Most of the family live in Buderim, near Nambour which is just below Noosa really. However, my Aunty Jennie who I mostly stayed with lives a little more out in the bush, so had to remove big spiders and chooks (that like to lay eggs in the house for brekkie) on a regular basis! Also got to sit with Nellie the emu - and yes in the photo i do looked scared and I am practically holding the creature down!! Stayed with lots of different relaitives so got a chance to meet many of the various cousins, aunts and uncles ranging from 3months - 93years!!

 

Its a really nice green part of Aus, loads of rainforest and some really nice beaches. Auntie Jen took me to Noosa, where the rich and famous live and also to the beach at Mooloolbah (according to some aussie guys i met, the way I say this is hilarious!) and saw my first WILD koala in the nature reserve! Had proper Aussie BBQ on Mooloolabah beach after some body boarding with my cousin Jill and her son Kieran. Then the next day they took me to the markets, which was followed with a dip in a very very cold rock pool with my little cousins and had my first introduction to jumping ants!! they all just came for me!! only one got me, but it don't half sting!!!

 

Also walked up Mount Coolum with my cousin Chris and the next day went to the christening of his daughter Olivia. That night satyed with my Uncle Dave in the house that he designed and built - it was amazing and triangular!! You will see  the photos, it was luxury staying in that en suite room with huge shower!! They just fed me a huge BBQ that filled me for days and then we watched the cricket!!

 

My last day here, my cousin Lloyd took me out on his bike for the day to seem some stunning views of the glass house mountains and we went down to this huge dam which was lovely! Couldn't tell you what type the bike was, but i think it was 700cc! Great fun!!

 

 

After the ranch I started making my way up the East coast, 3 nights at Coff's then couple of nights each at Byron and Brisbane. Coff's is pretty much a cheaper quieter version of Bryon - nice beaches, lots of water sports, rainforest and very humid weather!! In the photos, the cloudy ones are Byron, as we did get a refreshing morning of rain, so I decided to walk up to Cape Byron which has a big lighthouse and is the furthest mainland point on Australia. Got to see some really good surfers, dolphins and I think a turtle, though it could have been a big circular piece of seaweed....!! Then in the afternoon I went to a real proper hippy market with a couple of guys from the hostel. I think the market was pretty much made up of the population of Nimbin (a lot of you will know what I mean!)

 

In Brisbane spent a day at Australia Zoo (the one owned by Steve Irwin). The guy who drove the bus there was actually a friend of Steves as he worked with him for 2 years! Saw bird, snake, couple of tiger and couple of croc demos, most of which were in the huge $9million stadium!! The photos of the toroise eating a flower is Harriet, who is 175 years old and used to belong to Charles Darwin! Also got the stroke kangaroos (well, they're everywhere!) and koalas and feed an elephant. There were also keepers everywhere taking wonbats and cheetahs for walks!!

 

Oh, and I did get to see Steve himself zoom past on his motorbike!!

 

 

Hey guys,

Am just chilling out in a quiet little city called Armidale after a week of hard work on the ranch, learning how to be a Jilleroo!! Haven't got many pictures as didn't fancy riding through the bush with my camera, but there are some photos on the way! For now will just tell you briefly what I got up to:

 

Day 1: Once we bought our lovely 2nd hand clothes and alcohol for the week, we were taken on a 1.5hr drive to the ranch (half hour of that was just the drive from the road to the ranch!) We really were in the middle of nowhere, you could see for miles and all there was, was more hills and bush and the odd kangaroo!!

After an introduction with everyone (there was 18 of us varying from 20 to 40 odd, lots of dutch, few aussies, swedes and danes) we were introduced to our horses. Mine was a cool dude called Flash, appaloosa cross. Then we went for a 2.5hr ride. This was followed by dinner, which, like every other night was a delicious home cooked meal eaten round the camp fire!!

 

Day 2: Had a Natural Horsemanship Lesson (this is the special method they use to train their horses).

Had horse shoeing, lassoing and whip cracking lessons.

Mustered some sheep from the hills down to the yard, then did some barrel racing on the horses - my team won!

Talked about sheep husbandry and had a go at shearing a sheep

 

Day 3: Natural Horsemanship lesson.

Some weed spraying and digging in the hills (got to enjoy some fantastic scenery and were the first to see a huge storm develop and come over!)

After the storm, felled a few trees and bruised and stripped the bark, hard work but we did it in record time!!

 

Day 4: 2hr ride to find cattle, then 1 hr to muster them together, separated the calves from the cows.

After picnic lunch had a lassoing competition, using the calves.

Then went in pairs to catch and wrestle a calf to the ground (am talking medium sized calves, not tiny babies!!) Me and Susan were the quickest and best if I may say so myself, although we were probably the smallest in the group!!Yeehah!!

Watched one of the calves get castrated (the balls were later cooked on the fire and we all tried a bit!!)

Demo on working dogs, then herded all the cattle back to the top of the field (just so we could get a feel for being on a cattle drive!!)

Slept under the stars this night in a swag! A really clear night for it too!

 

Day 5: Rode to waterhole, stripped to our swimmers and took a swim with the horses.

Played a few more games - our team lost this time!

Went for 2 hr ride, trotting and cantering - on the way back saw my first real poisonous spider, was big and white with red bits and apparently has a bacterial venom - can't remember its name though!

Went back to Tamworth and ate as much as you eat buffet (roast, chinese, salad, fruit, dessserts), then enjoyed the Tamworth festival all night!!

 

 

Spent the week in Katoomba, Blue Mountains. Really nice little town, the home of the 3 sisters. For those of you who don't know, Blue Mountains are just to the west of Sydney and Katoomba is about 2hours train ride from Sydney. The 3 sisters is a famous rock/cliff formation you can see from my pictures! The hostel was also really friendly and homely, they even had a gas fire on when it was cold!!

 

First day went abseiling with 3 canadian girls - Rachel, Monica and Sacha oh and of course a guide, Paul! was great fun, surprisingly wasn't even afraid and really started to get the hang of it and pick up some speed! Did 2 10ft drops and 2 30ft drops. Then they all convinced me to go canyoning in the afternoon. I had no idea what this involved, but it turned out to be great fun, we just walked through a canyon (apparently only a small one, 1-2hrs) but you're walking through the river that runs through the canyon and sliding down the natural water slides (mini water falls).

 

However, there were about 5 times when we had to jump off one of these waterfalls into a pool of water from about 8-10ft high, one of them was the highest canyoners are allowed to do!! This was actually facing my worst fear - not the jumpiing, but the going under water!! We were only under water for a second cos the inflatable bag on our backs stop us sinking. Even so, every time i resurfaced I was having a panic attack and apparently not breathing!! Luckily everyone else really helped me through it but I can't say that I've conquered my fear. By the time I got back to the hostel I was really psyched though!! Also got to see my first wild kangaroos on the way back from the canyoning!

 

Got to visit the Jenolan caves - famous limstone caves, my photos do not do them justice for their size and spectacular stalagmites and stalagtites. Met 2 canadian guys called Mike and Lance on the bus there, so went round with them, Mike is the one you can see in the little cave!!

 

The rest of the week rained and was freezing. In the 2 hours sun we got on Tuesday I went with Jamie the manager of the hostel and my roomate Laura to the scenic railway, then we did a walk from the bottom of there, up the giant stairway and onto the first sister! If you go there, don't listen to the sign posts, we did a ''2 hour walk'' in 25mins!!! Got some photos of the 3 sisters and some good views from off them too. The waterfall is Katoomba falls. One of the pictures shows where we were on the 1st sister. Then you can see the big clouds that caught up with us on the way home!!

 

Even though it was raining again the next day, decided to take myself to Wentworth falls. Didn't really get to see the falls as it was so cloudy though! The walk only took an hour and a half and I got soaked through (felt like i had been canyoning again) however, the second half of the walk made it worth it as it was really pretty and ran along side the river which, due to all the rain, was really full and pretty rough!!

Some of you may have realised that in the  1st week of January the 5 day test cricket was playing in Sydney (Aus vs S.A) and pretty much everyone was watching it at the hostel! After talking to a guy in the hostel bar, managed to get myself an invite to join him and a couple of others at the Sydney Cricket Ground the next day!

Typically it was the only day that it rained almost all day, but we were just excited to be there! The pitch looks so much smaller than it seems on tv! We managed to watch about 21 overs and 2 wickets taken, so it was about 2 hours viewing and we got our money back as they played under 24 overs!!

The highlight of the day was ofcourse having McGrath standing right in front of us!! And I had to buy one of those big inflatable hands, so we wasted some time taking loads of photos of all of us with the hand! In order, you have Colin, me, Chris and Chris. Colin is also the one asleep in the rain!!

The next week I went to see ome tennis at the Medibank International (as I couldn't make it to the Australian Open, thought this would have to do!!) Spent most of the day on court 2, watched a double match: Knowle+Melzer vs Berdych+Suk, then a quarter final match: Srichaphan vs Karlovic (Srichaphan won) and a semi final match: Blake vs Clement (Blake won) 

Didn't have tickets to get into the stadium, but took a peek and the atmosphere looked amazing and it looked huge!! Got to watch Hewitt play on the big screen though, he got beaten by a young Italian lad called Seppi.

Decided to walk back to the train station instead of the free bus, so that i could check out some more of the olympic park. its really smart and spacious and green with lots of water features. Still looks really new and you can imagine being there for the olympics! its pretty much a small town made up of stadiums and hotels - and yes, there was still a MacDonalds there!

Found the Telstra Stadium opposite the train station (pretty hard to miss) got quite excited about this and had to take lots of photos!! It was so huge I was kinda awed by it, took a peek through the window and there is a whole shopping centre inside (was shut at the time) mainly selling rugby shirts!

In front of the stadium there were lots of poles with names of everyone involved in the Sydney olympics and paraolympics, incuding the olympic torch, which i got a photo of too!

So, yeah, I was being a bit of a tourist really and got a bit trigger happy with the camera!!

 

Its been a while since I've been on my website, so thought I should do some updating!!

 

As you can see from the pictures, new years was spent at Circular Quay watching the fireworks. I spent it with Aaron, Marc, Rob, Seb and Tara. We were told that it gets pretty packed quickly there, so set off at about lunchtime, with a huge bag of food, to get a place and spent the day in the baking sun! We were across the harbour from the opera house so got a good view of it all lit up and various boats floating around were lit up too.

 

Then at midnight we moved into position to get a good view of the bridge, however, from where we were the trees were in the way  of all the other fireworks that were being let off around the harbour. So as the bridge only lets off firewroks in 3 separate blasts, we had moments where we didn't see anything!! This didn't really bother us though as the bridge display was spectacular!!

 

 

Well, it was more of a gentle walk really, although i did decide to take a detour off through the bush to get to the little lighthouse on the headland and this ended up clambouring over rocks and stuff.  The whole walk was about 12km. I walked the first 5.9 in about 3 hours and thought I didn't have enough time to do the entire circuit so walked back the same way, however, this only took me an hour! So I guess I spent a lot of time enjoying the view on the way out - have put some of the photos on for you to see.

 

Was also having fun playing around with the timer on my camera, which is why there are a couple of  photos of my looking wind blown as I've quickly thrown myself into position!

 

Found a couple of really nice quiet little beaches which you can hire a kayak and paddle out to, which saves a 30-45min walk, so might do that another time! Anyway, felt good to do some exercise and get out of the city again!

 

Have been getting paid lots at my job and had to go and help out at another store yesterday as someone didn't turn up, so there was a girl on her own. Was a bit of a pain, as I was there relaxing, watching the rugby and cricket (2 tv screens you see), deciding what I was going to do for the day, when my boss rings up, practically begging me!! And it involved catching various trains and buses, then trying to find the shop in a huge shopping centre! However, the shop is much nicer and they have the cutest baby bunnies - my favourite!! As I was cleaning out the hermit crabs I also notced that one had a 'Winnie the Pooh' shell (you can buy them fancy shells and they're very fussy about which ones to use!!) Yeah, I can hear most of you saying 'small things....'!

 

Nothing much else has happened recently, I'm just trying to sort out plans for my next travels and earn as much money as possible to keep me going!!

Hey everyone,

 

Went to Manly today, this is just a half hour ferry trip from the main city. Didn't know what to expect, I just liked the name - Manly!! oh and a lot of people said it was worth a visit! Its quite a nice little sea side town, with one really busy beach, good for surfing and loads of smaller hidden quiet beaches. Unfortunately because its the holidays over here, the place was full of teenagers hanging around on the beach and stuff.

 

Anyway, I went off for a walk that took about 2 and a half hours and led me onto the Manly scenic walkway, which takes you along the coast line and around the headland - the pictures show some of the views. The whole walk was a mix of beaches (busy and quiet), lagoons, parks and nature reserves, also a golf course and tennis club, which really made me want to play tennis!!

 

Also visited the aquarium there, originally called Oceanworld! It was quite a small one, but they do dives with their sharks, hmm, wasn't tempted!! I became obsessed with trying to photo the turtle, but they pretty fast, have put the best photo on!! Also with the octopus (which stsrted jumping around) and the seahorse, which looks kinda funny os the photo picked up reflections from the glass - including me!!

 

Have got to get up at 5.30 tmw to get to Liverpool for 8.30 for a training day at the headquarters for my job. Then its back into the working world for me, well for a bit anyway!!

These are just some of the thousands of bats hanging aound in the botanical gardens that I mentioned, kinda cool if you're like me and have loved bats since about the age of 8!! There were loads of birds and other wildlife aswell (the big white ones are the ones that nibble your toes and steal your food!).

 

Had to take a photo of the bridesmaid, just to remind myself how lucky I was Dawn ddin't make me wear something like that at her wedding!! I mean, who in their right mind.....?!!

 

Oh, and got a job today, working in a pet shop at the most manic time of year - so if ay of you want australian presents for your pets you know who to ask!!

This week have mainly been exploring, which involves a lot of getting lost!! Luckily the locals are real friendly and if I looked vaguely confused (quite often) someone seens to appear to ask if I'm alright or know where I am! Also keep walking into sets of Superman, they filming the new movie here - to be released next year!

 

Have been to the Aquarium and tried to photo some platypus, but they're pretty quick! There are some huge ray and sharks there as well, one of the ray was bigger than me, I could only fit his mouth in the photo!  Went up to Sydney harbour, found some aborignes playing cool tunes with their didjiridoos (or didgiridoos!) and bought their album. Decided there is an optical allusion on the opera house because in all photos (even my own) it looks a stuunning white, but in real life seems yellow!

 

Took a ferry over to see Taronga zoo, involved a sky lift up to the top of the zoo. Got my photo taken with a koala and got to feed giraffes!! One of the photos shows a snakes sleeping on a branch - it amused me!!  Sun has atlast come out to play after its been raining every day since we got here, have enjoyed chilling out in the botanical gardens - found this area which has thousands of fruit bats hanging from the trees and big birds with long beaks (haven't found out what they are) that nibble your toes!!

 

Have honestly been looking for a job too, but exploring takes up a lot of time and is very important for me to get orientated!! Am going off to find Paddy's market now, meant to be pretty good! Found 'the rocks' market yesterday - some good ideas for christmas prezzies, if you're lucky!!

 

If you wanna check out what Aaron's been doing go to his web site, which is somewhere on this website!!