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Time for a quick update from Australia.

We arrived into Melbourne on the 21st of December just in time to spend an excellent Aussie Christmas with Denise, Simon and Daniel.

After chilling for a few weeks in Melbourne we hired a campervan and set off along the Great Ocean Road and then onto Adelaide. We managed to take in all the major tourist sights and also tick off sightings of all the famous Aussie animals in the wild.

We spent a few days in Adelaide before we set off on a 6 day tour to Alice Springs. We stopped off at some really cool places along the way including of course that big chunk of rock – Uluru. We did some really challenging hikes including an 8km hike up Dutchman’s Stern in the afternoon heat of 40 degrees so managed to finish up in Alice Springs a few pounds lighter!

We spent 2 nights in Alice Springs trying to cope with the soaring Northern Territory’s heat and then caught a flight over to Cairns to land in… rain!! We felt just a little bit at home but the warm temperatures soon got rid of those thoughts!

On the 30th of January it was time for another campervan hire, this time to make the journey down the East Coast to Sydney. Our first day was a bit of a disaster as we only managed to get 200kms down the road before being stuck for 2 nights in Cardwell due to flood waters blocking the road.

“Stuck in this tiny place in the rain for my birthday”, I thought. Thankfully the police woke us at 1am on the 1st and sent us on our way. We managed to get further down the road but to our dismay we were greeted with only more rain!

After a few days we finally managed to get away from the rain and we are now enjoying the “Sunshine State”. Our first major stop was Bundaberg where we visited the famous rum distillery and sampled a few drinks – before lunch was probably a bad idea so I had to get my stomach filled up with a delicious lunch in town. That evening we went to Mon Repos Conservation Park, a short 12km from Bundy to watch from nesting and hatching sea turtles. We were lucky enough to watch the rangers process a Loggerhead turtle nest that had hatched a few nights earlier where they found three baby turtles that hadn’t been strong enough to make it to the top, we sent them on their way to the sea to hopefully make it to adulthood and then we watched a group of Green Turtles make the race to the sea from the beach.

We visited Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo yesterday and watched an excellent animal show in the Crocoseum and we are now enjoying a lazy Sunday on the Southbank in Brisbane – similar in ways to London’s southbank with the exception of the beach!

Tomorrow we are heading for the Gold coast to some theme parks and some more sun!!!

I will upload photos as soon as I can…