Australia

For a while my beard became out of control.














The Three Sisters - Blue Mountains. (The Blue is supposed to be due to oil droplets from the Eucalyptus trees which, in combination with dust particles and water vapour, scatter short-wave length rays of light which are predominantly blue in colour - apparently).








Fred's shapely rear end.













We did see a lot of nice sunsets!













This one from our stopping point just after the Twelve Appostles.












The Twelve Appostles













Large trees (helpful caption).


















From our overnight in Deep Creek National Park













A koala - hurrah, one ticked off our Aussie animals to-do list.












Fred from the side.













Sam at Teddies lookout (below) and where we stayed for our first night out of Melbourne.

















The Great Ocean Road (or part of it).













Chez Manii and Lance
The engagement ring, a 0.33ct blue diamond elegantly set in 18ct white gold.


Saying that we've covered Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales sounds like we conscientiously backpacked throughout our available month in Australia to maximise our time - ticking off three of the six (seven including Tasmania) states.

At least we got to know Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney a little bit.

In Melbourne we lived in the lap of total luxury (what many people may call regular home comforts -nice house, all mod cons. Mnnnnn luxury. We stayed with Manii and Lance (Holly and Alfie) who I would say thanks very much to again (but there's a possibility we've already expressed our gratitude one or two times too many and we became unnecessary gratitude pests.

On Sam's Birthday (our first full day in Aus) I woke her with a delicious breakfast and a rose of exotic variety. Later, to the strains of one of her favourite haunting classical pieces in A minor, I fell to one knee and proposed. Sam was so intoxicated by the moment that her recollection has become a little varied from mine - but I'd never be anything other than smooth and confident at such a moment! (Although the proposal has been a known event for a while - the ring couldn't be made in time before the holiday - so I gave the jeweller Manii's address).

It took the promise of a free deluxe camper van for a five day delivery from Melbourne to Adelaide to tear us away from our new home. We'd stayed in Melbourne for two weeks (although we only went into Melbourne four times .... and one of them was to pick up Fred on the last day) ...... Fred was our van - deluxe model with air conditioning - and when we arrived to pick it up we were about to be grateful as it was another 34 degree day carrying our big bags.

We signed at the bottom of the contract for Fred with some suspicion. We hadn't needed to walk around the van to confirm any dents and cracks as usual as, in the space provided on the contract, it said "dents and cracks all over". Our new driving adventure began with a right at the bottom of the road and second left into the garage repair shop. There the funny mechanics joked about Freds' back door problems - before bashing the door repeatedly with a large hammer (to make it work again - which surprisingly it soon did). Fred was costing us $5 for five days of driving the Great Ocean Road, all in all we were happy. (Fred was far from the deluxe model, without air con, not even even power steering)!

Arriving that same day to the start of the Great Ocean Road at Torquay (a couple of hours south of Melbourne) I was totally at ease with the attention we seemed to be receiving ... it started from three bikini clad teenage surfer girls standing jauntily by their boards - waving and smiling at us. Just half an hour later I was rudely roused from my day dreaming by a group of beer swilling guys cheering at us.

Sadly in the last two sentences the word "us" could be replaced by the word "van", as Fred was a "Wicked" camper van. Painted "wickedly" and with "wicked" comments on the back. "The Liver is WICKED, it must be punished" was our caption. In New Zealand we were proud of our nice van, painted with flowers and birds and nice things. In Aus we stopped being the van that nice people would look at and smile - into the van that nice people look at with a frown and a bag full of assumptions about us. (Not all bad, re: surfers above). Unfortunately, with Sam being tea-total and me unwilling to have more than a bottle of beer a night because I didn't want to go to the toilet during the night - we perhaps weren't as wicked as our van was making out.

The main highlights of the G.O.R. seem to be the large scale erosion into the limestone cliffs. For various well explained reasons large portions of the coast has columns of cliff - previously mainland but now standing apart (and soon (relative term) not standing at all). The most famous grouping of these is the Twelve Apostles, and the most common picture is the Twelve Apostles with the sun setting behind them. On the day we were there there was a fantastic sunset ... there was a fantastic sunset ten miles further down the road too - a small laziness issue on our part - and we'd wanted to find somewhere suitable to stop before dark.

The Great Ocean Road runs halfway to Adelaide - the Victoria State part - before it moves into South Australia and becomes the Limestone Coast. Crossing the state border the times went back by half an hour (which needless to say we didn't realise until our second day in Adelaide). Also there were instructions to dispose of all fresh fruit (meat, milk etc products) bought out of State. Since the influences of travelling with mum in NZ we'd bought a load of fresh fruit before setting out. If there's an outbreak of Victoria Orange Peel disease in South Australia then can we just say - we conscientiously threw away all our fruit in the provided bins at the border. (If there isn't an outbreak - then quite obviously we didn't throw away our fruit as we thought the law was totally ridiculous).

Our days were spent driving, thinking about air conditioning, stopping in small "one street" towns, unsuccessfully trying to spot kangaroos, successfully seeing koalas and lots of kookaburras and walking to whatever the local attraction happened to be. On one occasion this was an inland waterfall, on every other occasion it was a pathway to the cliff to see another "stand alone" bit of rock, cave, blowhole, petrified forest ....

The petrified forest is formed by strong winds blowing sand underneath the bark. The sand hardens (sandstone) as the tree rots away ... ions ago. (n.b. at the time we knew all the facts ... now, several weeks later sitting in Bangkok, then who knows).

South Australia is split into 12 regions (e.g. Adelaide Hills, Kangaroo Island etc). Ten of these regions appear to be grouped together tightly around and south of Adelaide - wine growing country (Jacobs Creek etc). The remaining two are the Limestone Coast (everything East and where we came from) and Flinders Ranges Outback (the other 95%). We headed south into Fleurieu country.

We hadn't yet seen our kangaroo and we were promised Deep Creek National Park was the place to be. Thus far we'd slept at two look-outs on hills, and in car park overlooking the sea. The N.P. was our only paid for campsite, but it was very beautiful and we had it to ourselves (bar one other). There were kangaroos around, but also parrots, kookaburras and cockatoos screeching in the forest. This was my favourite night and morning of the journey.

The next day we sped along a fantastic windy, hilly and empty road up to Adelaide. While we had the van we were going to drive around the outlying areas (the bits with a beach). Our favourite was Glenelg (serviced by tram from Adelaide centre and hence full of life). For showers we'd been paying for the use of campsite shower blocks along the way ... somewhat cheekily in Adelaide we paid for the showers ... but then parked for the night in the campsite shop car park.

Adelaide itself was nice ... so called "city of spires", it was definitely nice. The main CBD (central business district) is very manageable with just one main shopping street. To the north there are big old university buildings and further north park and botanical gardens before the suburbs. There's not much more to say .... nice.

We flew to Sydney via Mr Branson's Virgin Blue (a fleet of red aircraft) having pre-booked a kitchenette in Balmain (ten minutes bus ride from Sydney centre) on the internet for a good price. Balmain has similarities to a London neighbourhood with one long street full of bars and restaurants and coffee shops. We could choose from Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, Vietnamese etc (which was fine). Our flat also came complete with a BBQ on the roof (which we made good use of).

So we didn't do quite as much as we could have done in a week in Sydney. There was a street party in Kings Cross, people surfing on Bondi, the mountains weren't very blue (or mountains in fact), the bridge was there, as was the opera house and Darling Harbour had a good aquarium. As all good backpackers should do (as well as not showering and wearing the same underpants for two straight weeks) we went to see 'Sleeping Beauty' - Tchaikovsky's ballet - at the Opera House. It was very beautiful - though I'm sure my sandals smelt a little as the elderly gentleman in the tuxedo next to me wrinkled his nose occasionally.

The Blue Mountains were impressive mostly due to the dramatic cliff footpath which winds it's way along the top of the valley to the main landmark (the Three Sisters), then down to the valley floor and back. Also impressive were the number of flies (though to be fair the whole of Australia seemed to have fifteen flies per person outside of the main CBD's).

And that was that .... next stop (where we currently are) ... Bangkok. Christmas on the beach, Northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand again. We're looking at a return flight on around the 20th April (with mixed feelings). Happy Christmas to one and all.