Well hellooooo!

It has been a while since we've updated, but we've been having so much fun that we kind of forgot to keep up with our blog! So this might be a long one!

So, we have spent most of our time in Australia here in Sydney. We're staying in a little place to the north of the city called Warrawee. We have been staying with Paul Samter which has been great! We've had our own bedroom, our own bathroom (none of this sharing malarky!) and we've had numerous barbeques out on the balcony and copious amounts of beer and wine as well. It's been so nice to stay in one place, unpack our things and feel like we're living like 'normal' people again!

So, we've been to Newport and Palm beach a few times. Palm beach is where they film for ome & Away (so I'm told). The houses around the coast there are phenomenal!

We've toured the city of Sydney, walked the harbour bridge, taken the Manly ferry over to Manly beach, and been to the Opera House. It actually looks really odd close up, kind of 70's bad decor!

It was awesome to have Mike with us for 3 weeks :) We had a bit of a palava getting it, but we eventually hired a hi-top camper for the 3 of us to bundle up the coast in. As we had a relatively short amount of time, we didn't think we'd get that far, but we're impressed with our milage!

We spent our first night in Forster/Tuncurry. Quaint little place, nice beaches. We then moved on to Lennox head, then Byron Bay. We spent 2 nights in Byron. Although very touristy and popular with backpackers, it was an awesome place! Very busy, lots of shops, nice beaches and pleanty of places for us to get a beer.

We then headed to the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise. It was super windy while we were there, so I went shopping while the boys went to the beach. There were so many wonderful shops! They had the high end shops, right down to the tacky souvenir shops - bliss! I was so close to buying a didgeredoo, and was asking the shop lady lots of questioons. She said there was actually an aboriginal shop down the road that specialised in didgeredoos, and I should go and have a look there. So off I went in search of this place, couldn't find it after 45 mins of searching, then couldn't find the shop I was in in the first place so ended up empty handed!

From here we went through Brisbane (we had no real desire to stop here) and stopped for the night at a place called Beerburrum. Kind of like the places you see on films where the locals eat anyone that passes through, but it was nice to hook up our van to a powerpoint for the evening and have a proper hot shower :)

In the morning, we visited the Glass Mountains and headed on to Tin Can Bay. When we got to Tin Can Bay, we were directed to Rainbow Beach,so we could use that as a starting point to Fraser Island. So off we went to rainbow beach. It was a national park place so we had to get permits to camp. Most of the campsites recommended 4WD. Needless to say our camper got stuck in the sand on a number of occassions!

We decided to rent a 4WD to go to Fraser Island. The difference in price of that and a tour group was minimal, so we thought driving ourselves would be better instead of being ona bus of 30 other people.

Fraser Island was awesome! The 4WD was HUGE, which was great to drive! The 3 of us took it in turns to drive across the island. The weather wasn't great, but the driving experience kind of made up for it. Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island. We were given windows were we had to drive up and down the beach, and times when we had to be off the beach due to high tide, and so driving through the forests.

The rental was definitely the best option for us. We saw the tour groups on the island, full of annoying kids and lots of waiting around for each other.

After Fraser Island, we went back to Tin Can Bay for the night, as we wanted to see the dolphins, we we were told come to the bay every day for feeding. We were very excited for this - on our whole travels, we haven't seen any dolphins! So we arrived by 0730 as advertised, and it was peeing it down. The workers said the dolphins turned up late the previous day, so it would probably be late again today. As the time passed, more and more people left, until we couldn't wait any more. So we left around 1030, bummed that we didn't see the dolphins. They said there were only 3 days last year when the dolphins didn't show. Sods Law.

We made our way back to Pauls in time for the camper to be dropped off. Mike and I took turns driving on the trip as Stevie wasn't insured. I think we both enjoyed driving Sheila around. I think if we were to do it again, we would probably try a bigger van. Although it was fine for the 3 of us, it was a squeeze at times, and it gets soooooo hot in the van, but you can'y have the windows open or you get eaten by mosquitoes!

It was great being able to pull the van up for the night next to a beach, then the boys go for a swim first thing in the morning while I make breakfast.

We fly to Singapore on Tuesday, and will make much more of an effort to keep our blog updated!

Lots of love and hugs to you all

Stevie & Sam xxx