Sydney!

After what was definitely the worst overnight bus journey in terms of sleep time, we arrived in the middle of Sydney with no idea how to get to our hostel! We gave up waiting for a bus to arrive and set off on foot... which we soon discovered was perhaps not the cleverest thing to do in a new city...an hour later and on the verge of giving up, Amy spotted it!! Yay! And outside was Silvio, a guy we met diving in Cairns, painting the fence!! (Crazy!)
We spent the afternoon exploring the centre of Sydney and catching up on some food shopping and internet. In the evening, the hostel gave us a FREE bbq which was really yummy (though we are not exactly sure what was in the mystery sausages we ate....). After dinner, we watched some of Peter Kay. (I'm not sure the non-british people in the room really understood some of the jokes!) An early night.
Today, we woke up to find FREE breakfast with nutella! We were beginning to like this hostel :). We set off to the harbour (via the botanical gardens of course) and took some postcard photos of the opera house and the harbour bridge. We then visited "The Rocks" where there was a fantastic market selling all sorts of arts and crafts and food, most of which we sampled! Then we met up with Francesca, a german girl we had met in New Zealand who works as an au-pair in Sydney and we took her back to the market for some more liquorice sampling. Our day then became an even more social one as we met up with some friends from England. We went out for sushi which made us feel very sophisticated :). We finally got back to hostel at about 8 o'clock, realising that we had been on our feet all day! We were knackered! Another early night.

Byron Bay

We have spent the past few days in Byron Bay learning to surf! It has been so much fun, and surprisingly we both managed to catch the waves and stand up on the board quite a few times! Although we are now aching all over especially in our shoulders and will definitely be catching the free shuttle to the bus stop tonight! We now understand exactly why surfers are so hot.. :) Today we went body boarding for free (always good!) and had a great time in the huge waves, which seemed intent on removing our bikinis!! We didn't even stop for the torrential rain which came out of nowhere, but as we were already wet it didn't matter. Apart from that, the weather has been amazing and we are trying our best to soak up as much sun as possible before we leave!
We enjoyed Shrove Tuesday and managed to eat 6 (mini) pancakes each with sugar and lemon. We tried to check with the Australian check-out boy that we had got the right day, but he just looked at us blankly when we mentioned Pancake Day and asked if it was a place?!! Oh dear. We met someone (Dutch) we had done the Whitsundays with while we were eating them and she looked at us in disgust and told us we were very English! English and proud we replied :)
Part of the surf package was 2 free breakfasts and a free dinner at a local cafe. We have yet to sample our dinner, but the breakfast was amazing! We both had a bacon and egg roll (on both days) and I have to say, it was probably the best meal we have had in Australia :).
Tonight we jump on the overnight bus to Sydney where we will be looking out for any hungry sharks on Bondi Beach...

Noosa

We arrived in Noosa yesterday after a short bus journey from Rainbow Beach. We decided to make the most of the sunshine and went for a walk through Noosa National Park which was lovely. The path took us along the coastline and we watched the sun set behind the hills (very romantic!) However the walk did also take us onto a nudist beach of which we were not aware...promise. (We weren't tempted to join the naked men in the surf!) We had a gourmet dinner of tinned spaghetti bolognaise sauce with rice which was surprisingly tasty :) We then retired to our dorm which I have to say is a convincing winner of the award "the largest number of beds we can fit into the smallest space"! (The bunks were so close that Amy and I could actually hold hands). And if this wasn't enough, we also had a window with no glass which looked into another dorm. Amy could literally have rolled over and ended up in the bed of the guy in the next door dorm!! Tempting.
Today we went to Australia zoo!! This was awesome and our favourite animal is now officially the koala. We both paid $20 for a photo in which we held a koala-so cute! It took some persuasion from the keeper to make me give it back...I reckon my backpack is just about big enough... We saw loads of crocs and elephants and tigers and loads more! We could also walk through Kangaroo Heaven and stroke the kangaroos! (Though I don't think they liked Amy as one tried to bite her hand off...)
Tomorrow we are off to Byron Bay for some surfing!

Fraser Island

We went on a three day, two night 4WD self-drive trip on Fraser Island. Fraser is an island of sand just off the east coast near Rainbow Beach. It is unusual because forest grows on it on sand.
We got put in a group of 11, packed up the van and set off with just a few guidelines to follow! Crazy! On the island, the beach was the road and your campsite was in the sand-dunes.
It was fantastic, we swam in beautiful fresh water lakes and took loads of photos of the amazing scenery. Some highlights were the Mahino shipwreck which you could get right up close to and seeing the native dingos.
We couldn't drive being under 21 but quite frankly didn't want to- we were quite happy to let the Swedes (again!) handle the wash-outs and temperamental gear box! Somehow we got put in charge of the cooking, and we made a 36 egg scrambled egg for breakfast on day two (it was all eaten!). Cooking in the dark in the evening meant our steaks were pretty rare, but fortunately three peolpe in the group were french and they loved it. Something we didn't miss when we left for home were the enormous flies we called MONSTER flies which ate us alive during dawn and dusk (yes, we were up that early!). On the way back on the very last day we managed to get stuck in some wet sand as we attempted to round the head at high-tide. Stupidly we had let the Chilean drive and he did not listen to anyone! Problem was, when we tried to dig the wheels out, the van just sank further in. Absolute nightmare! Anyway, luckily some Aussies turned up and towed us out but not before all the other groups arrived to watch us...

Our Whitsundays sailing trip

We have just arrived back on dry land after 2 days onboard a sailing boat on a tour of the Whitsundays Islands. After thunderstorms forecast, we were extremely lucky with the weather and even managed to sleep outside! (Well for most of the night anyway!) There were about 15 of us on the boat and we all lent a hand hauling the enormous sails up and down! We visited Whitehaven Beach which is rated the third most beautiful beach in the world. The sand is 99% silica and was so fine that it felt like flour between your toes and squeaked when we walked over it! We did some fantastic snorkling too and even saw a turtle which was really cool. (Nemo must have been sleeping though as we couldn't find him!)

Today we chilled out by the lagoon (again!) and saw some people we met in New Zealand! Lagoons are definitely the place to be.

Tonight we have an overnight bus to Rainbow Beach where we are starting our self-drive Fraser Island tour!

Whitsundays

We managed to escape Cairns on the first bus to run for weeks. It left at 12am which was a bit of a shocker. It started raining just as we left the hostel with our big bags and trekked over a mile to the bus station. And it stopped immediately when we reached shelter!

We slept quite well on the coach which had very good air-conditioning unlike our hostel, and the best part was we saved some money on accomodation that night. We arrived in Airlie Beach at about 11am and spent another lazy day. We got the bus to the supermarket and got some supplies including MEAT for the first time :) ! Then it was time for some serious shopping. We spent about 3 hours choosing between three dresses for George, only for her to change her mind at the till (and then she swapped it today- no jokes!). In the evening we swam in the lagoon before we had spag bog and stuffed ourselves with melon. Yum yum!
Today we swam in the lagoon again and did some more shopping (this time it was my turn to take ages trying things on, but no luck- surely I can find one bikini I like in Australia!). The weather has been fantastic finally!

p.s check out hot pic of Amy... :)

Reunited at last!

Unfortunately today we were reunited...haha just joking, it was actually really nice to see each other again (though Amy got a bit over-excited and practically slipped over on the kitchen floor!) After an update on the buses, which still weren't running due to the floods south of Cairns, we had a lazy day by the lagoon, catching up on some sun-bathing and doing some food shopping. We were shocked by the lack of food in the supermarket as obviously no supplies could reach Cairns. (See photo of empty aisle- no yoghurts today!!) In the afternoon, we returned to the lagoon where we bumped into the Canadians we had met in New Zealand!!!! Crazy!!! They had travelled up the coast from Sydney in a record time and were flying to Perth tonight to start their semester! It was great to see them- we felt like long lost friends! We had some lunch with them and then said good-bye for the second time in 3 weeks! We had a quiet evening at the hostel, renting Oceans 12 on DVD for free :).

The next day we finally got some news on the buses! They were going to run again that evening! So so relieved. We were considering spending our precious cents and flying out. So we were able to start booking things, and ended up paying for our Whitsundays trip, Fraser island, Surf Camp and all accomadation (oh, and not forgetting Steve's Australia Zoo :) !). We visited the lagoon again and packed to leave Cairns at last!