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!

Well we made it, in the end covering 3000 kilometres (or 1864 miles) in 4 1/2 days. We took an interesting route, definitely off the beaten track at points but was worth it for the sights. We saw a number of kangaroo and wallabies, wild pig, eagles and lots of cattle. I don’t have any snaps from the journey, I have some on the camera which I’ll upload when I get to a computer.

We have a fair bit planned for Darwin, seems a lot of things to see and a lot that are free to see too. But for now I’m happy to do anything that doesn’t involve a long drive….

We have worked our way as far north up the east coast as we can go without the need of four wheel drive. We have been too Townsville, Mission Beach, Cairns and Port Douglas. Today we drove to the Daintree national park, crossing the Daintree river by ferry. Got as far as you can go on sealed roads (and a bit further by accident…) before visiting an icecream factory and doing a rainforest walk (see pictures attached).

Tomorrow we leave Queensland on our way too Darwin….

EDIT: I previously wrote this would be a 12 hour journey time as Claire had informed me after looking on satnav… the 7pm arrival time was actually for the next day, this is a 36 hour drive! 2700 kilometres. We are hoping to do this in 5-6 days.

For the past week we have been staying at Airlie Beach, nice place and nice campsite (apart from the very noisy birds). On Friday we did a sailing trip around the Whitsundays Islands on a catamaran called Camira www.cruisewhitsundays.com/camira.aspx. Was a nice day, best part for me was the snorkelling. Got to see lots of coral and hundreds of fish. The water was about 2-3m deep so I was glad of my underwater breath holding abilities as you could see everything much clearer up close. The colours of both the coral and fish were amazing, I’m defiantly planning on doing more snorkelling.

Currently we are in townsville, spent most of yesterday driving here with a couple of quick stops in Bowen and Ayr. Not a lot there but we did spot a school fete to have a mossy round and buy homemade fudge and pumpkin scones. Will be here for a couple of days seeing the sights.

Relaxing at Airlie beach for a couple of days.