Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Katie and Taylor
The pilgrimage north up the East Coast spurs images of sunshine, sea and sand! Unfortunately the weather for us has been reminiscent of an Easter holiday in Scotland, of course sprinkled with a few matches of sunshine. We docked into a beautiful wee town called Bellingen which had the local community market full in full swing with hippies selling everything from plants to bubbles, but as the Scots have brought the weather with us, it rained Koalas and Roos (not sure if it rains cats and dogs here.)
Our first major stop along the coast was Coffs Harbour, famous for its Big Banana (crazy Australians!) In fact there is a huge banana on the outskirts of town, which we had to get a ridiculous photo in front of as modelled by Katie below! Coffs Harbour, or "Coughs" Harbour as I call it was where I had a wee dose of the deadly man flu, so we holed up in a motel for a night of films, tea and munchies.
The flu never abated the next day even visiting MacLean which is a Scottish heritage town in the middle of nowhere didn't help. It is twinned with Portree, sells Haggis and every lamp post in town is painted with a different type of tartan. We spent the night near Lismore was the venue for us to watch the final of the Australian X Factor. Its the shows first year over here and although it isn't quite to the same standards as the UK equivelant, it was nice for a bit of home comfort. Ronan Keating is one of the judges and you'll be glad to hear his singer Altiyan Childs won!
Next on our route was Nimbin, king of the alternative lifestyle! In the 70's this little town hosted something called the Aquarius festival and a few stalwarts hung around after and created their own little community. Cue being asked on every corner if we wanted hash, mushrooms or amphetamines. I was just waiting to be asked if I wanted to buy a hug. The drive from Nimbin to Byron Bay was almost like driving back home, through the moors on a summers day, simply stunning!
Byron Bay was our last stop in New South Wales before hitting Queensland and is a true backpacker heaven. Cheap food, even cheaper drinks and luckily for us some sun! We even managed to sneak in seeing the new Harry Potter film on the cheaper Tuesday, cause we're Scottish and love a bargain. Cape Byron on the coast is Australias Easterly most point and it's easy to see dolphins playing in the waves below, the walk also goes through some pretty sections of Bushland where we spotted a wild Wallaby with her joey.
In case you aren't up to speed with school holidays in Australia, at the end of high school there is a party for them all up the east coast which lasts a few weeks, the focal point for it is Surfers Paradise. Guess what? We are hitting it right at the busiest time so surprisingly enough we only docked in for a few hours in here as it is over run with lots of wee kids (or Scoolies as they are called here) and apart from making us feel old (or being classed toolies-too old to be schoolies), the prices have sky rocketed for everything. Attractions are similar to Florida such as theme parks, water parks, zoos etc so we are sitting just now deciding if we want to stump up for a theme park this afternoon.
Next stop is Brisbane for the weekend where we are meeting up with Elaine for a good ol' Scottish shindig!
Friday, November 19, 2010
Katie and Taylor
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Katie and Taylor
The drive from Katoomba back to the East Coast took us through some stunning valleys, quaint towns and numerous scary switchbacks but we are glad to report that Shelly took this test with ease. We were lucky enough to be able to dock in on our way to meet our fellow Odyssey Overland pal – Kaye.
From Kaye’s we turned Shelly northwards to Newcastle and typically towards the rain. We headed further into the downpour as we past Swansea, Cardiff, Mayfield and arrived in Newcastle. Very odd! This was our first free camp and cooking in the car which was an all round success apart from the one Mozi which sneaked into our car during the night to wake us up whizzing past our ears!
The sun has decided to break out this afternoon so we went to Blackbutts Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Newcastle which is home to Koalas, Wombats, Kangaroos and various birds. Tonight we are heading towards Hunter Valley and perhaps a spot of wine tasting for a few nights?!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Katie and Taylor
We picked up our pretty new car (you’ll meet her later) and headed across the Sydney Harbour Bridge (thrice) to Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. The zoo offers an overnight package called “Roar ‘n Snore” which involves a night safari, close encounters with some of the animals, sleeping in a fancy tent overlooking the Harbour Bridge and Opera house, lots of amazing food and to top it off we got to spend the next day at the zoo.
Our continental breakfast in the morning was great, cereals danishes, fruit, juices and tea/coffee, really feeling spoiled now as we went off to meet the giraffes. We walked in the paddock and got to feed them some carrots. Their tongues were pretty slippery and very long so there was a technique but it was a lot of fun! We then headed off to the nocturnal house to get a talk about feeding the animals and got to hold the smallest glider in the world; the feather tailed glider. It was so small but so cute! Next we headed to the education centre where we got up close with kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, possums and quokkas. These had all be hand rescued and hand reared at the zoo so loved attention from humans. Unfortunately it is illegal to hold koalas so we only got to stroke it, but he was cute! That was roar and snore over and it was amazing. We got the whole day in the zoo, which was great early in the morning as it was really quiet so we got to see everything from wombats, emus, kangaroos to elephants and their 3 babies at bath-time, and the tiger at feeding time. There was a seal show and a bird show which were great and that was our Taronga Zoo experience.. Amazing! (more pics on the "Going Solo" album on the signpost).
When we picked up our car we were told to give it a bit of a test drive to make sure we were happy so we took her for a spin to the Blue Mountains, just over an hour away from Sydney. We stopped off at Ikea to buy the basics for sleeping in the car; pillow etc and headed for Katoomba. We decided to check into a campsite so we could ease into the camping on the road and we were spoiled with a kitchen and great bathroom facilities. We settled into our nice new bed (in the back of the car) and had a great night sleep.
The next morning we headed off for a walk to the mountains and Katoomba town. Katoomba is set at the top of the mountains on a plateau so the walk we went on was on the cliffs (so no climbing was involved). Ended up at Echo Point, the best place to view the three sisters (3 rocks) for some photos. The Blue Mountains are like a green (or blue) version of the Grand Canyon; spectacular and named for the eucalyptus oil which evaporates to give them a bluish tinge, theses trees cover the mountain range. We then went to Katoomba for a few more essentials for our car; camp-chairs and storage boxes, surfed the internet for a bit to find out that I’d won $1000 towards a training agriculture program which guarantees employment in Australia. This was something we entered at the travellers expo in Sydney but not something we planned on doing. We have over a year to use the voucher so that might mean having to come back with a working holiday visa (if Taylor can get one too) and work on a farm! Celebrated with a sneaky dominos pizza and a bottle of wine and enjoyed the sunset over our campsite.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Katie and Taylor
On the spur of the moment we decided to head to Bondi Beach, to the east of the city and where a lot of locals flock to on sunny weekend days. Bondi is one of the worlds greatest beaches with the Pacific creating perfect surf conditions, apart from us who can't surf!
This is where our nightmare began though as we hadn't booked a hostel ahead as we expected to just check in somewhere easily......wrong! Everywhere was fully booked so we ended up in a place called "
Beached at Bondi" which is no where beside the beach. Anyway checked in and we were greeted by a Brazilian whose opening greeting was "Isn't suicide such a great release!." We laughed this off but were greeted by a Colin Farrell look-a-like who was drunk and listening to rap music from his very own amp! Long story short the Brazilian attempted suicide and spent the night in the hospital and the Irish guy drank and smoked till the wee hours in the morning.
We had booked 2 days and despite our best efforts we couldn't move rooms or get a refund so we are about spend our second night in hell and to make things even better my mobile phone has been stolen! Photos of this nightmare will be on our photo album in a few days when we get the internet again.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Katie and Taylor
After a few chill out days in Sandakan we were all set for our adventure to Oz. We flew to KL in the morning and caught an evening flight to the Gold Coast (south of Brisbane). We arrived in Coolangatta on the day of the Melbourne cup – a national holiday for a horse race for those of you who don’t know - and settled into our hostel on the beach. It was a stunning day so we lazed around the beach watching surfers before watching the horse race in the afternoon. As usual our horse (appropriately named Harris Tweed) was leading the whole way until the last few seconds where he seemed to give up and lost us our money, oh well. After finding everything on my checklist (nachos, Kopperberg and sun dried tomatoes) at lunch we headed to a local bar for a few drinks in the evening. Drunken women started fighting in the bar and were causing a scene so were asked to leave, we scored some free drinks for that so we were quite happy to watch the show!
We only stopped in Coolangatta for one night before our flight to Sydney the next day so were sad to leave the sunny skies behind for rainy Sydney. The weather wasn’t too bad, typical summer in Scotland so we had a wander around the city avoiding the showers. We had 3 days in Sydney and managed to pack in a lot of sights including, Circular Quay, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, the Rocks and its night market, Darling Harbour, Kings Cross the Botanical Gardens and Hyde Park. We were also treated to a fantastic lunch thanks to my cousin and his wife and managed to squeeze in some shopping too. There was a travellers expo on at the town hall over the weekend which had everything you needed to plan a trip and lots of free stuff so we went to see what we could find. We both won a cruise on Lake Taupo in NZ, given free beer and got some really good deals on hostels and food on our way up the East coast of Oz so left with our free hot dog lunch very happy. The next step was getting a car so we headed to the car market to find a good deal. We ended up on Gumtree and found a great deal so on Wednesday we will be the proud owners of a 1998 Ford Falcon Stationwagon and she/he needs a name if you’ve got any good ideas let us know!
.JPG)
Before we pick up the car we have a few days at Bondi Beach and a night a Taronga Zoo. The sun has come out for us so Bondi is mobbed but it’s a great place to relax and maybe try to surf.
.JPG)
.JPG)