 23 hours!
We spent our first night in a hotel near the airport, crashing out and recovering from the journey. Rick was picking us up the following afternoon. We walked out in the morning and explored Darling Harbour, our first taste of Oz. Strange having Christmas decorations around when it’s warm, something we didn’t really get used to throughout the trip.
To arrive at Rick and Mads house saw us needing a trip in a dinghy, their “cat litter tray”, to arrive at their island or rather Scotland Island in Pittwater, they share it with a couple of hundred houses and wow what a beautiful place. Stunning scenery in a sub tropical rain forest with tropical birds flying around and their yacht moored just off the jetty. It was a great place to recoup from the journey, catch up with each other, chill out and generally drink far too much over the weekend!
Monday morning saw us up early with Mads to get to the airport for our flight to Cairns to pick up the camper van. That’s where the heat and humidity of Australia hit us; phew it was hot at 35’C+ and more than 80% humidity. But we were soon in the van with the air con on, stocking up and heading off to our first campsite, Wonga beach. There were literally a couple of trees between us and the idyllic beach and ocean. The caretaker was friendly and insisted on sharing three bottles of bubbly with us while the regular evening torrential rainfall hammered down!
We found a few problems with the van and after contacting the hire company we were heading back to Cairns having the van checked. Actually the problems turned out to be so severe that they had to change the van – twice! The brand new van that they were going to give us ended up having a leak from its pressurised water system and they had to find us another van. It did take up time in our holiday and caused some stress but they did compensate us. While this was all happening we had a day trip into the rain forest and the village of Karunda on the scenic railway and skyrail cableway, fantastic scenery and a great experience.
A big highlight and best value of our trip was a flight over the Great Barrier Reef in a 4 seat Cessna plane – Awesome.
Once the vans were finally sorted we began travelling south and headed for the Atherton Tablelands. The humidity was a lot less here due to the altitude, more stunning scenery with waterfalls and winding climbing roads. We could have spent more time here but needed to move on after just one night. From here we headed back to the coast and onto the Bruce highway. Its mainly national park along this road and so it’s very scenic – which ever way you look, again we could have spent longer in this area but knew we were limited with time to get to Sydney. We arrived in Airlie Beach, a tourist spot for heading out to the Whitsunday Islands and the Barrier Reef. We had decided we wanted to actually snorkel on the reef and thoroughly enjoyed a day trip on a fast catamaran. Taking in the Whitsunday’s and then out to the reef. Words can’t describe the colours of the fish and coral, absolutely amazing.
A touch of inland after that and walking in the Cania Gorge. Again more stunning scenery and an excellent campsite where the drinks around the campfire still went ahead despite the rain!!
>This led us onto the Sunshine coast with stunning beaches backed by national parks, why it’s called the sunshine coast though we’re not sure as it rained and was overcast the whole time we were there. The Glass House Mountains, isolated pinnacles jutting out of a flat plain are visible for miles around and are rather dramatic to see.
When in Australia you have to visit Australia zoo, made famous by late “crocodile hunter” Steve Irwin – crikey! It was expensive but once we had been up close to kangaroos, koalas, wombats etc blissfully free of other tourists and then watched the “wildlife show”, we felt we’d had our monies worth. Again awesome!
We had no intention of stopping at Brisbane, just another big city are our thoughts although others we are sure will disagree. We headed straight through to the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise with its skyscrapers, golden beaches and rolling surf. The beaches stretch on and on here including the most eastern point of Australia, Byron Bay. A top tourist spot for hippies and backpackers. We were quoted the highest price for a night with the van here. Needless to say we didn’t stay but drove for half an hour and paid a quarter of the price.
We spent a few more days on the coast before we headed for the “Hunter Valley” and the obligatory wine tasting. In fact we started with some beer tasting as the campsite was very close to a micro brewery! On a tour of the vine yards some great wines were tasted and bought but they weren’t as cheap as we thought they might be.
From the valley we headed out to the Blue Mountains where it took most of the day for the rain and low lying cloud to lift and for us to see the spectacular mountain range with a blue tinge. We even managed a late afternoon hike to some waterfalls.
Time to head to Sydney and return the van. Time had gone far too quickly, we could have easily taken three months or longer to do the same trip; maybe we’ll go back one day!
Christmas and New Year saw us spending time on Scotland Island with Mads and Rick, eating, drinking, playing (or doing maintenance) on their yacht and generally chilling out. We watched the start of the Sydney Hobart yacht race, glad that we weren’t going out in to the huge swell and remembering the horrors of tragic race when many yachts and sailors were lost. We gave the Sydney fireworks a miss on New Years Eve for many reasons, mainly the city was a alcohol free zone (not ideal for any of us!), an hour or more drive and if we wanted to be on the water a cost of 400$ or more each. We instead did the local Pittwater 9pm fireworks from the yacht and watched the city fireworks on telly.
There was so much to see and do in Sydney that we booked into a hotel and spent five days being tourists. Climbing a pylon on the bridge for the views over the harbour. The advertised bridge climb being far too expensive and possibly a bit scary and you couldn’t take your camera in case you dropped it on the traffic below. We did the Opera House tour inside and out, 18 years to build it at a cost of 112 million dollars – Awesome. The Botanical gardens, Aquarium, Maritime museum, Hyde Park Barracks Museum, sight seeing bus to Bondi Beach (you have to say you went there!) were some of the other things we visited. G will also say we choose the hotel well as it was opposite a microbrewery with decent beer and cider at the right price and of course Chinatown for eating was a must and great value.
Our time ended all far too quickly and it was soon our last weekend in Oz to spend with Mads and Rick chilling out in the “tree house”. They made us so welcome we’ll definitely be going back some day.
Now it’s back to reality, working and saving to get back to “Crazydream”.