All Aboard HMS PrickleFingers.........

Hi all. We arrived in Sydney on Thurs 28th Oct so we've now been in Oz for just over 3 weeks. We stayed with Nina's uni friend, Christel, for the first couple of nights. It was great to see Christel, it had been over 5 years since Nina last saw her. Christel lives in Coogee which is south of the city centre and a couple of bays down from Bondi. It's got a great beach on which we ate our lunch when we arrived.

We did the Sydney harbour bridge climb, even though it was damn expensive (turns out everything in Oz is now!) we had to do it, couldn't come to Sydney for a second time and still not get up there!

After a couple of days with Christel we picked up our home for the next month, the campervan. For one reason and another we ended up with something a little different to what we had planned. We've christened it 'HMS PrickleFingers' because its roughly the size of an aircraft carrier and has a slightly worse turning circle.  It's a six birth with leather seats, flatscreen tv, dvd player, stereo with internal and external speakers, hob, oven, grill, microwave, air con, electric awning, toilet, shower and fridge! They must have needed it back in Cairns or something because we didn't pay the full price, just what we were going to pay for a smaller one.

Christel and Adam - Coogee Beach

Our first night camping was actually still in Sydney because we went for dinner at the house of a friend i used to work with, James, from London who now lives in Oz. James and his wife Isabelle served up a cracking meal on their balcony which has a view over the whole of Syndey, the lucky buggers.

From Sydney we travelled north, ending up in the Lower Hunter Valley after a couple of days. There's only one real reason to come to visit the Hunter Valley and thats for the wine. The local speciality is semillon and they do good shiraz also. We went on a wine tasting tour, with drinking starting at about 10am! To be fair they make a big point of drinking water between each glass and it was by no means a p!ss-up. It was a good day out, we bought a couple of bottles and also saw our first wild Kangaroos.

Before we left Hunter we popped into the McGuigan wines cellar door and picked up a couple of bottles, had to eh, no discount tho, surely i'm family or something?!

From Hunter we left for Byron Bay with a lunch stop planned in Port McQuarrie. It was a long lunch......3 days long actually. We stumbled across a campsite on the waters edge whilst walking off lunch and decided it looked like a good place to stay, so we booked in and took the camper round.  There was a boardwalk that went along the coast around the headland and we used this for the first runs of the trip, which hurt a bit...

We left Port McQuarrie and drove 400km upto Byron Bay which immediately felt like the coastal australia we were hoping for. Byron Bay is awesome, it has a great beach, good food and bars, nice people and a general relaxed atmosphere. We took a surfing lesson on the second day.... i stood up first go...ahem.....Nina did great too. The Aussie lad instructor was a good guy, properly living the surfing life, the day before our lesson Kelly Slater won his 10th world title so all morning all he kept shouting was 'Kelly Slater Day!!! Wooooooo'. The 3 times surfing world champ Andy Irons had died a few days earlier also, on his own in a hotel in Texas of all places, so the surfer dudes were all talking about it.

Byron also has a great coastal walk up to a lighthouse (the biggest on the east coast apparently) and includes a section which is the most easterly point in Australia. On the walk we saw migrating humpback whales and tons of dolphins which was a bit special.   

From Byron we moved up to Brisbane and in the process crossed from New South Wales into Queensland, we didn't stay long, just enough to see the city for a day. Walking back to the camper in the campsite on the second night, Nina felt something on her foot and looked down to find a tiny 'snake'! She kicked it off and it wriggled away, it was only about 10 inches long and we weren't able to find out exactly what it was, but it defo looked like a small snake!

North of Brisbane is the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise, we didn't visit either of these because, although popular, from what we'd read they are pretty average. We did stop briefly in Coolangatta though so i could take a snap of Kirra and say i'd been there (Neil/Rich - it was no good, small and onshore).

The next overnight stop after Brisbane was Noosa and before we got there we stopped at Australia Zoo (the late Steve 'Crikey' Irwin's zoo).

We went straight to the 'Crocosium' (yep, thats what its called!) to see the live show, past all the free roaming lizards and other creatures on the paths. The zoo was good, perhaps not quite as good as we were expecting but still worth the visit. Rather than the crocodiles it was the birds which were perhaps the most impressive, they had some huge eagles as well as a lot of other fairly large tropical birds. 

Our next stop was Noosa. Noosa is a bit different to the other places we'd been to on east coast as it's a bit flashy and upmarket. It has lots of waterways with houses backing onto them with boats moored and i guess you could say it's a bit like the Miami of the east coast. It's a got a great main beach, and another spectacular coastal path around the headland where we saw planty of dolphins, turtles and a manta ray.

We did a day trip to Fraser Island from Noosa in a 4x4, it's an island just off the south Queensland coast and is entirely made of sand. The weather wasn't great but it was still a good day out. We swam in Lake McKenzie which is apparently the purest water you'll find pretty much anywhere. Driving along the waters edge on the beach at 100Kms was pretty good also. We came across a turtle on the beach and so stopped to check it out, turns out it had got itself tangled in some fishing line and one of it's front flippers was completely missing with just a stump of bone where it used to be, poor little fella. The driver did what he could, cutting off the line and calling it in to the national parks people who came out to get it.

After Noosa we headed to a much smaller place called Town of 1770, named coz that's the year us British landed there.  We managed to get a spot in a campsite right on the beach, which was great as in the evenings loads of people set up fires on the beach.  There was a big backpacker community here and so we tried to blend in, as much as we could being at least half their age again!

We did the scooteroo tour which was a good laugh, the bikes are choppers with big monkey bar handlebars and you get given the leather jacket, helmets and tats if you want them.  Covered about 65k on them touring around checking out the wild kangas & wallabies.  Bikes get up to about 80Kms if pushed, with head between handlebars!  Didn't like the whippersnappers passing me - turned into a right kid. 

That night we decided to go to the surf club party, which was interesting to say the least!  Lots and lots of very young people, all competing in limbo competitions and other, lets just say 'different' party games consisting of little clothing... in order to win a whistsunday trip - all just part of being young, but Nina & I did not partake in such frivolity!!  At least we managed to hang out with some of the guys from the scooteroo tour and we had a good chat and few beers into the night.


We hit the road then to Airlie Beach which was a good solid driving session covering a bit over 700K, and arrived to be greeted with rain and pretty much rain ever since we have been here..  Now heading off to the Whitsunday islands to sail around them for the next 2 days, weather looking a bit better but hoping for a bit more sun for the scuba diving so the water is nice and clear......

Will update on this on our return...