Hmmm.... I'm not sure if 'Cultural Encounter' best describes this leg of my travels! Byron Bay is a big surfing hot spot, (although we didn't actually surf from here!), and Nimbin is.... Nimbin!Byron Bay - Dip and I spent a day at the fab alternative local Byron market. Just a short walk from our hostel (everything is very close here), and we were at this 'Camden -style' market, selling things like hemp bags and man made ornaments made out...

Bundaberg - The place to be for turtle viewing, and at this time of year (December), the turtles were coming onto the beach to lay their eggs. They come to lay their eggs once every 2 to 3 years, and always return to the same part of the same beach. Intelligent cretures. We arrived at the beach in the evening with a tour group, and our groups were called out one at a time once there was turtle activity on the beach. Luckily we were amongst the first group to be c...

Magnetic Island (from Townsville)- Leaving Cairns at half past midnight, and arriving into Townsville at 5:30am was a challenge itself, but we then had to pretend to be awake enough to blag our way to Magnetic Island! So we managed to get ourselves across, to find our hostel hadn't opened as yet! Do they know how long I'd been awake for?! Best not to ask! Once checked in, Dip and I took the very short walk into town, and decided to spend the rest of the d...

Having seen a great deal of what Western Australia had to offer, we had now arrived at our final destination. Very diffrerent to the rest of the west coast, Perth is a busy little city, with less greenery than we were used to, (and less spiders and snakes too!!) Never the less, it was beautiful: the people, the food and our experiences. We started off the weekend visiting the Red Bull Air Race. It was fantastic, with lots of tricks by relatively small fighter j...

Having flown from a cool breezy Perth into hot, hot, hot Alice Springs, we just wanted a lovely cold shower, and a good night's rest! Instead, we were boiled in the shower, with the cold tap not working! The last resident's nail clippings in my bed didn't help either! Anyway, we had our room changed, and headed out for a short walk of the area (Todd Street Mall) and some food! As night fell, we saw our first real bit of trouble in Australia, with...