Hey all

We have landed in Brisbane and are with 'Da Ozzie Family'. We left Sydney (sadly without meeting anyone famous in the Zeta Bar), but after having a lush stay in Sydney. We travelled up through the coast over about 4 days, and about 1120 kms! We took a trip up to the Blue Mountains and as predicted didn't hang around too long as it was really cold and decided it was time to start looking from some beaches. Get ready for the photos of Summer Bay Surf Club, which is on a lovely beach just north of Sydney called Palm Beach. It was quite funny as it's just the local surf club which they use for filming, and as it was a Sunday we didn't get to meet Alf. We used the loo so that's about the biggest claim to fame so far. Along the way we stopped off in Hunter Valley at the Vineyards and pretended we knew what we were doing tasting the wine and choosing some bottles. Hunter Valley was very pretty and we walked away with a couple of bottles that were very nice. That night we stayed in this really scary Motel (well it wasn't really), but thanks to Hollywood we were convinced we were going to be kidnapped in our sleep - Matt looked for cameras and it all seemed ok - so after a not so great nights sleep we headed on up to Coffs Harbour and stayed in a much nicer place. Coffs Harbour was really nice a sleepy little coastal town and we mooched around & tried to find some Whales, but they didn't want to come out and play. Then we travelled on to the famous Byron Bay which was lovely and started to chill out with the hippies. Again though we seemed to miss the action as they had just had a festival and we arrived a day late (lucky as we managed to get somewhere to stay), but we missed the bands! We then trundled up and hit Queensland and the Sunshine Coast and arrived to lovely weather about 25 degrees so we are now a lot warmer. See photos for the arrival into Queensland. (Oh just remembered though on one of the coastal places we were driving through we saw a dead whale on the beach - (Jo will laugh at this) it was really sad & smelly and so, so far the most we have seen of wildlife is Muton Birds on Mutton Island at Coffs Harbour and Lorakeets (noisy birds) and dead ones, but I think we are going to a Koala Sanctuary in the next couple of days so KT can have a cuddle. It's hard to describe everything you see and hope the photos do it all justice.

We are now staying with relatives and having a bit of a rest after all the driving and taking everything in and will probably stay around for a couple of weeks before trundling up North.

We hope everyone is good and keep e-mailing us so we don't miss you too much!

We also want to say Happy Birthday to Thomas, we are missing you and Uncle Matt is glad you are taking care of the scooter, he has a cool new T-Shirt for you to see.

Lots of Love

Matt & Katie

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