Today we picked up our hire car, a blue Toyota Corolla and left Brisbane. Stephen was driving and after a few initial emergency stops and probable whiplash injuries as he negotiated the sensitive breaking we were on our way. We took the Pacific highway for about half an hour until we hit the Gold coast. We joined up with the Gold coast highway which hugs the coast for a few hours before rejoining the motorway. Our first stop was surfers paradise. A long strip ...

Today we visited the lone pine Koala sanctuary. Whilst normal people probably would have taken the ferry or a bus, we decided to bike the 22km there. We had been told the rote was almost entirely along the river and flat so it sounded simple enough... I don't know whether we had been incorrectly informed or whether it was Stephen's bad map reading but we found ourselves away from the river and cycling through a suburb called Indooroopily! To say it was hilly wou...

Arrived in Brisbane today after a 2.5 hour flight from Alice Springs. Landed in torrential rain feeling very much at home! Once we got out of the airport though we were reminded that we were in Queensland due to the heat. Stephen hailed a cab and we headed to our hotel. We started getting bad vibes as soon as we were greeted by the miserable cow on reception. We eventually checked in. Our room is nice, as we have a kitchenette and a nice balcony overlooking the ...

Another early start, we were picked up at 6.15am. The sun was thinking about making an appearance as we boarded our coach for the 10 minute drive to the canyon. The previous day we had been given the option of 3 walks. 2 sounded really easy and the other much more challenging. The latter was a 3 hour hike taking us from the car park up to the top of the canyon, around the rim, back into the "garden of Eden" and eventually back down to the car park. We met our gui...

Today we were picked up from our hotel at 5.20am so we had set our alarms for 4.45am. Stephen was reluctant to get out of bed but we felt a bit better after showers. The coach took us to Uluru again and we climbed some sand dunes in the dark with cups of coffee to a viewing deck at the top. The damn flies were out with a vengeance again and with one net between us (as I had left mine in the coach) Stephen gallantly let me use his and he fashioned a bandana type c...