Australian Road Trip

Yes, we are still alive! Despite a lack of regular updates on the blog we are still traveling around and enjoying ourselves along Australia's east coast. Since it has been awhile, will give you brief updates of various places along our slow meander up the East Coast. There will be a fair bit more than a normal update here, so you might want to grab a nice hot cup of tea and travel with us for a bit.

It began in Sydney where Justin finally met up with Steff after a 2 week absence for his sister's wedding in Ontario. It was so amazing to be back together again! It really wasn't so nice having to be apart. Anyhow, we met at the airport and then headed into the cute little borough of Sydney, called Glebe where we checked into our hostel in this historic residential area. Being Spring, the streets were lined with trees in full blooming colours of purple, pink and red! Sydney was an amazing city, very clean, well laid out, first class as far as cities go. After a few days there, looking at some vehicles we finally settled on a GIANT Ford Falcon station wagon with a mattress in the back, which was sure to save us a fortune on accommodation expenses. The car also came complete with a stove, pots, pans, water jug, tent, chairs, folding table, the works! Plus the car has power everything and floats down the road, and we've nick-named it 'The Mayflower' due to its large size and a faint creaking (like a large wooden boat) we can hear as we go around bends.

We left Sydney for the long road trip north, but actually only made it to Freshwater Beach near Manly, at least 25 minutes away! It was just so pretty around there, so we couldn't pass by without stopping. We spent a couple of nights with our friends Bex and Andy, who we met in Vietnam. When we met them in Vietnam they had just been engaged in Paris and they were on their way back to Australia where they live (but they are actually British). While we stayed with them they had their engagement party which involved, not surprisingly, a massive BBQ with lots of meat and lots and lots of beer and a touch of wine, good fun with some great people. Wine is what led us to our next destination, the Hunter Valley, a few hours north of Sydney.

The Hunter Valley is the closest wine region to Sydney and we just had to check in out. We spent a two days exploring the region and tasting wines made from grapes grown on local vines and also from grapes grown in the more famous Yarra and Barossa Valleys. Overall the Hunter Valley wines did not impress us as they lacked any real full bodied flavour that we have all come to expect of Aussie wines. The Hunter Valley does not get as hot and dry as other wine regions, which is why they do not produce the flavours we were looking for. Also, many of the Australian wines available overseas are not from this region, so the flavours of the Hunter Valley wines did not meet with our expectations for Australian wines we have had in the past. We left a little disappointed with only two bottles of wine, but we did have fun with all the wine tastings to find those two!

After the Hunter Valley we headed back to the coast where went in search in kite-surfing spots for Justin. We found the the ultimate spot in a small, off the beaten track coastal town called Old Bar. It's a cute little town with a tight community of talented local kite-surfers who warmly welcomed us. We spent a few days here while Justin worked on improving his kite-surfing skills, checking out the local beautiful waves and making new friends. As hard as it was to leave, it was time to get up to Port Macquarie to visit our friends April, Sarah and Olivia.

Port Macquarie is a beautiful coastal city where many Aussies come for a relaxing holiday or to retire. The temperature is just perfect; warmer than Sydney, yet not humid as it is further North. There are many beautiful beaches and rocky cliffs overlooking the sea, and of course great waves for surfing, the national past time of Australia. We really enjoyed spending time with Sarah and April, who we lived with in Vancouver during 2000/2001. Olivia is Sarah's daughter, aged 3 and she is great fun to hang out with. We were the first Canadians that little Olivia had ever met, so she asked Steff, "Why do you talk like that?" referring to the Canadian accent and also asked, "Do you have two voices?" wondering if we could also speak like her in an Aussie accent as well. It was a very cute moment!

After our visit in Port Macquarie, we continued our drive North along the coast and stopped in Yamba, famous for it's point breaks (surfing) and where we were had the opportunity to get up close to wild kangaroos and observe them for hours. One evening, while exploring some small roads in search of a kangaroos and not finding any at all, we met a friendly lady, named Nerida, who wondered it we were lost. We said no, but that we were (yes, at the age of 30+) searching the forest for kangaroos! We felt a bit silly, but our honesty paid off and she invited us back to her remote 100 acre island that has a massive kangaroo population! Fantastic!! So off we all went and she gave us a great tour of her property, showed us how to interact with the kangaroos and welcomed us to camp on her property for the night, so that we could photograph the 'roos in the morning when they are most active. we kindly accepted and at sunrise took some great photos up close and even observed the two largest rivaling males have a boxing match. Not sure who won, but it was exciting to experience. Interestingly, Nerida's 100 acre property houses many endangered plants and is home to not only 100's of 'roos, but also acts as a sanctuary for birds, yet only a few years prior a Japanese company had owned all the land and vicinity. The plan was to build an adult playground with an airport, resort and casino strictly for the Japanese. The whole project was cancelled as the Japanese Yen had plummeted and thankfully the kangaroos were there waiting for us! It was lucky that we had the opportunity to observe all those 'roos, as throughout the rest of our travels in Australia we only saw dead kangaroos flattened at the side of the road.

Our next major stop was in the beautiful Queensland city of Brisbane. We visited with our Canadian friend, Zoe, who also introduced us to all her friends, which was great fun! Turns out Brisbane is very picturesque, also very artistically oriented and mixes the older colonial and unique Queensland architecture with wonderfully modern homes and buildings. We loved the feel of the city and only left it because Zoe and friends had invited us to join them up in Noosa for a party weekend in a grand, luxurious house. Naturally of course, we had to join in and subsequently spent almost a week in Noosa, not just a weekend. Noosa is to Brisbane, as Whistler is to Vancouver- a party, relax and enjoy type of town. Of course the kite surfing opportunities made it a good place to be as well!

But, the luxurious time in the house had to come to an end and we returned to our car camping lifestyle. We drove from Noosa up to Hervey Bay near the famously touristic Fraser Island. We spent 4 days staying at a lovely little campground on the beach. Lots of relaxing, reading, swimming and looking at the Southern Hemisphere constellations in the evenings, while enjoying a glass of wine on the beach, very civilized. Harvey bay would have been a prime spot for Kitesurfing too, but sadly in the 4 days we were there the wind failed us, teasing but never quite building up enough to get out on the water. The beach area was lovely but what lay slightly inland from the lovely beach areas is strip mall hell, which seems to be spreading over Australia like a disease. While in the midst of strip mall hell we could have been anywhere in Canada or the US, kinda sad really.

From Hervey Bay we began the long drive up to the Whitsunday Islands near Airlee beach. The drive was pretty dull actually. We spent a night parked up in the country side near the town of Rockhampton, a place with some interesting residents, we left pretty quick. The last hour or two before Airlee beach, the launching spot for the Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef, was very beautiful and finished with a drive into Airlee where the unbelievably coloured water hugged the beaches. It was a challenge to get ourselves booked on a tour that included everything we wanted to do as it was Christmas and Summer Holidays and very busy. We found one, but unfortunately it was all to happen in a single day rather than the 3 day tour we had envisioned, nonetheless we were EXCITED about it!!!

After sorting out our tour we made our way to a lovely campsite in a mango grove (yummy!!!) that was full of great travelers from all over the world. We had a couple of days to check out the local area before our day trip. We traveled a little bit north to visit some quiet deserted beaches and had a lovely time wandering around in the white sand. No swimming in the water here though, the waters at this time of year have some very unpleasant, in fact deadly, jellyfish. You get the usual box jellyfish, which can kill you, but you also get some very nasty and dangerous tiny ones that you pretty much can't see, often less than 3cm long! Despite the beautiful looking but potentially dangerous waters we still enjoyed some lovely romantic beaches all to ourselves.

It was the morning of our big day out, and it was raining, how disappointing. We were about to blow all our budget for this part of the trip in a few hours and the weather sucked. Fortunately as it turned out, it was only on the mainland and not out on the islands or reef. One of our goals for the Great Barrier Reef was to see it from the air, in our mind this was really the only way to get a sense of scale for this, one of the Earths great wonders.

We headed over to the Whitsundays airport where we boarded a Cesna Caravan, which is a small 8 seat propeller plane that had been outfitted with pontoons and retractable landing gear, making it completely amphibious. We first flew out to a small island off the coast where we picked up the other 4 guests, we got some extra flying in since we had to first fly out to this small island. From there we took off from the small tropical bay and flew for about 15 minutes until we were over the gorgeous white silica sands of Whitehaven beach. We did a few circuits before we landed just at the edge of the shore and went for a walk onto a secluded section of beach. Arriving on the beach our pilot brought out a lovely champagne picnic, complete with cheese, crackers, fresh fruit and cakes, wow! this is the life! We spent about an hour and a half on the beach before heading back over to our plane for the next part of our trip. We all boarded the plane, buckled in and the we took off again from the water flying low over another beach and some island hills. This time our heading would be for a section of the great barrier reef, 60 miles from the main land and another 15-20 minutes from Whitehaven.

The first bit of the flight was just over deep blue water, but then the Great Barrier Reef came into view. The white water crashing on the edge of a giant section of reef. Before landing we were able to do a couple of circuits over the reef and got to see the famous Heart Reef. After enjoying the views from the air it was time to touch down so we can see what things looked like under water. Our plane touched down in a completely enclosed section of the reef, only accessible by special permit to small groups since much of the reef is now under protection.

As we touched down on the water i could see through the windows that our landing strip was a carefully picked line through clumps of shallow coral, the colour was beautiful. The plane eventually came to a rest at a small, semi sub, (half small boat, half submarine). As the plane was anchored we pulled away in the semi-sub and began to cover a small distance towards another section of the reef. We could go inside the semi-sub and sit in the darkened gray carpeted submarine part of our craft with big windows looking out into the water. We were getting pretty excited looking at all of the hard coral under the water, some of it bright blue but most of the colours were mauves and yellows, and of course there were tropical fish, big ones! Shortly we came to a stop where we got set up with our snorkel gear and hopped in the water, it was pretty neat that there was no land anywhere in sight yet here we were on the reef with a maximum depth of no more than 15-20 feet. Now, those who will remember something i mentioned a few paragraphs ago might be thinking; 'hey, what about those deadly jelly fish you mentioned?' Well, the great thing about the reef is that the jelly fish don't really hang out there, they prefer to be terrorizing tourists at the beach, so we didn't need to worry, we did wonder about some of the huge fish we saw though, they looked like they could do some real damage.

After a couple of hours our date with the reef had come to an end. We climbed out of the water back onto our semi-sub where we were greeted on the outer sun deck with some more champagne, great! I was thinking that the only thing better would be some more cake, then, out came the cake... Can we do this everyday???

The flight back was lovely, the late day sun made everything look golden. We swung north for a view looking South over a large section of reef, very large boats near the reef looked like tiny white dots, this was exactly how we had hoped to see it, from the air. We touched down on the small one hotel island of Hayman to drop off the other 4 guests and then got ready for another take off. Justin climbed into the copilots seat for a different experience on the way back, Justin taking the controls was pretty much out of the question, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

Like all great things, this day had to come to an end, it really was one of our best days so far on our whole trip. We left the airport and went back to the campsite and treated our selves to a really great meal and a tasty bottle of Australian wine. Waking up the next morning the whole thing seemed like a lovely dream, but flipping through the images on the camera confirmed that it really did happen.

We had a nice slow departure the next day and began to head inland for our route back South. We selected something a bit different for the drive back, roads that were a few hundred kilometers inland from the coast, so we could see some different geography. It sounded like it would be a great idea, at least that's what we thought. What ensued was 3 days of fairly repetitive scenery. It was pretty different geography and landscapes to the coastal areas, but after looking at it for a couple of hours it gets pretty tiring, only there is more 2 and a half days of it left to go. We needed things to keep it interesting, the iPod battery was dead, our 4 CD's had been played too many times, we began to stop for a look at some of the heaps of roadkill, just to keep things interesting, oh yeah, we were bored. But it did all eventually come to an end when we finally popped back out on the coast, amidst acres of banana trees, near Coffs Harbour, a couple of hours north of Port Macquarrie.

We spent one last night on a cliff top in a place called Scott's Head before heading back to our friend Sarah's place in Port Macquarie the next day.

We spent Christmas in Port Macquarie with Sarah and April's family which was really lovely, we felt really lucky to be part of a family to celebrate Christmas, Aussie style. We relaxed, ate, drank and played games over Christmas day and on Boxing Day enjoyed a mid day party at Sarah's, really good fun.

On the 27th of December the wind was up and Steff and i headed down to Old Bar (our favorite Kite-surfing spot on the coast) to start Steff's Kitesurfing lessons. Not happy to just sit at the beach watching all the kiteboarding fun Steff needed to be out there rippin' it up. While Steff was having lessons Justin was out on the water working on his Kitesurfing skills too. It will be great to get out on the water together and enjoy flying along under kite power, yipee!!!

Hope you enjoyed our Australian update and there are many new photos for you to view in the Australian Photo Gallery. :-)