Palm Cove part 2

only 3 minutes left on internet, but wanted to say all's good here, heading to PNG in the morning,will try to catch up more then.  also have sent out my resume, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Palm Cove (Cairns)

We safely made it to Cairns, where so far the weather has been 30C and sunny, tomorrow's forcast is not looking as good, but whatever.

According to the news there was an earthquake in the Soloman Islands yesterday, so once again we have evaded a natural disaster (earthquake in Melbourne 2 days after my first trip there, tropical storm here in Cairns when I was in Alice Springs, earthquake in Chili & I'll be there in late May!) . . . just hope we're able to keep it that way!

Sara & her dad spent yesterday out at the Great Barrier Reef snorkling & got stung by blue bottle jellyfish, that'll teach them to leave me behind in the hotel room!  Apparently they didn't learn their lesson cause they're off today to the beach to swim between the flags (life guard protected area) and with in 2 nets, the further out one is to keep the sharks away and the closer one is to keep the jellyfish away.  Not sure how the jellyfish one works, but good luck to them!  Also on today's agenda is to find a few items to bring up to PNG which her cousin has asked for.

Last night they eat dinner at the Reef House Restaurant (in Palm Cove if you want to google it), which is rather posh, but well worth the price!

We all leave the hotel Thursday morning at 4am to get to the airport in time for our flight to Port Moresby, where we have a 6 hour lay over & aren't allowed to leave the airport before our second flight of the day to Raboul (or at least I think that's where we're going first, since Sara hasn't taught me to read, I just carry the paperwork, but don't actually understand any of what it says)

Sydney & Melbourne revisted

Dad & I are safely in Melbourne now, after spending 4 days in Sydney seeing the Blue Mountains, including the famous Three Sisters, taking a cruise around the harbour, a dinner with cousin Ern, wife Gill, her son Peter, his wife Michelle, their 3 children Ellen, Jess and .  Cousin Ern & Gill also took us on a tour around Sydney one day, we went to Coogee beach, Bondi beach, Double Bay, and a also to the cemetary where relatives are burried, but we couldn't find the grave stone cause we had the polt M42, but there was no map to tell us what the grid system was, so after 45 minutes of all of us seperating & searching we gave up, plus being Easter Monday the office was closed.  After that we went & had a picnic lunch near the cliff where people try to jump off & kill themselves (forget the name right now).  But here is a photo of cousin Ern & dad with the city of Sydney behind them.  You can see the Opera house & harbour bridge.  Cousin Ern lives in Lane Cove which is sorta located between dad & Ern's heads.   

Since being in Melbourne, I've gotten my hair cut at a hair salon school & all I'm going to say is I got a great deal!!  $20 (that's about 15 quid) for wash, cut, & blow dry!!!!!!!!  Can't find those prices in London can you?

We also went on a river cruise, went opal shopping (bought an opal too) and met up with my mate Tania & her boyfriend Cal for dinner.  Yesterday we took the train to Tan's shop which is called Rock Paper Scissor and then a taxi over to the family reunion dinner.  There we met cousin Vicky, her husband Chris, cousin Howard, his wife Hillary, their son Scott (a few months old), cousin Susan, her husband Dave, and their sons, first one I can't remember right now but he's about 14 and the yonger one who's name is Matt.

Today we're off to Phillip Island to see some penquins and tomorrow we're spending the day with cousin Vicky & Chris.

Saturday we're off to Cairns to see the barrier reef!

Hunter Valley & Coolmore

I'd love to write & say that the weather has been wonderful & I'm super tan, BUT the reality of it is that this week has been kinda uneventful, I got back last Saturday from my travels within Australia & first thing I had to do was laundry!

The day I did my laundry was very warm & sunny, so I just relaxed in the yard while waiting for my laundry to dry - every now and then you need a day of no touring, no driving, just doing nothing.  The next few days I thought I'd go for some fun in the sun at the beach days, but the weather man was not working with me and it ended up raining heavily & my plan of going to the beach was ruined, so we rented some movies from the video shop and just chilled out at home.  I also spent a lot of time uploading photos to facebook. 

On Wednesday I went into Sydney to have lunch with my mate Simone who works here, but who I met when she came to the UK over a year ago and we went on a road trip from Glasgow to Innverness and back over a long weekend.  I got to meet her boyfriend too when we went to a Greek restaurant, where the food was GREAT! 

That evening I went to Cafe Sydney and had a wonderful dinner with my London neighbours, who are in Sydney en route to the Solomon Islands.  The restaurant has a great view and best of all the rain/fog from the day had sorta lifted so we had a good view of the harbour bridge!

Yesterday I got to go up to Hunter Valley for some wine tasting.  I learned I'm not a fan of oaked wines, which means I'm never going to be a fan of red wines, so best for me to stick to fruity whites or dessert wines.  Of course I can drink others, but according to the wineries we visited my preference is unoaked, which I think is the opposite of my sister & dad, which explains why I never like their wine choices.

Then once the wineries closed we went to visit my mate's sister who works at Coolmore, a famous horse stud north of Hunter Valley is Jeffery Plains (I think) and we got to see some of the famous race horses, which was fun.

Today dad arrives so I'm going to meet him at our hotel later tonight.

Nagambie, Australia

Seeing cats was not what I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it - I've decided to call it a singing ballet, as I don't think it really fits into the musical category as there was no real plot (LOL)

The day after seeing Cats I had a bit of a lazy morning & didn't leave the hotel room till 11am when I had to check out.  After that I went looking for a place to grab some lunch wondered all around & finally found a cute little restaurant/bar serving pasta, salad & a drink for $11.50, which was a great deal so I took it!

After my lunch, I then headed over to the train station to catch the train to Beth & Mike's work in Parkdale (south of the city centre).  40 minutes later I was there meeting Beth & Mike.  To those of you who don't know Beth & Mike (which in case you're not sure would be all of you) let me explain how I know them . . . Beth was roommates at college with my dear friend Anne in Connecticut.  When Anne found out I was going to be in Aus she put the two of us in contact.  Beth explained she lived in Nagambie (1.5 hours north of Melbourne) and that she'd love for me to come up & visit for a few days, so I took her up on the offer.

We left their work & drove home to Nagambie, where I learned they live on a river, have a motor boat which they do lots of waterskiing on & also are FANTASTIC rowers.  When I say fantastic, I mean best in the world in their age group at last year's master's regetta in Vienna, Austria!!

We first went out for a boat ride to check out the local wildlife and then had a barbie on the river's edge.  After a wonderful night's sleep in a real bed (hotel beds are not real to me any more) and a quick breakfast I spent all of Friday reading & relaxing on the river edge, alternating between sun bathing on the floating dock and napping in the hammock, and reading with my feet dangling in the water.

At lunch time we took the boat over to Tahbilk vinyard, which turns out to be the oldest one in Victoria (Vic is one of the states of Australia) and which had just celebrated it's 150th anniversary last weekend.  We had a lovely seafood risotto for lunch & toured their cellar.  I bought 2 bottles as gifts to bring back to Umina with me.

That evening, Beth & Mike's mate Neville Howell came over for drinks & dinner.  He's an amazing man, who's just turned 80 and is probably more active than I will ever be at any age!!  We had another lovely barbie on the water's edge before heading back to the house as the paper wasps where attacking Beth & me.  We stayed up till nearly midnight chatting about his business & rowing & stud farms & philosophy & my travels & a heap load of other things.  It was a wonderful evening with lots of laughs and great company :-)

This morning, we again woke up & had breakfast before heading out to check out some property (another stud farm) Neville was considering buying before heading to the airport to fly back to Sydney, but not before having my first Aussie meat pie!

Now I'm back in Umina & really want to migrate to Aus & live in Nagambie on the river & learn to row . . .

Coober Pedy, Adelaide & The Great Ocean Road & Melbourne

So after a day long ride in a Greyhound Bus, we arrived in Coober Pedy (opal capital of the world) which is mostly underground!  We spent the night sleeping 6.5 metres where the temperature is 24-26C year round, even when the temperature outside is 54C (in the shade, aka FREAKIN HOT!)

Since we arrived at 8pm, we went straight to bed & then went exploring in the morning, before touring the opal mines & surrounding areas in the afternoon.  Sara found some opals in the ground around one of the mining holes & was allowed to keep it - how cool is that?  At 8.50pm our next Greyhound bus left Coober Pedy & headed over night for 12 hours to Adelaide.

The bus was rather cold & there weren't many people on it so we were excited to stretch out until the driver told us we could only take up 2 seats for safely reasons :-(

We arrived in Adelaide around 7.45am and walked to our hotel, where I got shoved in a holding area as the room would not be ready till noon.  Sara went out to get some breakfast & check out the city.  Apparently she was NOT impressed, she found it quite & boring.

In the afternoon after checking in & having a shower, Sara was off to Hahndorf, a German city about 25km away from Adelaide.  It was an interesting little town, but she was so knackered from the overnight bus, she slept the whole way out to the town & walked around in a sleepy daze (lol)

The following day Sara picked up the car from Avis & off they went Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road bound.  The first day was about 570km drive to Mount Gambier, with nothing much to speak of along the way, but stopping every 2 hours for toilet/stretch your leg breaks.  The one thing we did learn in Mt Gambier is that when we were arriving in Melbourne, the Grand Prix along with a flower show and food & wine show were all going to be going on, so we were going to have a hard time finding a place to stay which wasn't super expensive . . . luckily thanks to Tania (girl I'd met in Africa) who lives in Melbourne, she gave us a few ideas & we were able to find a place that was reasonable, NOT the InterContinetnal for AUS$650/night!!!

Spent the night in Mt Gambier and left the next morning stopping at all the "sights" on the Great Ocean Road and staying the night at the 12 Apostles Motor Inn & Conference Centre.

The next morning we drove from 12 Apostles to Geelong, again stopping for photos at all the important places.

After a night in Geelong we drove up to Ballarat to see Soveign Hill & try our hand at panning for gold, which we soon learned was a lot harder than opal mining & we ended up with nothing to show :-( and then drove into Melbourne, but missed our drop off time of 6pm by about an hour due to city traffic.

Next morning we woke up, returned the car & saw that Cats was playing so we stopped in for a quick avaiability check, and walked out with 7th row centre stage tickets (SCORE!!!!!) But then realised we needed to do a bit of shopping as none of us had anything aside from shorts, trainers & flip flops, so the rest of the day was spent shopping at the DFO (direct factory outlet) where we all found something to wear for this evening's performance!!

Alice Springs & surrounding area

Well we've been busy here in Australia, as you can tell from Sara's last update.  Since then, I've been packed, unpacked, repacked & HAD tons of clean laundry - gotta love fresh smelling clothes!

We left for the airport at 6am a week ago (Thursday) and got the 9.30am flight (aka the 10.50am due to high winds & heavy rains) and after a bumpy take off the rest of the flight was pretty smooth, apparently up in economy they showed the movie The Blind Side, down in the belly of the plane they showed nothing, what's up with that?

We arrived safely into Alice Springs, got a taxi to the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge and planned our next 4 days.  That night Sara fed the local rock wallabees which come down the gap around dinner time to get fed pellets sold by the hotel.  The next day was the West MacDonnell range tour - so we saw, Simpson's Gap, Ormiston Gorge, Standley Chasm, Glen Helen Gap, and a few others I've forgotten now.

Following day was the beginning of the bigger adventure, a 2 day tour of Ayer's Rock, The Olgas & Kings Canyon. 2.5 hours after leaving Alice, we arrived at Erldunda (which is just a road house) and switched into a smaller van for the day in Kings Canyon, the weather was looking cloudy but not horrible . . . until another 3 hour drive got us to Kings Canyon Station (cattle station - only petrol shop for miles!) and they announced the creek might be flooded, but we decided to have a look . . . to make a long story short, we made it into Kings Canyon creek to find it flooded 1metre above the road & by the time we turned around Katherine's creek was flooded 1 metre as well, so we were trapped between the two creeks for 1.5 hours, till Katherine's creek went down a bit & we just gunned it & made it across.  The plan for the day totally impossible, we headed back to Erldunda for the night.  Next day we headed to The Olgas & Ayer's Rock, which we saw in the pouring rain, which is very unusual AND we got to see awesomely amazing waterfalls coming off the rock, which few people get to see in person :-)  Due to the tour failing the day before we decided to stay an extra night in Erldunda & go to Kings Canyon the next day . . . long story short, it had rained too much & now the creek was 2 metres high, so we came back to Alice Springs & saw some things in town.  Spent the night at Heavitree Gap Lodge & next morning got the Greyhound bus to Coober Pedy.

Arrived in Coober Pedy, found our underground motel & slept 6.5 metres below the ground - WEIRD!  Then took a tour of the booming metropolis of Coober Pedy, getting to do a bit of opal mining ourselves, well not really, we got to look for opals in already dug up piles of rock, & I found a few pieces :-)

Last night we got on the overnight bus from Coober Pedy down to Adeliade, where we arrived this morning at 7.30am & have been walking around till now.

New South Wales & Australian Capital Territory

I've now been here in Aus for about 6 days, feels like longer with all the things I've already seen & done!

The flight was rather uneventful, Qantas staff are amazingly friendly & helpful and the food was par for airline food.  I arrived at around 14.30, flew through immigration, baggage claim & customs, with just a brief pause for shoe cleaning, since I'd been in Africa & there was still some dirt on the bottom of my trainers.

Arrived in Umina (Central Coast) around dinner time and after that I basically just went straight to bed.  Woke up the next morning and we went to the Australian Reptile Park, were we got to see spider milking, which is just to collect the venum from the spiders & they save it to send to the labs for it to be made into anti-venum.  Apparently the only place in Aus which does it - pretty cool!  We saw lots of other Australian wildlife as well, a few photos from the reptile park just down the road from Kaylie's house, click here.

Following day, we got manicures & pedicures, which were much needed after 41 days in Africa!!  Now my fingers & toes look fabulous - in case you were wondering ;-) We also did a bit of shopping for things like an Aussie sim card, Havaianas (flip flop) and planning for the next few weeks until dad arrives on April 2nd.

On Sunday, Kaylie & I drove to Canberra in Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to see a few things there, on our first day we visited the Australian War Memorial, which was super cool.  It's a nice large building, with an eternal flame & tomb of the unknown soldier, along with a museum filled with planes, boats, photos, models, and stories of all the things the military has been involved in since they first became a country.  We also stopped in at the tourist information centre and found out the Monday was Canberra Day so everything would be closed for the public holiday, so we decided to head out to Kosciuszko National Park and Eucumbine Dam for the day, which are both actally in New South Wales (NSW) just on the other side of ACT which is soooooooo small.

All in all we drove about 520km.  We left Canberra and headed straight to Thredbo which if you look on a map means we passed Cooma (where we grabbed some lunch)and Jindabyne (which I call Junebug, cause it's easier to remember & spell!) You can check out our photos from this trip by clicking HERE We took the chair lift to the top of the highest mountain in all of Australia where it was just 8C, but luckily no snow, since I was just in jeans, trainers and a tshirt.  On our way back from visiting Mt Kosciuszko, we decided to take a small side detour so we could also visited one of the many SnowyHydro Dams which were built many years ago.  The dam we visted was only 52% full, cause as most of you know, Australia has been in a drought for quite a few years now.  It probably would have been more impressive to see it at full capacity, cause right now it just looks like a lake at the bottom of a hill (lol).  We ended up back in Canberra around 6pm and were looking for a place for dinner, we thought the mall would be a good place to find something, but as it was a city holiday, everything had closed at 5pm, except for the cinema, so we decided to go and see Valentine Day and eat our dinner of popcorn and pepsi (LOL).  The movie was amazingly not nearly as bad as I was thinking it might be.  Has anyone seen it?  Did I also mention I saw The Blind Side, which I really really liked & since Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for it, I'm glad I've seen it, since I'd not seen any of the other movies which were nominated or won awards, oh wait, that's a lie, I saw Julia & Julia on my plane ride, but had to watch it like 3 times to see it all, cause I kept falling asleep during it.

On Tuesday, we went to visit the Royal Australian Mint & saw how their coins are made from a really cool viewing deck which is above the production floor and after that we went back to the visitor's information centre to find out if there was anything to do in NSW on the way back to Umina (which is north of Sydney by about 50km).  We learned that Fitzroy Falls was just off the highway & apparnetly just as popular a tourist stop as Ularu (Ayer's Rock) so we made that quick stop by there to check it out and it was pretty darn cool!

Today is Wednesday and it's a "preparation" day.  Tomorrow we fly from Sydney to Alice Springs for 4 days, then take the Greyhound bus down to Coober Pedy (Mrs Toste this stop is JUST for you!) where the opals are minded and then bus it again to Adelaide, where we'll spend a day before picking up a hired car and driving down to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road.  I think that will take us 4 days and then we've got 2 nights in Melbourne, one of the days of which we'll go to Ballarat for some gold mining (wish me luck).  Then we'll go and visit my friend Anne Winterson's mate Beth for 2 nights, she lives 1.5 hours north of Melbourne in a rural area, which I think is on a river, before flying back to Sydney for a few days before dad arrives & I start part two of my Australian adventures with him!

Umina Beach, Australia

safely here, updates to come at a later time :-) and hopefully photos too!!!!!!!