After an amazing time in the beautiful New Zealand our next destination was Australia, where we had 5 weeks to make our way up the East Coast from Sydney to Cairns, leaving the cities of Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide & Perth for another time (hopefully!).
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| Our route |
The most popular way to travel round Australia is on Greyhound buses (Premier buses are also a popular choice), however, we booked to go on Oz Experience in the hope that we would have a Driver Guide and be able to meet a group of likeminded travellers. Unfortunately though, on arrival in Australia, we discovered that Oz Experience had moved to its "winter schedule" and so we would be travelling on Greyhound buses anyway, even though we had paid more! Very annoying!
On our first morning in Sydney we went on a 3 hour free walking tour with a company called I'm Free, who also offer free walking tours of Melbourne. If you are planning a trip to either of these cities I would definitely recommend doing the walking tour as it was a brilliant way to see things that we otherwise might not have seen! We spent the rest of our day sunbathing in the nearby Botanic Gardens, before heading out to the suburbs where we went for a BBQ at Laura's family friends house - what a great way to start our time in Australia!
The next morning we went on a shopping trip (Sydney is amazing for shopping) and I just couldn't resist the lure of Topshop and ended up buying a dress that probably cost me twice what it would have at home - oops! Ed arrived in Sydney in the afternoon so we went for a walk to the harbour, then that evening my Mum's cousins son, Robbie, very kindly took us out for dinner at really nice place called The Sheaf in Double Bay.
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| Sydney Harbour Bridge |
For the next few days, Alex & Laura stayed with Steve, a family friend of Alex', and his family, whilst Ed and I stayed in Bounce Hotel, a budget boutique hotel, which was recommended to me by Hannah, my older sister, and it was amazing!
On our third day in Sydney, we took the ferry to Manly Beach where we met Laura, Alex and Brad and Chippy, the boys Ed is travelling with. I would definitely recommend going to Manly if you're going to Sydney, as on the ferry trip you get such a great view of the harbour! The following day we went on the ferry again to Taronga Zoo, where we saw koalas, kangaroos and an amazing seal show - without a doubt the best zoo I've ever been to!
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| A koala at Taronga Zoo! |
After a great few days in Sydney, we boarded our first Greyhound bus up to Spot X Surf Camp, an inclusion on our Oz Experience pass. Rubbish weather, even worse accomodation, and the surf lesson was also pretty useless! Our sleeping bag liners got their first use of the trip at Spot X - grim.
Two days at Spot X was two days too many, so we were very pleased when the bus arrived to take us up to Byron Bay! On our first night in Byron Bay we stayed in Nomads hostel - such a nice hostel. To book all of our hostels in Australia we used Hostelworld, a website and app, where people can rate the hostels, so you can then rank the hostels by rating. So useful, as we then stayed at the best rated hostel in each place we went!
The following day, we met my Mum's cousin, Terry, and her daughter Lara, who were on holiday in Byron Bay, and Terry very kindly offered for us to stay with them for the rest of our time in Byron Bay. On our second day in Byron, we went on a day trip to Nimbin, another inclusion on our Oz Experience Pass. Nimbin itself was a tiny street filled with hippies and drugs and definitely not worth the visit, but the trip was a good way to meet people, who we then met that night in Cheeky Monkeys - a great club in Byron Bay where the dancefloor is made up of picnic tables. So much fun! On our last day in Byron Bay, Terry and her husband Neil booked us a surf lesson with Style Surfing which made us realise just how rubbish our other surf lesson had been. All three of us managed to stand up on nearly every wave and it was a great hangover cure!
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| Nimbin |
From Byron Bay we headed up to Surfer's Paradise, which ironically wasn't a little surf town, but a city filled with high rise hotels - certainly not paradise! The good thing about Surfer's Paradise is that there are tonnes of activities to do if you have the money, but as we are on a budget we spent our day cloudbathing.
Brisbane was our next stop, where we spent the majority of our time at Southbank, a lovely area next to the river, with a manmade lagoon, museums, art galleries and cafes. On our second night in Brisbane, we met up with Dave and Arj, Alex and Laura's friends from home, for a night out. From what I can remember (not much) it was the best night out we've had whilst travelling!!
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| Southbank, Brisbane |
Our next destination was Noosa, where we stayed with Al's Nanna's friend Jill for two nights, then with Jill's daughter Caroline for one night. Noosa is such a pretty place! Whilst there, Jill took us on a trip to the nearby coastal towns and we went on a walk in the Noosa National Park - lovely!
From Noosa we travelled up to Rainbow Beach, which is where we did our Fraser Island trip from. You can get to Fraser Island from either Rainbow Beach or Hervey Bay, with Rainbow Beach probably being the best choice, as it is only a 10 minute ferry crossing compared to 45 minutes. We did our Fraser Island trip with Rainbow Beach Adventure Company, who offer a self-drive 4WD tour of the island in a convoy of 4 cars, with a guide in the lead car. The other option on Fraser Island is to go on a 4WD coach but I would 100% recommend the self-drive trips over a coach, even if you can't drive, as driving or being a passenger in a 4WD car is the whole point of the experience and it just wouldn't be the same in a coach!
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| Fraser Island |
On our first day in Fraser Island we drove to Lake Mackenzie, where our guide, Muzza, found some tiny turtles for us to look at - so cute! From Lake Mackenzie we headed up to our campsite for the night. It is safe to say that if you are more of a glamper then this trip is not for you! On our second day we went to Eli Creek (a lazy river that you can float along in), the Maheno shipwreck, then to the Champagne Pools, which are rockpools that are deep enough to swim in, where waves crash over the edges making the pools look like fizzing champagne! From the Champagne Pools we drove to a massive sand dune which we hiked up (seriously tiring), before heading back to the campsite. That night we played a hilarious drinking game with the lovely Swiss girls that we shared a car with, which did not make for a pleasant drive back to Rainbow Beach the next day (via Lake Wabby which we walked to for 40 minutes in the pouring rain).
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| The Maheno Shipwreck |
So we arrived back at Rainbow Beach, looking like drowned rats and feeling slightly worse for wear to be greeted by Ed, Brad & Chippy in their Jucy campervan. (If hiring a campervan to travel round Australia, then Jucy are definitely the most popular company to hire from.) The next day, the boys headed off on their Fraser Island trip and we headed further up the coast to Agnes Water. Agnes Water is an even smaller place than Rainbow Beach, yet somehow I managed to get lost whilst on a run and had to hitchhike back to our hostel! At Agnes Water we stayed at Southern Cross which had a great pool to sunbathe next to.
Airlie Beach was our next stop, which is where you sail to the Whitsundays from. We spent 2 nights in Airlie Beach before our Whitsundays trip, staying at Nomads hostel (Nomads is a chain, with other chains of hostels including Base, YMCA & YHA), which was so nice! The morning of our Whitsundays trip we woke up to unbelievable weather - so lucky as the week before, most trips were being cancelled due to a storm! We had booked a 2 day 2 night trip on a boat called Powerplay, which takes 18 people plus the crew. There are hundreds of boats to choose from and we chose that one as it's not a booze cruise, but still for people our age. On the trip we stopped at 4 snorkelling spots and at one we saw 5 turtles which was incredible! The boat was ideal for sunbathing and the crew literally did not stop feeding us - without a doubt, the best thing we did in Australia!
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| Whitehaven Beach, Whitsundays |
After returning from our Whitsundays trip, we headed up to Townsville where we took a ferry over to Magnetic Island for a 2 night stay at Base hostel, which was included on our Oz Experience pass - definitely the best inclusion. The hostel was right on the beach and would be better described as a resort! On our full day there, we hired a white and pink "topless" car to explore the island, and whilst there wasn't much exploring to do on the small island, it was such a fun day, plus we got to feed some wild rock wallabies!
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| Topless! |
Our next stop was Mission Beach, a really popuar spot for skydiving. Having already done a skydive in NZ this made it a pretty pointless stop for us as there is not much else to do their apart from sunbathe.
Our final stop on our Greyhound route was Cairns where we spent 4 days, staying at the incredibly popular Gilligans hostel, complete with its own club! In Cairns we spent all 4 days at the manmade lagoon, as we managed to miss our trip to the Atherton Tablelands (oops).
From Cairns we flew to Darwin as this is where we flew to Bali from. For some reason, we had dismissed Darwin as a transfer day but unexpectedly, it was such a great place! It has a really nice waterfront with a wave pool and a deckchair cinema, and is home to the vast majority of Australian Aboriginals making it a culturally interesting place also! Darwin is also home to a huge number of crocs, so on our one day there we hired a car and drove up to the Adelaide River where we went on a jumping crocodile cruise. We got so close to the crocs and although it was pretty scary it was amazing to see them in their natural environment!
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| Jumping croc!!! |
Whilst the weather let us down a lot, I really enjoyed Sydney, meeting my Australian family and our Whitsundays trip, all making Australia well worth the visit!
Next stop... Bali!
