Hello from Sydney! After a swift but sad farewell to Nemo we jumped onto a plane to Sydney arriving late at night. The next day slightly refreshed we decided to take our own self-guided historical tour of Sydney. We headed to Circular Quay home to the world famous Sydney opera house and harbour bridge. However when we got there it was cool, cloudy and raining - can you believe it! (Well we couldn't anyway). We started off in an area known as the Rocks, where the...

Hello from Hervey Bay in Queensland. We thought the Whitsundays would be tough to beat (it is after all the 7th wonder of the world according to Australia) - we were wrong! We took the plunge and drove about 800km on Sunday to Hervey Bay. We had an early start to get straight on the road as soon as it was light and made good initial progress. Most of the landscape stayed the same with the occasional kangaroo roadkill (we call them a stiffaroo). However at presen...

G'day dingos! Here is an update from the amazing Whitsunday Islands. Discovered by Captain Cook in 1770, they are made up of 74 islands, the largest being Whitsunday Island (named after the feast day it was discovered on, though it was actually discovered on a Monday, but Whitmondays sounds rubbish). Just beyond lies the Great Barrier Reef southern section, including Heart Reef as mentioned in the last blog. Our first day here was spent fervently looking for ...

Fancying a change of scenery (can you get tired of beautiful beaches?) we heard about a place called Paronella Park, a ruined house in the rainforest at a small town called Mena Creek, about 45 minutes drive inland. We set off along a single track and some unpaved roads, muddy in the rain, towards Mena. Paronella Park was built to realise the dream of one random Spaniard, Jose Paronella. He came to Australia in 1913 and made his fortune in sugar cane farming. ...

Hello from Australia! We left Hong Kong on another overnight flight arriving at Brisbane airport. No chance to rest as we had to get a domestic flight to Cairns but found that we had to pay for a bus or train to get to the domestic flight terminal! Instead I spoke to the Quantas man and looked pretty pathetic so he gave us free bus tickets to the terminal - yep that's the backpacker spirit! We would love to tell you how amazing it was flying into Cairns over th...