Queen of the desert

After fox flying we started our journey to the middle of the country. We drove for about nine hours to a town called Charters Towers and slept for a couple of hours, got up and drove through the desolate outback, and entered the Northern Territory. Right away I almost hit a kangaroo, it jumped right in front of the car, and shortly after that I hit a batch of birds. The road is very long and very straight, and I drove for 13 hours. Oh, and our AC went out a few days prior to this, so were in the outback with no AC and 115 degree heat. Then we here an alarm go off in the car, and sure enough we find out later that means the car is overheating. We make it to a "place", not town, but a place called Barkley Homstead which isn't even on the map, and decide we have to camp there, and have the auto mechanic check it out in the morning. There were so many grasshoppers, beetles and flies here you couldn't even stand outdoors with out getting attacked by a grasshopper. So the next morning, Dusty, the auto mechanic, who obviously heard about our troubles rolls up next to us in his huge tractor and goes to work on the van. This guy is quite a character, he looks seventy but hes probably only fifty because hes so wrinkled from the sun. Dusty figures we will be all right if we stop driving 150 k an hour and sends us on our merry way. We make it to Alice Springs, the town in the middle of nowhere, why did we come here again? Oh yeah, to see a big rock four hours further into the outback. So the next day we headed for Ularu, where Ayers Rock is. There is a really nice resort there, and we stayed at the campground. Its weird to see this oasis in the middle of the desert buzzing with tourists. It was so very hot, and the flys were terrible. Everyone was walking around with fly nets over their heads. At all times until the sun went down there were at least twenty flies feverishly trying to get up your nose and in your ears, it was extremely irritating. At sunset we went to a look out at the resort and watched the sunset on the rock, it was really beautiful. The next morning we got up at five thirty and joined the convoy into the National Park, which is a lot closer to the rock then at the resort, to watch the sun rise. After, we walked around the thing, it is 10k around and took about two hours. There is a spot for you to climb it, but the Aboriginals advise not to because it is sacred, so I don't know why they let people do it in the first place.

We drove back to Alice and stayed at the Wicked campers garage for two nights with our new friend Matt that works at the place by himself and lives in the vans. It was his birthday and he had no friends there so we bought him a cake and played charades for two days. We drove the long distance up to Darwin only to find there is really nothing in this town except for bums and drove right back out. Just out side of Darwin there is Litchfield National park were we stayed and played. It was so much fun. There were rock holes called Buley Rock Holes, and other waterfalls that we played in for hours, there was a rope swing and cliff jumping, and thank god no crocs. There was a waterfall closed off for crocs and flooding though, this is their territory! Every day the paper has a front page story on crocodiles, whether it was a sighting or attack or other. After the funnest National park ever, we spent a couple days driving to Broome (i said a broome chicka broome...), and it was the hottest I've been so far, so very humid. Broome is an extremely cute town, with a lot of plant and bird life, which is refreshing after two weeks in the outback. But it is so unbearably hot, we have to keep moving south.

Cairns or bust!

We arrived in Hervey Bay on Monday the 16th. The following day (st patricks day!) we went to frasier island, which is the largest sand island in the world. Only four wheel drive is aloud on this island and rarely do people go by themselves without a tour group. Oh but we did. After skimming through our camper guidlines fine print, and accidently skipping the large bold letters saying NOT to take the van on frasier island, we bought tickets for the ferry. Wow. It was AWSOME. I drove the whole time and it was intense. We almost tipped a couple of times, it was two feet of soft sand we were in and an extremely rough track. I actually had alot of fun driving! But it was very beautiful, we went to Lake Mckenzie which is right in the middle of the island, pure blue fresh water. This island has a big population of wild dingos, you know the saying, a dingos got my baby, well I believe that happened on this island 30 years ago. We saw one, and alot of different lizards, including a huge black one with yellow speckles that was four feet long. I also got over a houndred sand fly bites and I look like I have the chicken pox. Its ridiculous, they itch terribly. St patties day night was fun, met a bunch of different people.

The next day we drove for eight hours and stopped to sleep in a town called Marlborough. Oh by the way, I'm quit a year yesterday, yea! Go me! At dusk we saw the bats start swarming as usual. The bats here are incredible, they have a two to three foot wing span. They start off by flying in a big circle, like they are rallying, but we were not prepared for what we saw, it was probably the most incredible sight Ive seen so far, there were hundred's of thousands of bats, they said there was over a million in that colony. They are very stinky noisy creatures. There is a video on utube under Jrompls, I'm having a hard time getting pics on this blog, sorry y'all. That night a construction crew cut down most of the trees in the area, so when the bats returned at dawn, they had no idea what to do, they all flew around chaotically, they had lost there home, it was actually quite sad. Also at this campsite there was a large green frog in every toilet!
The next day I drove eleven hours to Cairns, woo hoo! We decided to treat ourselves and got a cabin for a few nights- very luxurious. We went on a full day sailing trip through the great barrier reef to an island to go snorkeling. I thought I was going to puke at first but I got used to it. There where several other people puking off the sides and puking into bags. We decided to up grade from snorkeling to scuba diving- it was awesome, Ive never been and I'm very afraid of the ocean, but I felt pretty calm and really enjoyed it. Saw a bunch of beautiful fish, held a sea cucumber, saw several sea turtles, and found nemo. I enjoyed it so much I bought a second session. The next day we went fox flying in the Dain Tree Rain Forest. Zipp cording that is-so much fun. The rain forest was beautiful! Now we are off to a town called Alice. ALICE SPRINGS OR BUST!

The not so sunny sunshine coast

We where on the sunshine coast, named because its sunny three hundred days of the year, at the perfect time, right on the edge of a cyclone! We had planned to be in the great barrier reef a lot earlier, but it was really badly flooded, and there was a cyclone hanging around that was unpredictable. So we spent the time in the stormy, but not as bad as if we went north, not so sunny sunshine coast, and waited quite literally till the storm blew over.
We spent three days in Brisbane. Brisbane is my favourite of the bigger cities so far. It reminds me of Minneapolis, its right on a river, and has the big town small city feel. We did a lot of shopping there, visited some museums, walked all over, it was rainy most of the time. Our car wouldn't start the second day we were there, so i held up jumper cables and tried to wave some one down. Finally this crazy but very generous Greek guy named jghsvijdfhgkjashgs stopped to help, and when he couldn't start it after a half hour he let me use his phone to call the camper company (who couldn't help us till the next day), and then gave us a lift in his pickup to the city cat, which is a river ferry. We took the city cat to Jessica's very flamboyant friend Scott's uni apartment, that he shared with five people, were we got a long needed shower, and enjoyed Brisbane's night life. After sleeping on their two very small couches, we bid a very thankful farewell and went back to the car to wait for the wicked people to come jump the van. I really haven't had a more successful car breakdown, they came, they jumped, we followed them back to the station where they fixed the problem and we were off! The rest of that day we spent on the city cat going up and down the river, which is only a couple of dollars, just enjoying the view and the ride.
That night we drove to Mooloolaba and bang, we where in the hurricane. Cyclone Hamish, I think it was called. We watched the waves that night, along with half the town, and ate pad thai. I saw a three story wave, it was incredible, and it scared the crap out of me, as soon as I saw it I wanted to run just out of instinct, but we were a safe distance away. It was so windy it was hard to walk. We were too late to get a campsite so we stayed in a parking lot where there were other vans camped. The van shook violently from the wind all night, it was pretty eerie and I dreamt about killer waves all night. It was a lot calmer the next day. We explored the town, its a cute little surfers town, and got a campsite. Although we really were not planning to spend money on campsites, its really a lot easier, less stressful, and a real treat to have one, plus you meet a lot of travelers. We went to the Australian Zoo the next day, which is the second largest zoo in the world and its the one Steve Irwin started. It was amazing, I feed an elephant, watched a crock show, touched a koala, feed and hung out with a ton of kangaroos and wallabies. There my favorite. I'm getting one. There were reptiles, a million birds, koalas, dingos, Tasmanian devils, camels, wombats... I think i'll just stay here and work there.
That evening we headed to Noosa Heads (which is right next to Gympie, which is right next to Kin Kin.. how did they come up with these names? ill find out) where we stayed for the next four nights. It was completely storming by the time we got there and had to cook in the wind and rain. The next day we RELAXED. There was a TV so we just chilled and watched TV, I haven't watched for over a month so I was probably the most excited person in the world to watch the Ellen show and the biggest loser Au. The day after that was the Saturday before Saint Patrick's day, so of course we went pub hopping all day, what else are you supposed to do? We nursed our Guinness hangovers at the beach the next day, the only sunny morning for a while, and chatted with an older British and Israeli couple for a couple hours. After eating a lot of greasy food, and feeling lazy, we decided to treat ourselves to a movie, hes just not that into you, which I actually really enjoyed. We camped on the road that night next to the campground, deciding to save some money after spending so much the day before. After getting woken up by the lawn mower guy the next morning, warning us the trooper was going to be around soon to hand out tickets, we headed to Hervey Bay.

The Gold Coast

Its Sunday the 8th of March and I'm in Brisbane, just got here this morning. For the past week we have been traveling the gold coast. Its very hot here, and its just going to get hotter so I best get used to it. Last Sunday we ended up going to the koala hospital which was excellent, they have got to be the most adorable creatures I've ever seen. They had a huge outdoor area were the koalas stay and we went on a very interesting tour. It was very windy and 3 huge branches fell, I needed a helmet. Later that day we drove up to Coffs Harbour and just spent the night by the ocean. On Monday we took off right away for Byron bay. We heard by almost everyone we have talked to that its the best town in basically all of Australia , and it is a sweet funky little town, full of all different types of people and shops. We spent a few days there, walking around the shops, beaching it (I played in the waves for about an hour, y'all should be proud of me!), and met different people. We couldn't find a place to camp for the first night, they are really strict there about backpackers camping any were they want, probably because there are so many, there were tons of other wicked vans and camping vans. We were asking around and ran into two English couples we made buddy's with who took us under their wing. They led us to an old abandoned hippie camp called the quarry that they have been sleeping at for the past week, and we slept there after chatting all night. The second night our friends and us found an old abandoned hotel and stayed in the parking lot, but got booted out at 6am, so we went to the quarry, but got booted out again by a huffy cop. So we moved on to Surfers Paradise and got a camp site, which is pretty much paradise to us! Toilets, showers, laundry, internet and a TV! We stayed there 3 nights and it was a blast, it was mostly other backpackers in vans cuz they to realized you can't park on the streets on the gold coast. We went to an amusement park, which not only had sick rides but a small zoo as well-I fed a kangaroo, saw a hundred different kinds of amazing birds, there is a bird called the Ibis that you see everywhere and its the funniest bird! Dingos, which look like any normal dog, wombats, which look like RUS's- or pigs, crocs, koalas, lizards, snakes... it was fantastic. We went to hooters that night cuz we NEEDED wings, plus they were buy 20 get 20, they thought we were amazing cuz we got the hottest ones (they really don't know hot here), and were drinking pints, no girls drink beer here. The next day we went to the ocean and played in the waves, and theses are serious waves . Biggest ones yet, dangerous. Never turn your back on the ocean. Playing in the waves have got to be one of the funnest things for me, but i'll only go in if there are loads of other people. Some times I psych myself out and think i'll get eaten by a shark and have to catch a wave in. Yesterday we went zorbing!!! It was hilarious! You basically get in a hamster ball with some water in it and roll down a hill. Genius. We stayed in a camper park in Jacobs Well last night (down by the river), I got stung by something I stepped on. It was pretty painful. My flip flops broke about four days ago and all though I have trainers i've just been going barefoot, actually that's pretty common here, some people never ware shoes, no shoes no shirt no problem! I did get some flips today though in downtown Brisbane. Jess has a friend here so we'll meet up with them, and hopefully stay in their driveway! Yep, we're bums!