Endurance flights back to the UK.

The flight left on time and arrived in Singapore early. The service was, as always, splendid and the flight good.

We booked a hotel at Changi airport and got a cab into town which was another mistake, should have got the train – we never learn!! The hotel was excellent and in little India. After a good kip we had a walk into town which has changed so much since we were last here via a visit to Raffles Hotel. We ended up in China town which we like and did a bit of shopping. As usual I came out with more than Mrs D. We ate in Chinatown with the marathon flight to Manchester looming.

The flight to Manchester from Singapore used to be direct but now it stops off at Frankfurt on the way making what was a fourteen hour flight nearer sixteen!! However it all went OK and we even managed to get some sleep on the way. We were picked up in Manchester by a good friend who offered to collect us after our epic journey, big thanks to Jack!! In no time we were looking out of the back window in Middleton, which is always nice to comeback to. It was a quick brew and off to bed for a few hours before the return to Blighty adventure begins!

Pix are at Raffles Hotel and a rickshaw in Chinatown.

The Harbour Bridge & Opera House, it has to be Sydney.

We drove into Sydney and onto the harbour bridge mid afternoon. The first time you see the bridge and then the opera house is a real wow moment. You really are there….it’s like Ayers Rock, to see it on TV is one thing and to actually be there is another..

We were booked into the YHA at the Rocks which is pretty much down town central. It took us ages to find the place and another accidental trip across the harbour bridge and back before we actually did find it!! When we got there, there was no where to park the car as it was so central. We chose to take the car to the airport and drop it off a couple of days early. Easier said than done. We got on the motorway but we had to take it back full of fuel and couldn’t find a gas station to fill the b**t**d!! Sydney Kingsford airport must be the only airport in the world that doesn’t have a gas station!!! We drove out of the airport and eventually found one. Fuelled up and on our way to the airport again we hoped for an easy drop off and it was. So now to getting back into town, we took to the train!! Not just any old train but a double decker one, it was splendid. Another lesson can be learned here by the UK as the train drops you at the main ferry terminal out of Sydney harbour and also the main bus station, excellent. We had a short stroll back to our digs.

It was then off to the opera house, what a building!! Looks even better by night as does the bridge. We were doing the harbour bridge climb the following day at 10am so we had to resist a drink as you have to undertake a breathalyser test before you are allowed out onto the bridge!!

The day for the climb and we were only yards from the check in office which was on the same road as our digs. It was all hyped up with safety stuff, breath tests and fancy gear so we all looked good on the photos!! It was in total 3.5hrs of an experience but could have been done in a lot less. Having said that we had a superb time and our guide was very informative about the bridge and its history. The views at the top were excellent, in fact the views all the way round were superb!! After the obligatory photo on the top we came back down. As you are not allowed to carry anything for fear of it dropping on the cars below they take thee photos. You are also fastened to the bridge at all times by some fancy climbing system.

The afternoon was more sight seeing, Mrs D meeting an old uni friend who now lives in the burbs of Sydney and of course a celebratory pint. In fact we had a celebratory dinner out on a roof top beer garden overlooking the harbour area, it was excellent and it was also our last night on what had been an amazing trip.

Last morning we had a leisurely local stroll and then it was up to the airport by shuttle. Now the driver here was awful, whizzing about, cutting in, making loads of pick ups, we should have got the train. We eventually got to the airport and the usual melee of check in and security ensued.

Pix are of the harbour bridge, opera house, the business district and some of foks doing the bridge climb.

Port Macquarie – Koala Town.

It was a steady run down to Port Macquarie, the last stop before Sydney. The digs were on a main road junction and to be honest a bit of a disappointment. The room was tiny, the owner was so laid back he didn’t care what went on. Not many rules and it was full of kids. No offence to the kids but there was no one in charge. Needless to say we checked out after one night and found a lovely caravan park down by the river for the second night.

When we got up the following day in our tiny, grubby, noisy room we were heading off to a Koala reserve to see some more of the little guys. They really are cute and make everyone go awwwww!! It was a super morning, loads of koalas, more ‘roos and wallabies. Big lizards all over the place and just generally a good place. After the obligatory shot with the Koalas we left and headed into town to check in to our caravan.

Also in town was a Koala hospital, more awwwwws I hear. Well you have to go don’t you. It was quite remarkable really, totally run by volunteers. The koalas are brought in after they have been hit by cars, fallen from trees or been attacked by dogs. Sadly they have no road sense and if they end up in someones garden they risk dog attacks.

There were some sad cases in there and a few who would be put back into the wild after recuperation. There was a couple of years ago quite a famous one there who was rescued from the bush fires around Sydney and after a couple off years of the best of care, many, many operations the little guy gave up and they lost him. There is a memorial poster to him with all his problems, operations and issues detailed and from reading it, the amount of care and attention these volunteer guys gave to him comes across loud and clear, very sad….I’ll just put my hanky down and continue….

The next day we were heading for Sydney, we did not know what to expect just another city we thought.

Pix are a couple of koala shots and our splendid little caravan.

Emu Park, Hervey Bay, Tweed Heads & Sawtell.

Yet another early start as many more miles to eat up en route to Emu Park. Now Emu Park is the coastal closest to Rockhampton. Rockhampton claims to be the beef capital of Oz, with rodeos, ranches and of course many “steers” or cows to you and me.

The run down went well, with a splendid lunch stop where we were invaded by lorikeets who shared our lunch. Well that was until a gang of cockatoos flew over (who are obviously the bosses) as then lorikeets cleared off sharpish as soon as they heard them!! It didn’t last and they were soon back after the cockatoos had flown away.

We arrived at Emu Park late afternoon and we had a super room. Obviously not been built long but very nice and spacious. We had a walk into town and bought a beer like you do and found a splendid ship shaped wind chime to the memory of yes him again – Captain James Cook. It was quite a spectacle and also very noisy.

We wandered back to the digs and on the way back we had our first sightings of the flying foxes (huge fruit bats) which come out at dusk to feed. Boy are they big and is there plenty of them. There is a small note in the lonely planet about these guys in Sydney in their thousands so we will report later.

After a good nights kip we were up and off again, we are now nearing the end and these few days are really just moving on and passing through towards Sydney, all one nighters.

Hervey Bay was a big sprawling place and the coast not too spectacular. We were staying at a YHA place and it wasn’t very good. Thankfully it was only one night. The room was small and no where to put anything. After a wander round the harbour we went back and had a drink before getting off to bed. Not much to say about Hervey Bay. The only point of note was that the following day was Anzac Day – remembrance for Galipoli and all would be closed the following day so we had to stock up.

Travelling the next day to Tweed Heads was quite a pleasure, no-one on the roads due to public holiday. That was until we made the mistake of trying to follow the non motorway road down the gold coast – big mistake as it was chocker with folks and surfing types. We managed to get back onto the motorway and eventually to Tweed Heads.

Lovely motel with a bracingly cool swimming pool. Set at the mouth of a river at the bottom of the gold coast, quite pretty. Another evening stroll around the harbour area took us up to sleeping time.

Reasonably short drive today to Sawtell. Sawtell is the less popular neighbour to Coffs Harbour which is very posy, busy and upmarket. Having said that the little town of Sawtell was lovely and the beach was Mrs Ds fave of all we’ve seen so far!! Couldn’t get her off it. Apart from a few surfers it was so quiet, long, sandy and peaceful. In fact it was so good we had to get up early the following day so we could go there again before we set off!! Digs were OK, another nice motel with another bracing pool. Another quiet evening in our digs with an Indian takeaway for a change, not up to Bradford standards but not bad. The next stop was a two nighter in Port Macquarie which we are told is a Koala haven so we will no doubt be getting another koala fix.

Pix are - Mrs D feeding the lorikeets, Captain Cook memorial at Emu Park, digs at Emu Park, us at the memorial and Mrs D's fave beach at Sawtell.

Serious catching up to be done here…..

Before we travel further in OZ, for those of you who have not lost interest and given up on us…, we are now into our fifth week here on Corfu this summer. We are with our second round of guests!! We’ve had a month in Blighty in between so I will do my best to catch up and keep it going.

Cannonvale Bush Village and the Crocs….

Just before we head into todays adventures I forgot to mention a guy from Blackpool called Andy who we met on the reef boat. He was interesting to talk to. He had taken 5 months off work from British Gas and they were keeping his job open for him. He set off out with a friend but his friend went back home to the UK after a month away as he was missing everyone. Andy carried on with his trip alone and was having a whale of a time. He had done a similar route to us but also managed to get up to Darwin. Anyway, he sat and ate with us on the boat and was pretty good company.

Back to today and our 400plus mile drive to Cannonvale. We were off at 0730hrs and after the lovely drive down the Captain Cook highway we managed to lose quite a bit of time stuck in Cairns Monday morning rush hour traffic. We got through eventually and were on our way.

The one thing we didn’t realise was just how much sugar cane is grown out here. There is hundreds of miles of the stuff as far as you can see. There is also a network of narrow gauge railway they use for hauling the cane up and down.

The journey went reasonably well, just a long drive really. The area we were heading towards was the Whitsunday Islands. These are a allegedly a group of spectacular islands off the coast from Airlie Beach, a resort built on the gateway to the Whitsundays.

On arrival at Cannonvale Bush Village we were a little disappointed as the unit itself was a little run down. It was two units which shared the kitchen and bathroom facilities. This was OK as all but one night we had the place to ourselves. We got our gear in and set off to walk into Airlie Beach.

The first thing we hit was a massive swarm of dragonflies whizzing around. Then we got into Airlie Beach. Lovely marina, nice beaches and a lagoon area where you could actually swim (no jellyfish stingers in it!!) Quite bizarre really as Queensland from what we have seen has some of the best beaches but you can’t go in the sea because of jellyfish and little ones they are too!

Anyhow, Airlie Beach didn’t impress us much the weather was cloudy so even if we wanted to see the Whitsundays it wouldn’t have been a sunny experience. We wandered back to our cabin and got some rest.

The following day we were up early as breakfast was free here so we lined up with the spotty kids for our flakes and toast. Also there was the added bonus of the rainbow lorikeets joining us for breakfast. They really are very bright and cute. They sat on the rails at the end waiting for some toast. One of the things we wanted to do here was a crocodile safari on the local river to see some ‘saltys’ or saltwater crocodiles. The trip was arranged for the following day provided they got a few more takers.

The bad news was, there wasn’t enough takers so we had to decide if we wanted to stay here another night as it was definitely going out the following day! So we opted for another day as we really wanted to do the croc safari. This left us another day to kill whiles we waited. We filled the day locally with a trip to a local waterfall and then onto a local beach, called Conway coincidentally. A super long beach with no one on it as usual. However on closer inspection the beach was covered in the most brightly coloured crabs we had ever seen. They were electric blue, not too small but could they burrow into the sand when they wanted to disappear, they were splendid. The day was rounded off with a trip to the local hair-dresser for Mrs D.

The next day we breakfasted with the lorikeets early as we were on a coach at 0845 to the croc safari. We didn’t know what to expect but it actually turned out to be a super day. The owner was called Steve and what he didn’t know about crocs, mangrove, bushlife and wetlands wasn’t worth knowing.

In the morning we did the croc safari and were lucky enough to see new hatchlings amongst the bigger mothers. We also saw one of the larger males locally known as fat guts (use your imagination!!) All the females we saw were called really naf un-croc names like Doris, Doreen and Dorothy, still mean and nasty looking all the same. Anyhow, the morning went very well with several crocs, amusing commentary and interesting information on both crocs and mangroves.

A BBQ lunch followed prepared by Steves assistant who looked like a one eyed Willie Nelson (more imagination here!!) After a super lunch we all boarded Steves tractor train (a tractor hooked up to about six carriages) for a tour of the wetlands. More amusing tales and interesting info about life in the wetlands. We were shown how to make soap from leaves, a tiny tree frog, a snake or two, many birds and more ‘roos and wallabies. At one point Steve was shaking a tree to get a snake down to show to us but thankfully (I think) it got away as it was quite large!! It all went far too quickly and we were back at the digs sooner than we wanted to be.

We decided to have an evening out as it was our last here so we got the camp bus into Airlie beach. The bus was driven by a guy from Cumbria, another not longing to go back to Blighty!!. We had a wee walk then went into a bar where there was live music later so we had a drink and hung about. When he actually came on he was very good. He did mostly covers but one or two of his own. He sang, played acoustic guitar and two digeredoos all at once, got to be a feat on its own!! We stayed ‘til late and got the late camp bus back, a good night was had by all and we even got a couple of his CDs.

Pix are - a mangrove (croc home), mother croc, another croc, croc hatchlings, Cannonvale Bush Village where we stayed & Airlie Beach.

Port Douglas, the rainforest and the mighty Barrier Reef.

The flight to Cairns got away early and got into Cairns even earlier due to favourable tailwinds. The second of our two flights with Qantas and both were excellent flights, service and super flight crew.

Now the heat in Red Central was very hot but it was a dry heat. We got off the plane in Cairns and we could feel it was equally as hot (at 1800hrs) but we were now in the tropics and it was heavy with moisture and very humid. We picked up our car and headed north to Port Douglas where we had three nights at Dougies backpacker resort.

The drive up was OK albeit dark but not a long journey. We got to Dougies around 1930hrs and checked in with a guy called Rowan who was very friendly, helpful and got our first beer in, OK in my book!! Dougies was set amongst the trees of the rainforest, quite a nice setting. Our room was OK and the facilities good. We also appear to have left the nuisance flies in Red Central which is great!!

So after a couple of beers we sorted a few things and crashed out. The following day we were up early for breakfast but we had no supplies as we had just flown in so we went to the ‘Rainforest Habitat’ a few kms up the road and had breakfast with the birds. Now this habitat place was home to all Ozs’ birdlife, some crocodiles, ‘roos, wallabies and of course koalas. It was done very well with most of the birds free to come and go but as was pointed out not many go as they get well looked after in their ‘habitat like’ surroundings.

Breakfast was as much as you could eat with flagons of tea. On the bird front there were black parrots, rainbow lorikeets, full size cockatoos to name but a few whizzing past your ears whilst you were trying to eat!!

It was a super place and all with the blessing of David Attenborough who had visited a few weeks earlier whilst out in Oz filming his next wildlife spectacle for the beeb. The birds were wonderful colours and sounds, the wallabies and roos just ignored you then fed from your hands and the crocs were just cool hanging out in the water. The stars of the show were of course the koalas who got plenty of attention. We spent about 5 hours there before leaving to do a walk.

Just up the coast from Port Douglas is Daintree, the Daintree rainforest and the Mossman Gorge. All this is in the Cape Tribulation area of Northern Queensland. The walk at the gorge was very spectacular but sadly cut short due to works on the tracks so we were a little disappointed. However we had a bit of a stroll and then went to get some supplies in before heading back to Dougies to book our reef trip.

With reef trip booked, all clean and showered after a few beers and some grub we retired. The following day we were picked up at 0845 and taken to the port for our boat. It was a reasonable sized boat with facilities for both scuba and snorkelling. As we pulled out of the harbour we were told the seas were moderate due to some winds of around15 to 20 knots (please explain later Jack!!) Anyway there was talk of seasickness tabs and Mrs D who loves being on the high seas instantly turned green. She hurriedly downed the obligatory tabs which had no effect whatsoever and went on to have the most awful of days and did not get to see the reef at all – the seas I have to say were pretty choppy and there were others not too good either enough said.

Feeling riddled with guilt, I had the most wonderful of times in the sea snorkelling over the reef, which was sometimes 20 feet below me then next 2 feet away. It was superb and the fish and coral quite spectacular. It rated well high up with the natural history experiences. One which if I ever get the chance will do again. The crew on the boat were excellent and couldn’t do enough for us (aside from getting a chopper to get Mrs D back to terra firma!!) The food was good all the kit was excellent and the knowledge these guys had of the reef was second to none. At one point I went out on a reef snorkelling tour with a few others and one of the crew, very informative.
Well I think that’s enough on the reef, I could go on but I don’t want you all falling asleep just yet.

The evening was a quiet one and the next day we were heading south on what was our longest drive of the whole trip. 430 miles to Cannonvale Bush Village resort in the Whitsunday Islands area. We enjoyed our stay at Dougies which had a lazy easy feel to it and was in a lovely setting. Port Douglas, Daintree and Cape Tribulation were spectacular and possibly worthy of another visit if only to breakfast with the birds again.