so back to Australia....... after Sydney we stayed with Hannah's cousins for a while, it was jolly nice to have a bed and food for free!! it was soooo lovely of them, and nice to be with a big family again, as we'd gotten used to being on our own! then they took us up to their house in Palm Beach!! fancy pants or what!?! pretty much just lazed on the beach all day every day! the two girl cousins were called Hannah and Sarah as well, which was confusing!

then we started on the Oz Experience, the bus which was going to take us up to Brisbane, but its stops wherever u want it to! our first stop was at Barrington, which is more inland, and right in the middle of nowhere! lots of farmland around it. cows a plenty! we swam in the clear river, and in the evening went night kayaking! was quite scared at first, as id never stepped into a kayak in my life! and it was bloomin dark! pitch black some might say! lol! we had little head torches on, but all they seem to do is signal to aaaaaall the insects that there is something to eat! yes thats called my face! it was so tough, cos there were all rocks under the water that we couldnt see, and with the current ud get wedged onto a rock and stuck for a while until someone came crashing in to u a pushed u away! i was being a real baby for most of it! it was just a mixture of it all, bugs in my mouth and eyes, the dark on a river, crocs anyone?! not being able to steer myself from my lack of kayaking experience, and everyone crashing into eachother, so when u did start to get the hang of it, u just got pushed into a bush! we al came out of the with bruises galore! especially the Canadian guys we were with, who had drunk an awful lot that day. its gota be against some kind of law to have let them do it in that state!! dangerous for them and us! they were big guys!

next stop was Arrawarra Surf Camp, yes i did surf! mwahaha! alright at it as well! managed to stand up most of the time! although i swallowed a bit too much sea water for my liking! id also bruised my knees! which proves i was doing it wrong! lol oh well! then Byron Bay. this was the place of the dreaded sunburn! it was really cloudy and windy one day, and we went to the beach, and i lay down before putting any suncream on, and fell asleep! when i woke up about an hour later i was as red as a lobster! and in a considerable amount of pain! the whole of my front was glowing, but nothing worse than my face! here is a lesson i have had to learn for u all! ALWAYS PUT SUNCREAM ON YOUR FACE!!!!!! first my skin swelled up, the went crusty, and solid, then it all started to crack and weep! that was the nastiest scariest part of it! then slowly all the skin fell off and i had new skin underneath. (luckily!!) for a week i looked like a monster, i think i scared a child who came up to our window one day!

we went Zorbing!! for those of u who dont know, u put 3 people in a rubber ball, with lots of water, and roll them down a hill! it was soo fun! (see pictures!) although i had bad sunburn at this point so i thought i was going to be painful! after a while, they lay people down in front of the ball so when it rolled over them it kinda just bounced higher and went thud thud thud all the way down! u should all try it, jolly funny!

In Brisbane we went to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo! it was very fun, saw all the little koalas and kangaroos! koalas are pretty creepy! they just kinda stare at u, with their beady little red eyes! the kangaroos are very cute tho, they let u stroke them, which as first was a little scary cos i thought it was going to kick me, but it was ok! and very soft! i wanted to take one home! and had our picture taken with a koala. it scratched hannah on the neck!! see i told u they were evil!!

after reachnng Brisbane, we rented a camper van! this was jolly fun! ours camper was the biggest pile of rusty junk id ever seen! but it went,and that the main thing! it was black and had General Lee painted on the side. (pics avaliable when i can be bothered!) we had such fun that week! apart from having to sleep in the camper in the sweltering heat! we drove up to cairns in that week, about 2000kms, and when i say we, i mean hannah! so i think everyone should applaude hannah on how well she did! it must have been so knackering, but she did it! and without hitting anything which i was suprised at! we stopped at Noosa, Bundaberg- home of the rum! Mackay, Airlie Beach, Tully, aaaaaaand Cairns! yay! most of these places u wont have heard of! the road map of Queensland we had was so funny! it had all the towns written on it in really big bold letters, and you'd reach the town, a building and a petrol station would go past, and that'd be it! out of the town!

on our last day we got a boat out to Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef. we went ona  glass bottom boat ride and saw all the coral and fish and turtles! it was really amazing and beautiful! the island is pretty much just national park, and it has lots of secluded beaches. a really good ending to a wonderful month!!

we left cairns on the 26th of Jan, by left i mean flew out of! and reached New Zealand! yay! only been here one day, and first impressions?! really nice! Auckland's pretty mini! but we went to the Museum today which was fun, and walked around, which doesnt take long!

im really sorry im so rubbish with the journal updates, but u must understand that i have to pay for internet now! its jolly expensive, and these journals take me so long! especially as the computers in these internet cafes are that fast, so everything takes aaaaages to happen! but il try my best!

au revoir! xxxxx