Finally put some of our Australia photos on our photo buckets site!
Check them out at
http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll220/Lesley_And_Kerrin/Australia/
After coming down the Gold Coast and doing some of the theme parks when I was here before, it seemed rude not to check some of them out while we were passing. The first of them was Warner Brothers movieworld where all of the rides and shows are to do with Looney Tunes or one of their films. It was a really good day out with some pretty big roller coasters and rides and got to meet scobby doo and the gang and a couple of other characters.
The next day we headed to Seaworld which had brillinat dolphin, sealion and waterski shows and loads of marine animal enclosures, with Lesley getting pretty attached to the dolphins and us ending up with millions of photos of them, really cute though, there was a couple of rides there too to check out.
the last of the theme parks was suppoed to be Wet & Wild a big waterpark, which was pretty good, but it was bloody freezin' , yes freezin in the Australian summer and the queues were pretty huge so it kinda spoiled it but still good. We had hope to go to Byron bay for a few days, but there were was not a single bed in the whole town available, appartently everyone wanted to be there for christmas so we had another few days in Surfer's Paradise.
With one of our spare day we headed to Dream World, full of rides, with the Big 6.
The Giant Drop a 120m high vertical drop, then there was the tower of terror a roller coaster that shot you out horizontally like the Rita ride at Alton Towers which then shot you 3/4 of the way up the Giant Drop tower, there were 2 pretty good roller coasters in the big 6, the other 2 were The Claw, a giant swing that swung you pretty high and upside down a bit and The Wipeout which spun you round and round like, felt like being in a washing machine. There was a really good tiger enclosure where they had a few adults and some cubs out playing, so cute! they had a show as well showing them doing some stuff they do in the wild like climbing trees, jumping and fight stances. We even got to stroke a tiger cub, wel chuffed. We got a deal at the end of the day to come back for a second day for $10, so it filled our remaining day too. That night we had our 16 and a half our overnight bus journey to Sydney to look forward to, :-(
We got really excited about heading to Brisbane, with Lesley getting to meet my furthest away relatives my cousins in Brisbane. We started off the week doing some of the touristy stuff in the city centre checking out the fake beach at South Bank (really nice), Queensland museum and a couple of other places just enjoying the city. A few days in we headed out to Mike & Wendy's (my aunt & uncle) for a BBQ, was so good seeing everyone my three cousins Andrew, Megan and Jaime & their partners, Mike and Wendy & Max and Roslin (Wendy's sister and her husband) who we stayed with for a bit during my last family trip to Oz.
We soon after headed out to stay with Megan and Ben at their place and had a brilliant time either being at theirs or up at Mike and Wendy's for BBQ's, at Andrew's 26th birthday party, round at a friend of their's party or down at Max & Roslins. We had a ball the whole week with a good few hangovers thrown in for good measure. Thanks guys for having us, was great to see you all, hopefully wont be so long til the next time.
God it was good gettin to Australia and back to normal food again, that beans or baked tattie with beans never tasted so good! Started off up north in Cairns which we soon found out was a ghost town and much smaler than we thought so only lasted a day there, down in its nice waterfront.
Next stop was Townsville, really nice wee place with a really nice beach front, nice swimming pool, stinger free bits etc. We checked out Reef HQ, a reef in captivity, with sharks and tropical fish it was just like being diving again really cool.We had hoped to do some diving in the Great Barrier Reef but it was way too dear.
20mins over the water was Magnetic Island, really small island with loads of nice little bays. WE did a few nature walks and seen Koalas in the wild on one of them, we got VERY excited!!! Better was to come though as we came across some wild rock Wallabies on our walk home and sat feeding them corn from our hands for about an hour, so cute and even more excitement!!!! We seen a couple of possums that night back at the hostel, so we did pretty well for australian animals that day. Oh yeah and the cool little Rainbow Lorikeets you get to feed in the zoo are everywhere here. The island was pretty much dead apart from "schoolies", all the kids just finihsed school coming for an underage drinking week, god we felt old.
Back on the mainland we headed to Airlie beach where we went crusing round the Whitsunday islands, had a couple of snorkelling sessions over the reef then headed up to a lookout point for amazing views ofver Whitehaven beach. On the beach itself, it had pure white sand, suppoedly the purest in the world 99.8% silica, felt amazing underfoot, crystal clear water, amazing! We headed of to do a bit of stinray spotting and came across a few pretty big gold ones. Airlie itself wasnt up to much, but was good for a few days chilling out.
Hervey Bay was our next stop down the coast for the world famous Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island. It was massive (125 km long) with only deep sand tracks to get about, so we got about in a big 4WD bus/ truck thing, seen loads of people stuck so was glad we werent driving ourselves. The tour itself was brilliant, the first day we had a wander round a pretty wee lake, a couple of walks throgh the rainforest and down by a creek then up to the spectactular, yes it was that good, Lake Mackenzie. It was amazing with the same sand as Whitehaven beach, crystal clear water fresh water you could drink and was warm, just like swimming in the bath, so good!! We met loads of nice folks on the tour and got good mates with Trish and Evelyn, a pair of irish sisters who we are hope fully gonna meet up with in Sydney and Jason and Lauren, a Canadian couple.
The second day we saw a sand blow, where the sand had completely covered a big section of the rainforest and smothered it, went swimmingin Champagne pools, wee rock pools that looked like champers, seen inside an old shipwreck, seen wild dingoes and went swimming in a creek. We went down to see the sunset then for a good few drinks at night. Day three was walking through the desert for what felt like ages then got an amazing wee lake Lake Wabbyand had it all to ourselves. there were some steep dunes up the sides of it so we got a body board out and boarded down them, great fun. Then spent the afternoon by Lake Birrabean, a bit like Mackenzie but better and chilled all afternoon, with nobody else there, amazing.
After out trip we headed down to Brisbane via Maryborough, the birthplace of the woman that wrote Mary Poppins so we couldnt resist stopping off to have our photo taken with the Mary statue and having a wee nosy about town, before heading down to Brisbane.
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