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Sydney to Cairns Part I
We have now eventually left Sydney having spend the last 5 months living and working in the most famous Australian city, it's been great, but we're glad to be on the move once more. Our first stop was Port Macquarie, which was a fair trek and a good test for Alma to see if she was all better. Thankfully she went the whooe way without any problems whatsoever and driving is now a lot easier. By the time we got to Port Maquarie it was dark and so we only had time to quickly find a campsite and cook dinner before relaxing a few hours and then going to bed after a long day.
An early start the next day and we were off to Byron Bay, for what we hoped was a weekend of fun at the beach, unfortunately there was a festival on there that exat same weekend and so we could only get in for one night before having to move on. It was also quite a distance again, Alma was running smoothly though, so again it was park up, set-up and have something to eat before getting some sleep. In the morning we walked around Byron Bay, before the festival crowd got there, and then set off for Surfers Paradise (sounds rubbish doesn't it). Fortunately Surfers (as us Aussie locals call it), was not very far from Byron so we managed to spend the afternoon on the Beach and by the pool at our campsite, before having a walk into the town centre at night to have a look around the market that was on there.
Brisbane was our next stop along the coast where we did the 'walking tour' of the city, as recommended in our Lonely Planet Guide, this gave us a good insight into everything that Brisbane has to offer, Rachel was pirticularly pleased that the sweet shop was on the tour route. We moved on from Brisbane the next day and took a trip to Australia Zoo, home of the Irwin family and lots of crocs. Rachel got to stroke a Koala and both of us got up close to some kangaroos (check out the photos), we also saw the show in the crocoseum. After the zoo it was time to go to Hervey Bay for a trip to Fraser Island.
We're sure everyone has been wondering what we where going to do that no one would believe, in fact we are both pretty confident that it is all everyone has been talking about for weeks. Well the speculation can end now as we can confirm that we have BOTH (yes even Dave) jumped out of a plane at 10,000ft for a SKYDIVE!!!! For the non-believers we have the DVDs to prove it. The skydive was done over Hervey Bay and we had unique views of Fraser Island from above, next a bungy jump (maybe).
After the adrenaline rush of freefalling for 30 seconds, we took a much needed relaxing tour around Fraser Island the next day, in a four wheel drive mini-bus (the same used by the army apparently) and with our great tour guide (Captain) Kirk. The island itself is absolutely beautiful and is the largest sand island in the world, with a six lane highway on the beach at lowtide (and a half line highway at high tide). It also has the clearest lakes and streams that we have ever seen, the pictures do not do it justice. We spent the night on the island before another day of touring, before returning to the mainland in the evening.
The next day was a day of driving to Rockhampton, we were making good progress, where we set up camp and relaxed in the evening, before getting up early to continue our journey arriving in Airlie Beach with plenty of daylight still left. Airlie Beach is a great place to take a tour out to the Whitsunday Islands, so thats just what we did. It was a two day tour, the first of which was spent on White Haven Beach (which is one of the top 10 beaches in the world), Hamilton Island and Daydream Island. In the evening we were taken to our resort on Long Island, it was like a mini holiday. The next day we got to lounge around at the resort, before being brought back to the mainland and returned to Airlie Beach, where we spent the next day lazying around (it's a hard life).
We are now in Townsville, with only a few more stops until we reach Cairns (its only about 350kms away now). We also have less than two weeks left in Australia altogether and fly down to Melbourne soon to catch our flight to NZ.
Look out for a new post soon, albeit a short one.
Love and miss you all
Dave and Rach
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