Another long and hot drive got us to Alice Springs, taking in some huge salt lakes on the way and seeing wild goats and horses on the road. We spent a few days exploring the town including doing a tour of the Royal Flying Doctors. There wasn’t a lot more to see apart from the camel stations and over priced wild life parks. Next stop was heading the 5 hours to Yulura, the nearest resort to Uluru (Ayers Rock).

Unfortunately we didn’t make the destination because of a blow out on a rear tyre resulting in a spin off the road and rolling our van. We were very lucky to walk away with only minor cuts and bruises, but the same couldn’t be said for Bill the camper van. He was damaged beyond repair and due to the remote location was unable to be recovered. Passers by were good enough to stop and help, followed about 40mins later the police who took us off to a medical centre to get checked out. The medical centre was an experience in its self as was in an Aboriginal community not assessable to the general public.

Two passers by that stopped were an Aussie couple Matt and Lauren, they were heading for South Australia and very kindly offered us a ‘lift’. We packed all we could fit into our bags and left Bill at the side of the road. A lift sounds like just down the road but was actually a 2 day drive to Port Augusta.  From there we caught a coach back to Adelaide where Claire’s family came to pick us up and generally took care of us. We were very grateful of having such good (new) friends and family.

Down but not out we started the hunt for a new vehicle to continue our trip. We bought a Holden Commodore Wagon and fitted it out with a mattress in the back and re-bought all our cooking and eating equipment (along with lots of donated equipment from family). The next plan was… head back to Uluru!

Before we left we got to experience Australia Day, very patriotic with flags and temporary tattoos a plenty. Of course there was also much BBQ’ing, drinking and back yard cricket.

We left the coast and headed the 145km inland to the capital of Australia; Canberra. First stop was to have a wander around the city centre to get a feel of the place. I had read before coming out here that Canberra “had no soul”, but we were both pleasantly surprised. Very clean and modern feel to the main shopping area and a real business buzz to the place with everyone suited and booted. Probably helped that it was such a nice sunny day.

Canberra boasts a good selection of tourist attractions so we planned our week stay around the list. First off was the new Parliament House which stands grandly on a hill above Canberra and architecturally looks a lot newer than its 1988 opening. Unfortunately we missed the last tour of the day but had a good look around by our selves and even spotted the PM, Julia Gillard.

Left over from the move to the new Parliament building is the old Parliament building, which is now a museum about Australian politics.  Its worth a good explore as seemingly everything has been left as it once was with all the offices set up and chambers accessible to walk around. Its quite a rabbit warren with lots of history left from the 1980′s but also some furniture and fixings going back to 1930′s /1940′s. There are also volumes of hardback bound transcripts of parliamentary discussions going back years, all free and accessible to look though.

Next stop was the National Museum of Australia, another great piece of architecture. We spent the whole day viewing the many galleries telling the story of early Australians and about the first white settlers. There were many artefacts from the first explorations to find and settle in Australia from the 1700′s as well as Aboriginal pieces and art work.

My highlight of Canberra had to be the Australian War Memorial. On first arrival I was surprised to find it was a museum as well as the the memorial, then further amazed to find just how big a museum it was taking us two days to see everything! There are countless original air planes on display along side helicopters, submarines, tanks, the bridge of a navy destroyer, jeeps, armoured cars, weapons… (the list would go on and on). Many of these displays were interactive with films and sound/lighting effects being played with the original piece as the centre stage. We had a free tour guide take us round for the first hour and a half and he told a lot of stories and the history from mainly WW1 and WW2 which were really interesting, but the museum covered all Australian campaigns right up to modern day with models and displays to give a real life feel. One of the best museums I have ever been too.

So my conclusion for Canberra: Different from the usual sea, sand and surf or the rural outback town, a visit is well worth it if you get chance.

October has been spent travelling down the NSW coast. We have stopped at many picturesque places and done a lot of whale watching. We have been lucky to find some really good places to get an close up view of whales and dolphins, best place would have to be Ballina where there is a sea wall you can get right to end of about 1km into the sea. We got probably 20m away from passing whales and ‘pods’ of about 10-15 dolphins.

October has also been very wet! The wettest in 40 years apparently. We were stranded in a small place called Minnie Waters for 3 days when flooding closed the local roads. We stayed in the van for 3 days solid only getting a break when a friendly Aussie family invited us over for breakfast in their caravan, we didn’t need asking twice!

We have also visited: Corindi Beach, Port Macquire (where we saw our first wild Koala!), Nelsons Bay, Newcastle, Umina Beach, Wollongong, Kiama and Kioloa Beach. Those who know their geography will notice we missed out Sydney on the way south. We are flying out from Sydney at the end of April so we are saving it for the end of our trip.

Our final leg of Queensland was the Gold Coast down to Tweed Heads and then inland to Tamborine and Mount Tamborine.

Surfers Paradise was a big city with lots of tourist shops, but the main reason we were there was the theme parks! Yet again we were lucky enough to have guides in the form of Nathan and Meeka, who have season passes and go all the time. We did Movie World, Sea World and Wet’n'Wild. All great fun, I did all the big rides but Claire was a bit more apprehensive, but she did a few of the big ones. We also had an excellent Japanese teriyaki meal in Surfers, my first taste of kangaroo! It was really nice. We took a drive down the coast to Tweed Heads and Danger Point, watched some good surfing from excellent vantage points.

We spent a few wet days in Tamborine, nice quiet place with a mix of rainforest and bush. I went for a walk following a creek and came across my first wild snake, after researching it was a Carpet Python. Was a cool creek with swimming holes, just a shame it was raining and cold all the time we were there.

In between our stay at Tamborine we headed north again to Noosa for Leigh and Kara’s engagement party, was a fun weekend and good to see everyone again. May have had a slight hangover the next morning after going to bed about 4ish…

A trip we had to get in before Brisbane was Australia Zoo. We spent the entire day there as so much to do and great interaction with the animals. Of course there were crocs, roos and koalas but also so many other Aussie species some I had never heard of. Highlights of the day had to be hand feeding elephants, watching the koalas for ages (they are so cool) and hand feeding the many kangaroos. We also had our photo holding a koala and I think that was the beginning of Claire’s new love affair.

On the hospital grounds is also the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, for just $2 you can have a “sneak peak” into the hospital. We had seen on-line that a proportion of the staff were volunteers so we asked about the process while there and got a contact details. We emailed our application the next day and started working the following day!

We did 7 days straight at the hospital working mostly in the koala recovery wards. Our main role to start with was cleaning out the enclosures and replacing the leaves, this was done while the koala was still in so amazing to be so close, never knew cleaning could be so fun! By the end of the week we were feeding the koalas as well which was really good. They have a soya based paste, vitamins, yoghurt and water all taken by syringe into the mouth which requires good accuracy so they don’t get any on their fur. Some loved the paste and were grabbing your hand to get it in faster, others were a bit less interested and made the task quite hard. But either way just being so close to these wild animals and seeing each of there characters was defiantly one of the best weeks of our travels so far.

We also had a few other jobs while at the hospital. Cleaning the bird cage was funny, Claire and I in a big cage with about 10 over active parrots was interesting, lol. We also got to help with taking a blood sample from a 40 year old sea turtle, we had to catch her in the water and put her in a special sling to carry her out, then a nurse took the sample. She was very heavy and I couldn’t believe how powerful the flippers were, beautiful creature though.

The volunteer co-ordinators and hospital staff were very friendly and really made an effort to ensure we enjoyed our time and got to see or do a little of everything. We got to see the workings of the hospital from the ICU where the animals first come in and stay straight after any treatment / surgery all the way through to the plantation of trees out back for the koalas getting ready to be released into the wild. I would recommend volunteering at the hospital to everyone and if I’m ever back in the area I will be doing it again.

While chatting on our last day with the volunteer co-ordinator about promoting the hospital I agreed to set-up a Facebook Page for the hospital with information, pictures and hopefully a monthly update about patients and goings on at the hospital. If you would like to follow it please view the page and click ‘Like’. It is still in the setting up process at the moment so look out for more content soon.

www.facebook.com/pages/Australia-Zoo-Wildlife-Hospital

Went a little in land and stayed in Maleny, a small country town. Were lucky enough to meet a couple who knew there were Platypuses in the river running along side the camp ground. We went for a sunset stalking and were rewarded by seeing 3 hunting and playing in the river. Quite a rare site so thank you Greg and Kate for showing us!

We visited Montville which is a bit bigger than Maleny with quite a lot of little tourist shops and some nice restaurants, the view is amazing as you are so high up, higher than the Glass House Mountains if I’m not mistaken. Bill certainly didn’t like the roads, some 10 and 12% inclines! Just a few kms from Montville is Kondalilla National Park, very stunning views and a great walk down to the base of Kondalilla Falls (80m drop I think). A few pictures below, see if you can see me standing in front of the falls for a bit of scale.

Spent a few days in Noosa, nice little town and the national park was really good. We walked from the car park at the end of Park road all the way to Sunshine beach (basically all the blue route on the map below). Sat and ate lunch at Hell’s Gates and was lucky enough to see Sea Turtles and Dolphins! An excellent walk I’d recommend to anyone, make sure you keep your eyes pealed And once you’ve done it stop by Hastings street for a Maximo’s ice cream, so good we have nearly driven back to Noosa just for another one.

We have been in Bargara and Bundaberg for nearly 4 weeks staying with family. We have visited some of the local area, fully explored Bargara and Bundaberg, Claire celebrated her birthday, visited the Hinkler Hall of Aviation and watched a lot of DVDs!

The Hinkler Hall of Aviation was very interesting, all about the life of Burt Hinkler. Born in Bungaberg he built and designed aircraft from 1912 and set many records for longest solo flights and first flight from England to Australia. The museum was very interactive which makes a nice change from just looking at stuff in glass cases. We also got to look around his Southampton (UK) house which was dismantled brick by brick and brought over to Bungaberg and rebuilt with original fittings.

Bill the camper van has also had a service and check over (Thank you very much Scott). I helped by drinking beer and passing the occasional spanner over.

Selection of pictures below:

We took a 1 day trip with Cruise Whitsundays out to their pontoon in the outer reef Knuckle Reef Lagoon.

www.cruisewhitsundays.com/gbra is their site for more info.

It was really good even with the windy conditions, got to snorkel around the corral with an amazing amount of brightly coloured fish. The depth ranged from 10m to about 1m, I was free diving down quite deep and getting in the middle of the fish. Temped to get a snorkel and mask soon.

We also had a good view from the underwater chamber and the semi sub boat, took pictures but very hazy blue with the thick windows. It was an interested trip back, even higher winds and out in the main shipping straight meant big waves for over an hour, I’d estimate about 40% of passengers were on the back deck outside being sick! Claire and I survived fine lucky, was very ruff though (I thought it was great fun).

Spent about 10 day in Darwin, its quite a small town really with the usual shops and quite a lot of souvenir shops. We visited the WW2 underground oil storage tanks built to withstand air raids, was quite eerie as dark and damp down there but a good display of photos from the time. The area around the storage tanks has been recently developed into a posh waterfront, with a netted swimming enclosure as well as a man made lagoon with a wave machine. This looked really good but being a school holiday at the time was packed with children so we gave it a miss.

Next was the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, a good mix of natural history and Aboriginal art. Spent a few hours looking round as well as seeing a students art competition gallery. There was a good exhibition on cyclone Tracy which hit Darwin on Christmas eve 1974, the photos and video of the destruction were a real eye opener.

On our last night we visited the Mindil beach sunset market. It was packed with people browsing the stalls of souvenirs and food, but we got a really good sunset with hundreds of people taking pics on the beach, I will add some photos in the gallery (link on the right). There were a few bands playing and one really stood out mixing drum and base with didgeridoos, really good.

From Darwin we have driven back to Queensland, to Townsville. Did it in 4 days so not to bad. Next we’re heading south to find somewhere for a great barrier reef snorkelling trip!