Australia

When we left Auckland it was 25 degrees and glorious sunshine, but Melbourne was 10 degrees and raining! The state of Victoria in late autumn is cold and very much like home. We explored the city on a free walking tour and then wandering around by ourselves. Melbourne is a trendy, slightly quirky city with lots of alleyways between the main shopping and commercial streets filled with coffee shops, restaurants and interesting shops. 

Melbourne Street Art

We visited the Melbourne Museum to check out the 'wonders of the world' Lego exhibition, but spent another few hours in the great Aboriginal exhibit. It was interesting to learn about their culture and history but distressing to learn about how badly they have been treated since the British colonisers arrived in the 18th century. We learnt about the 'Stolen Generation' where young Aboriginal children were removed from their families and brought up by church missions and government agencies with the aim of wiping out the Aboriginal culture. Amazingly they were only legally recognised as citizens of Australia in 1967. 

Lego!

We also visited the Victoria State Library, which is a spectacular building and contains the infamous Ned Kelly's armour with which he survived being shot several times by the police. We treated ourselves and didn't cook at the hostel, eating out at a Chinese dumpling house, a Mexican restaurant and a very tasty vegetarian restaurant.

Ned Kelly's 'bullet proof' armour

Our friend Lizzy moved to Australia about a year ago and our next stop was to visit her in the city of Ballarat. It was great to see her again after such a long time and we had lots to catch up on. It was her birthday whilst we were visiting so she had taken the Monday off work and we went to the Grampian's Mountains for a long weekend. On the way there we stopped to have a traditional Aussie pie (or two) and at a vineyard. Fortunately for us Lizzy was driving so we sampled about 10 different wines including a sparkling red wine. We stayed in a cabin at a campsite surrounded by kangaroos, emus and cockatoos. The following day we hiked up the mountains, enjoyed spectacular views and got to see a wallaby up close as it sat on the path in front of us. Bizarrely one of the guys who ran the campsite owned a flight simulator in a large trailer and we had a go in it. It was great fun, but very odd landing a Boeing 737 at Leeds airport whilst sat in the middle of the Australian wilderness!

Wallaby

New friends

When Lizzy went back to work on the Tuesday, she leant us her car so we could drive The Great Ocean Road along part of Victoria's coast. It starts at Torquay and runs west for about 200km along spectacular coast line and endless beaches. At Bell's beach we watched some expert surfers riding some of the biggest waves around. It is no coincidence that both Ripcurl and Quiksilver were founded and have their head offices here. Further along the coast we found the lighthouse from the kids TV show ' Round the Twist'. One of the highlights of the drive was at Kennet river where we walked a short distance into the bush and saw a few koalas including one really close up. We ended our journey along the coast at The Twelve Apostles, a series of impressive sea stacks, although we couldn't find all 12 of them. That evening back in Ballarat we went to music bingo at pub with some of Lizzy's friends where our team won 3 out of 4 of the prizes.

Koala at Kennet River

We flew from from Melbourne up to Cairns. Flying for over three hours and landing in the same country was strange, as was the temperature change, meaning we had to quickly swap our down jackets for t-shirts and shorts again. Cairns is a small town, with a great fruit and vegetable market, where we bought 4 avocados for around £1 (the dream) and an amazing public lagoon, built as swimming is not allowed in the muddy swampy they call the sea. It is also however full of 18 year old gap year-ers, who made us feel old, so we opted to head north to the sleepier town of Port Douglas. It was here that we booked a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef.

Snorkelling through the coral and fishes was an incredible experience. We saw several Nemo's (relatively easy to find as they never stray much further than a meter away from their anemone), as well as countless other brightly coloured fish, starfish and giant clams. Although disappointingly, no Dory - apparently they are much more rare. As well as enjoying the beauty of it, we also noticed significant areas of 'bleached' coral. This has been damaged by extra sunshine due to less cloudy days and warmer sea temperatures, and whilst it is expected to recover in a few years, if climate trends continue in this way it could cause much more permanent damage in the not very distant future.

The Great Barrier Reef from above...

...and below

From Port Douglas we drove further north up the coast through the Daintree forest, going on crocodile boat trips where we saw many of them, including one which was only a few months old and staying in a rainforest lodge, where there were huge spiders (although luckily they weren't in our room).

Adult croc over 3m long!

Next up we flew down the Queensland coast to Brisbane. We spent a relaxing day exploring the Southbank area on one side of the river that runs through the city. This area is a legacy from the 1988 Expo and contains some quirky architecture, a Gallery of Modern Art, the Queensland Museum, a huge performing arts centre and lots of parkland with a manmade swimming lagoon and beach. As there is a huge river running through the city and not many bridges one of the key forms of public transport is the fast catamaran that zips up and down the river stopping on each side in several places. Going for a ride on it was a great way to see a lot of the city from the water.

Sunny Brisbane

We booked a hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to take us from Brisbane to Sydney and our first stop was Byron Bay. This is a town famous for it's laid back surfing culture, so we got stuck in and booked a surf lesson for our first day. We have both surfed a bit before (most recently in Chile), but thought it was sensible to have another lesson to improve our technique and consistency in being able to stand up. The company we chose was called Black Dog, supposedly because the owners dog can surf. We'd booked a group lesson, but no-one else turned up so we got a private lesson for no extra charge. Our instructor was very good and we had a great time. Ben managed to stand up and properly surf into the beach on most of the waves he caught. Fiona was little less successful, but still made good progress throughout the session.

Watching the experts do it

In Yamba, we stayed just one night as a stop to break up the journey south, but discovered that well over half the people staying at the YHA had been there months. They were keen to ridicule their neighbours in Byron Bay, claiming that Yamba was the true surf capital of New South Wales. The hostel staff even woke everyone up at 8am by announcing over the intercom system that it was time to go surfing. The town was pretty and we enjoyed a walk around the peninsula, but we didn't get sucked in and managed to catch our bus the next day. At Coffs Harbour we swam in a sea filled swimming pool, kayaked on the creek through mangroves and cycled in the pouring rain to the Big Banana. There are lots of banana plantations nearby and in the 1960s a giant banana sculpture was built to promote the industry. It quickly became a tourist attraction and there is now even a mini theme park. The owner of the hostel took us to a local headland to see lots of kangaroos. He was very knowledgable and we learnt lots of facts. We even saw a few joey's tails poking out of their mother's pouches.

Big Banana

Kangaroo near Coffs Harbour

We then caught our first night bus since South America (and it was probably the least comfortable) and travelled to Sydney. We arrived at 7am and got the first train, which turned out to be a bus replacement service, out to the Blue Mountains. We stayed in the Flying Fox hostel in Katoomba which had comfy beds, free Tim-Tams (Australian biscuits a bit like a Penguin) and enforced 'social time' between 6pm and 9pm where no electronic devices were allowed. Hostel guests actually talked to each other and played games- including Cluedo! The mountains themselves are spectacular and we did several walks up and down the rocky cliff faces, through the forest and to see huge waterfalls. After so long staying in beach towns it was good to be able to go hiking in the mountains again.

The 3 Sisters in the Blue Mountains

Finally we visited Sydney staying with another friend who had moved out to Australia in the last couple of years, Elizabeth and her husband Paul. We did the classic tourist activities of walking over the harbour bridge, visiting the opera house, walking along the coast to Bondi beach and getting the ferry to Manly. We also went to see an Aussie Rules football match. However, to the uninitiated it looks like there aren't any rules. 18 players per team play on a huge oval pitch in a cricket ground and kick, throw and bounce the ball towards the opponents goal and can be tackled just like in rugby. We soon picked up the basics and it was an exciting match with the Hawthorns narrowly beating the home team the Sydney Swans with a goal in the final minute. We were also fortunate in being in Sydney during the Vivid festival of lights. During a 3 week period many of the city's buildings are lit up at night in multi-colours with the highlight being a bizarre colourful display being projected onto the opera house.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney Opera House during Vivid

After 4 months in Australasia it was time to move on to Asia...