Sydney and Final Thoughts about Australia

After a good nights sleep and some strong coffee, we started the final leg of our journey with Kitty (our rental car in case you haven’t read any of the previous blog entries). We arrived into Sydney at midday and made a beeline for Opera house and Bridge that Sydney is so well-known for. They did not disappoint. The bridge is huge, and on the rare occasion that you forget it is there it almost scares you when you turn around and notice it again. The Sydney Opera House is equally impressive, and we took in a tour of the building to learn a bit about its history. After our tour we climbed one of the pylons of the bridge to get some stereotypical Australia photos, before heading into the centre of town to meet Tara’s cousin Philip. We had a few warm-up drinks together before giving Australian Wagamamas another shot. Thankfully the Chicken Katsu Curry was as good as London this time, so we celebrated with another 12 or 13 beers. We eventually stumbled back into Eva’s Backpacker Hostel in Kings Cross at about 2am. Kings Cross is the native habitat of Sydney prostitutes, so our walk home that night reminded us very much of the journey home to our flat in London.

On day two we slept off our hangovers in the morning, and then ventured out to Bondi. We did a spot of shopping in Bondi junction, and then walked down to the beach to watch the surf. That evening we ventured over to The Rocks (an area near the bridge in Sydney) and managed to locate a good pint of Guiness in the Mercantile Hotel bar (who says it doesn’t travel well?!). We then grabbed some dinner before heading home for some much needed sleep.



On day three in Sydney we walked the Harbour Bridge and visited the old-school amusement rides at Luna Park. We then caught a ferry back across the harbour, and spent the afternoon museum hopping. We started off in the Museum of Contemporary Art and then walked through to Botanical Gardens to the Museum of New South Wales. After a quick pit-stop at our hostel, we set off for Philip’s apartment and the promise of our first home-cooked meal for three months. Gaz was concerned that Philip may have similar culinary skills to Tara (who can’t cook toast), but he was blown away by how good the dinner was. The main course consisted of sweet potato & onion with slow-roasted chicken, and for dessert we had profiteroles with chocolate sauce. All of which were homemade. Clearly Philip has picked up a thing or two from Aunty Kathleen. After dinner we set out into town for more drinks, and eventually stumbled home to our hostel at 2am again. You can no doubt see a recurring theme in our nights out with Philip.

We spent most of our final morning in Australia trying to sleep off our hangovers. This wasn’t proving very effective though so we dragged ourselves down to Harry’s Cafe de Wheels in Wooloomooloo for an injection of greasy food, and that seemed to do the trick. We then wandered up to Mrs Macquaries Chair in the botanical gardens (a spot which Gaz had been unsuccessfully trying to navigate us to for two days), before catching a ferry over to Manly. We spent most of the afternoon just soaking up the atmosphere in Manly, before returning to the hostel to wash some clothes and pack our bags for the last time in Australia.



When we started our travels in Australia we concerned that our journey here would be tainted by drunken school-leavers on this well-trodden backpacker route. We couldn’t have been more wrong though. Our five weeks in Australia have been amazing, and we’ve made some great friends. Its hard to pick a single highlight because so many parts of the trip have been amazing for different reasons. Uluru was breathtakingly beautiful, our skydive was exhilarating, and on Fraser Island were in a fantastic group of like-minded (drunken) people that I’ve no doubt we will meet again back in the UK.

Our next stop is New Zealand. Here’s hoping that it will be as much fun as Oz was.

Hunter Valley

The Hunter Valley is one of the premium wine areas in Australia, so we decided to sign up for a Wine Rover tour of the area. The tour cost us only AUS$40 each, and from a value for money perspective it was one of the best things that we’ve done in Oz. They took us to four different wineries (mostly petite wineries that only sell at their cellar door), a liquor barn, a cheese maker, a chocolatier, and a brewery. The last winery that we visited had a Breathalyzer for guests to try, and Gaz’s reading was ten times the legal driving limit so it was a successful day in that respect.

Surfers Paradise, Nimbin and Byron Bay

From Brisbane we headed south to Surfers Paradise where we spent the morning hanging out on the beach. After a quick bite to eat in the Surf Club we hit the road again and drove to the hippy hangout of Nimbin. This is a town in the middle of nowhere that has become home to a collection of stoned hippies. Unfortunately most of the locals were too high to turn up to work on the day that we visited, so most of the points of interest were closed. We did however visit the Hemp Museum where they extolled the virtues of hemp, and were fighting a slow and unsuccessful battle to legalise marijuana in Australia. We couldn’t help but notice that most of the locals seemed a little bit troubled (mentally) and paranoid, so paradoxically they we’re probably providing a reasonably good case for ensuring that the drug remains illegal in Australia. After Nimbin we drove back towards the coast and stopped briefly in Byron Bay to take some photos of their lighthouse at sunset, before starting on the first leg of our long drive down to Hunter Valley. To break up the long drive we spent the night in the The Abbey Motel in Grafton. The next day we stopped off in Port Macquarie for a wander around the harbour and bit of shopping, before eventually arriving in at our YHA in Cessnock (the main town in South Hunter Valley).

Australia Zoo and Brisbane

Enroute to Brisbane we stopped off at Australia Zoo. This was another one of our highlights in Australia. Gaz has always been partial to a good zoo, and Australia Zoo is one of the very best. Steve Irwin's animals are all very tame, which means you can wander into some of the enclosures and feed or pet the animals. We fed and pet Koalas, Kangaroos and even an Elephant. We also visited the famous Crocaseum where Steve Irwin used to do his shows prior to losing that fateful fight with a Stingray.



In spite of travelling to some remote destinations, we’ve found that there are relatively few things that we craved from home that we couldn’t get hold of. However, the one thing that we’ve both been pining for the most (with the exception of friends & family of course), is a Wagamama’s Chicken Katsu Curry. Thankfully a little bit of internet research had helped us to locate a Wagamamas in Brisbane. Unfortunately the Brisbanites have murdered the Katsu curry. Dejected, we ventured out onto the streets of Brisbane looking for something to cheer us up. Unfortunately for Gaz, Tara found something to cheer herself up very quickly so we spent the remainder of the evening watching the Sex in the City movie. The only saving grace for Gaz was that Carrie’s wedding rehearsal dinner in the movie was held in a restaurant called Buddakan. This is the same restaurant that Gaz took Tara too for her birthday last year, so he earned some much needed brownie points without even trying.

Rainbow Beach & Fraser Island

In a moment of lunacy, we’d booked ourselves onto a Fraser Island tour starting two days after our Whitsunday tour had finished. This meant that we had just one afternoon and one morning to cover the 900kms between Airlie Beach and Rainbow Beach. This may shock some of you, but even Tara didn’t have enough chat to keep us going on that journey. After night in a motel in Miriam Vale and a dinner in the Big Red Crab restaurant, we arrived into Rainbow Beach with an hour to spare before our Fraser tour briefing. After the briefing, we stocked up on Goon (wine in a carton) and beer and said our farewells to Kitty (she wasn’t quite up to the offroad terrain on Fraser Island). The next morning we set off for Fraser Island in our Toyota Landcruiser with nine strangers. The next 48 hours were the best of our trip so far. Our group consisted of three northern girls (Sarah, Taria, and Claire), a gay couple from London (Danny and Richard), a trio of lone travellers that had met in Melbourne (Alice, Ali and Gabby), and a german girl whose name I’ve chosen to forget already. Everybody in our group got on really well, and we quickly bonded with the help of Gaz’s cheesy iPod. We made our way up to Lake MacKenzie where we annoyed the rest of the beach with an impromptu game of rounders, before heading back down to the beach and setting up camp for the night. We made a good dent into our goon stash that evening, and we awoke the next morning with some monumental hangovers. With the aid of some Paracetamols we managed to pack up the van and drive up to the Maheno shipwreck for some photos, before driving up to the lookout at Indian Head at the northern tip of Fraser Island. Gaz also went for a stroll up to the champagne pools, before we re-boarded the jeep and made our way south to set up camp. That night we introduced the rest of the group to the Goon Train game, so the next morning we awoke once again to insistent hangovers. In spite of this we managed to trek up to Lake Wabby that morning for a quick dip, before catching a barge back to the mainland. After a quick powernap in the hostel our group reunited for dinner, and as was now traditional we hit the goon again. The hostel wouldn’t let us drink on the premises so we relegated to the bus shelter outside the hostel, which somehow added to the fun. We were sad to say goodbye to our new friends the next day, but the open road was calling so we set off in Kitty for the bright lights of Brisbane.

Airlie Beach & Whitsundays

After a short ferry ride back to Townsville, we got back into Kitty and started making our way south down to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, so after another night in a grim hostel we boarded our boat and set sail. Our sailing boat, The British Defender, was an 83ft veteran of the round-the-world yacht race. We spent our first afternoon out at sea and eventually arrived in darkness at Whitehaven beach. We moored at Whitehaven for the night and then spent the next morning on the breathtaking Whitehaven beach. The sand on Whitehaven beach is over 99% silicon and was used to create the lenses in the Hubble Telescope. From Whitehaven we sailed round to Tongue Bay were went on a bushwalk up to a lookout point. From Tongue Bay we sailed north and spent the afternoon and early evening snorkeling in Mantaray Bay, Maureens Cove and Blue Pearl Bay. We had planned on scuba diving whilst we were on the Whitsundays but our boat didn’t cross the path of the dive boat, so we had to miss out on this. The snorkeling was fantastic though, so we don’t think we missed out on too much. After a night moored in Blue Pearl Bay we made our way back to Airlie Beach. Despite being blessed with calm seas and stunning weather, Gaz never quite found his sea legs so he was glad to be back on solid ground. Irrespective of this, we still had great fun on the boat. The food was great, we made some great new friends, and we learnt a new drinking game (The Goon Train). The sailing itself was also a lot of fun and we both really enjoyed sailing along at a 45° angle as the waves crashed against the boat.

Magnetic Island

After a very short ferry ride from Townsville, we found ourselves on Magnetic Island. Our accommodation for the next two nights was the flashpacker Xbase hostel. On the surface the hostel looked great as it had a pool, a large deck, laundry and kitchen. Unfortunately it was missing one key element, an overzealous perfectionist owner (preferably German). Hostels just don’t work properly unless they are officiously run by sadistic old lady. Xbase was a case in point. After checking into Xbase, we went to our dorm room and discovered that our beds had been slept in, so we went back to reception and informed the disinterested child behind the desk. His response was, “How bad are they?”. It took another forty minutes of debating before they would supply us with clean sheets. We spent that night drinking in the hostel, and our blurry vision helped us to forget just how filthy our accommodation was.

The next day we decided to go and rent some bicycles so that we could tour the island. After 40 minutes walking in the blazing sunshine we found the bike rental shop and walked right passed it. It wasn’t the right weather for any kind of physical exertion. We then happened upon the Moke rental outlet, which suited our requirements better so we hired one of those instead. For those of you not familiar with a Moke; try to imagine the offspring of a forty-year old army jeep and a Mini. We toured Magnetic Island in the Moke from Horseshoe Bay in the north down to Picnic Bay in the south. After all our exertion we decided that we deserved a nice dinner so we went to the local pizzeria and sat down outside to enjoy our feast. Within minutes we were invaded by a possum, a curlew and a Labrador; all of whom we’re keen for a slice. The Australian wildlife is far more forthcoming than we’d like.



The following morning we drove down to the Bungalow Bay Koala Village for breakfast. This was the highlight of our time on the island. Not only were we given a fantastic breakfast, but we also got to share our table with a variety of different animals including Crocodiles, Snakes, Koalas and Frogs. On reflection, this wasn’t all that different from our dinner the previous night.

Townsville

From Mission Beach we drove down to Townsville, where we spent a night in a Bournemouth-esque chintzy bed and breakfast called Coral Lodge. We spent a day in Townsville where we strolled along the esplanade and visited the excellent Reef HQ aquarium. In the evening we caught the Ferry over to Magnetic Island and checked into the XBase flashpacker hostel, which I will write more about in my next post.

Mission Beach

Mission Beach was a welcome change from Cairns. Its a far more relaxed place, and the Absolute Backpackers hostel that we checked into was excellent. They actively encouraged travellers to bring in their own booze, and the large communal kitchen and eating area made it easy to make new friends. On our first day in Mission Beach we went white-water rafting on the grade 4 rapids of the Tully River. Here Gaz learnt the hard way that Tara doesn’t react well in a crisis. On one of the first major rapids of the day, David (one of our fellow rafters) lost his grip on the raft and tumbled out of the boat taking Gaz with him. Whilst Gaz attempted to scramble back onto the raft, Tara looked on in panic but didn’t feel the urge to help him into the boat. It was left to the instructor to scramble across the raft and pull Gaz to safety. It was a great day nonetheless though and we’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone. On our second day in Mission beach we decided to throw ourselves out of an aeroplane from 14,000ft with an Australian attached to our backs. Fortunately both of our Australians had remembered to attach parachutes to their own backs so we were in safe hands. Tara took all of this in her stride as she’d done this before, but Gaz was terrified to begin with. For Gaz the 20 minute ascent to 14,000ft is what Alex Ferguson would probably describe as “squeaky-bum time”. The 60 seconds of freefall was nothing short of amazing though, and quite possibly the best single experience of our trip so far. Two-days later the adrenalin is still pumping round our bodies.

Cairns

It was in Cairns that we first realized that the East Coast of Australia is preferred habitat of the 18-year-old British school-leaver. We both felt ancient in Cairns. The majority of these travellers are dragging wheelie bags behind them, which contain untold luxuries such as Jimmy Choo shoes and GHDs. This wasn’t quite what we’d expected to see on our travels. Cairns had little to offer to us, as the Lagoon was closed for refurbishment and the bars reminded us of 18-30 holidays in Spain with condom inflating games being played by the younglings. The highlight of Cairns for us was Kuranda, which is a town up in the rainforest above Cairns. We caught a cable car up to the town, and took the scenic train back down to Cairns. Whilst up in Kuranda, Gaz had a short digeredoo lesson and splashed out on an expensive piece of hollow tree. We were glad to be collecting a rental car on our third day in Cairns so that we could start making our way down the coast. The Nissan granny car that we were given wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for, but we've grown to love her and we named her Kitty on our journey down to Mission Beach.

Uluru

The following day we joined a two-day tour of Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and King’s Canyon. When we first boarded our bus we were disappointed to see that our tour group comprised of a retired Italian-Australian couple, a non-English speaking Korean student and a cake-loving Brazilian doctor. We were not expecting much fun. Thankfully it turned out that the Italian-Australian couple, Mario and Lynne, where unintentionally hilarious and kept us well entertained. Lynne was suffering from some mild form of tourettes and barely 15 minutes would pass on the bus without her shouting “DINGO!” or “SPECTACLE!” at the top of her voice. Mario was in control of the volume of his voice but was outspoken in a different way. His comments to us about the Aborigines are probably best not repeated on this blog, but kept us amused over dinner. Our two-day tour was expensive but we felt it was money well spent. On the first day we walked the rim of King’s Canyon, and our guide Siobhan taught us a lot about Aboriginal culture (much to Mario’s derision). We stayed the night at Mt Ebeneezer cattle station, before rejoining the bus for our tour of Uluru. Scotty and Tic where our guides for the second day, and were a comedy double-act that kept us well entertained. Aborigines consider Uluru to be a sacred site and prefer that visitors don’t climb the rock, however climbing is not prohibited, so Gaz took up the opportunity to scale the rock. It was much harder than he’d expected though, and out of the six people that started the climb from our bus only Gaz and the Korean made it to the top. We spent that night in the overpriced Ayer’s Rock resort (Old Pioneer’s hotel), before catching our flight to Cairns the next morning.

Darwin & Alice Springs

Due to a calendar malfunction, well, our inability read a calendar anyway, we managed to delay our entry into Australia by 1-day. As a result, we missed out on spending 24-hours in Perth, and instead we were forced to spend the night of Gaz’s birthday on the floor of Darwin airport whilst we awaited our connecting flight to Alice Springs. Gaz wasn’t too disappointed by this as it meant that he could spend the lion’s share of his birthday on the beach in Bali. Not a bad place to turn 28, I think you’ll all agree.
After a brief interrogation at the hands of Australian immigration, the next thing that greeted us in Australia was a baggage claim hall over-spilling with American Navy personnel. It was with great pleasure that we knocked over a handful of the smaller American sailors whilst swinging our backpacks onto our shoulders (we were careful not to upset any of the bigger animals). Gaz hadn’t had so much fun since he took out a pushy Chinaman in Hangzhou train station. After a few hours sleep on the floor of Darwin airport, we boarded a plane to Alice Springs and en route we were treated to the most spectacular show as the sun rose over the deserts of Australia. We spent our first morning in Alice Springs catching up on the sleep we’d missed whilst travelling, and then set out to take in the sites of Alice Springs. We were concerned that we’d only budgeted one afternoon to see Alice Springs, but this was more than enough time to see all that the town has to offer. The highlight (for Tara anyway) was a visit to the Flying Doctors museum. One of the things that was most apparent to us in Alice Springs was the friction that existed between the European Australians and the Aborigines. The Australian government only recently apologized for the way that Aborigines have been treated in the past. The government's current policy seems to be to give money to the Aborigines, but rather than improving things this appears to just be generating a lot of alcoholic Aborigines.