Along with the Whitsundays, Fraser Island is the ‘thing to do’ on Australia’s East Coast so the good times were set to continue. Called K-Gari by aborigines, which translates to Paradise, Fraser Island is a World Heritage listed, 120 km sand bar off the coast of Hervey Bay. To see the island a group of 8-10 people jump into a 4x4, fill an esky with food and another with alcohol, load all the camping equipment and explore the world’s largest sand island fo...

So it was on the Whitsunday coast that I discovered the true meaning of Queensland’s ‘Wet Season’! Rain was there to greet me when I stepped off the Greyhound bus at Airlie Beach and it sent me packing a few days later. It wasn’t all about the wet weather though as you will soon find out. Airlie Beach is the gate-way to the Whitsunday Islands and after meeting up with Stuart and Rose, who I met on Maggie, we grabbed some goon and boarded our maxi sailin...

So a quick stop off to break up the 9 hour drive to Airlie Beach turned into a four night stay at Magnetic Island. This was basically because I’m too tight to turn down a free nights’ accommodation. My stay on the island also helped me slow down my pace even more. ‘Maggie’ is situated 8km off the coast of Townsville, half the island is a national park and the other half is littered with either huge grey boulders or stretches of white beaches. There wasn...

So this was it, I had finally reached Australia. Two months previously in Bangkok, down-under had seemed ages away but it crept up faster than I thought possible. It was strange but as the plane touched down it felt like a really big deal. Maybe not in recent years but when I was younger Australia was a near in-accessible paradise. A 24 hour flight and the cost of a holiday meant I wouldn’t see Oz until retirement and now here I was, a young 23 year old ready f...

The first and most important thing to do on the train in the morning was to finish our long running game of Dirty Dozen. This is a card game Carol introduced us to and one I will take with me on the rest of my travels. The taxi ride from the train station to the hotel was extremely surreal. A city with the layout of Bangkok and then New York introduced itself to me and then evidence of British occupation smacked me in the face. British style traffic lights, dri...