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Hi Guys.
Hope everyone is well.
We are now in Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur.
We are about to leave for Thailand and I have a bit of time to let you know what else we got up to in Australia.
After our last blog we made a trip to McLaren Vale for a quick wine tour. We are trying to get a full house in vineyards!
We flew to Sydney where we hired a campervan, or rather a Hippie van.
From there we drove up to Port Stevens with a one night stop over in Newcastle. We found a one mile beach where we went body boarding, even the sand was hot!
We went to the Hunter Valley where we stayed for two nights and.... you guessed it... went on a wine tour!! More vintage wine, new wine and champagne!
On our way back to Sydney we went to a reptile park and saw lots of spiders, snakes and koalas.
We then met up with Mr. d*** Strattan in Sydney! First thing's first - we did lunch and caught up. d*** treated us to a night at the Sydney Opera House to see Madam Butterfly. It was fantastic despite the rain.
The next day we hired some bikes and cycled around Sydney. We enjoyed it so much that the next day we got the ferry to Manly with our bikes and after a lunch on the sea front explored the area. The ferry back was treacherous.... the waves were massive and people were being thrown out of their seats.
That night we met up with Dick's work associate, David Harris. Nice chap.
After breakfast the following day we said our goodbyes as d*** had to continue his travels to attend various business meetings.
We explored the rest of Sydney and took the bikes back. We then went to the botanical gardens to relax and take photos of the bats and the wild cockatoos.
Graham cooked dinner that night as it was Valentine`s day. We just chilled out ready for our early flight to Cairns the next morning.
Philippa, Lindsey's friend from Eastbourne college kindly put us up for a couple of weeks! She lives just outside of Cairns in Trinity beach with her boyfriend Dan. The apartment is lovely with a gorgeous beach view. Unfortunately though you can only swim in certain areas that are cordoned off because of the sharks, crocodiles and killer jelly fish!!!! Big shame. The water tends to be hotter than the air temperature here a cool 29 degrees!
There is a safe man made lagoon in the city centre of Cairns where people can swim and enjoy the weather without the dangers. It is beautiful. We had a night out with Philippa and Dan, went to the pub to watch the rugby and had dinner.
It rains most days, around 4pm...and boy does it rain?! It is a relief really because of the heat. We have about 4/5 showers a day, don't know how people wear suits to work here!!
We could not resist doing our PADI Diving course out here, there could not be a better place to do it. We went through a company called PRO Dive. We had a fantastic time; two days in the pool learning the ropes; then three days and two nights living aboard a boat with ten dives, and one was a night dive!
We are now certified Open Water Divers!!
The weather was not on our side so the visibility was not great but we still saw amazing sealife rangaing from giant green turtles to finding Nemo. We saw White Tip Reef sharks and on the night dive a grey reef shark bumped into my arm as I was getting out of the water onto the boat. Very cool but would have been scary if I had actually seen him coming!
Once back on land we had one last night in Australia before we had to say goodbye to our hosts and catch a flight to Singapore (via Darwin).
Next stop Singapore and Malaysia!
Lots of love,
Graham and Lindsey
xx
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