We moved!

The car thing didn't work out quick enough and we managed to get a couple of spots in a hostel in Ayr that arrange farm work for you - they're hard to come by so we were lucky that they had an opening.

So yesterday was a rush of getting packed and booking a bus but now we are finally here in Ayr! We will most likely be here for the next few months.

In order to work we need a tax number, so we went to McDonald's and spent $6 on food to use the wifi... it didn't work. So we came to a local bar and spent $9 on drinks to use their wifi... the website is currently under maintenance so we can't access the form we need :/

Give us a break, Ayr!

The photos that didn't make the cut

You may have noticed that Mathias' blog has mostly got nature and scenery pictures on it. After complaining to him that I wanted to share the more "holiday snap" pictures that he'd taken he told me that I don't appreciate art (omg I am dating my father :/) and we agreed that I could post some of his photos that he didn't really want on his own blog.

Et voila!

All of these photos were taken by Mathias. Even the ones that he is in. He's a superhero, don't you know.

Our first photo in Australia!

This is my "I just travelled for over 20 hours, I'm carrying all my worldly possessions on my back AND my front in the midday heat and I can't find the damn hire car place" face.

Mathias seemingly less distressed about all of the above than me.

Ok, here is the monster truck. I know, I know, it doesn't look that big in this photo but don't forget we spent the last 2 years driving a twingo.

Our first night in Australia - at Hervey Bay

Long Island with our welcome leis

Free kayaking! Woop!

A relaxing walk in the wilderness

Mummy wallaby chilling on the beach

Northern Queensland

We are kind of in limbo at the moment here in Cairns. We are waiting for some bank issues to straighten out and then, hopefully, we can buy a car and get out of here. The plan is to drive south, stopping at all the farms on the way and hoping one of them has work for us. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Last Thursday we spent the night in a rainforest, which was really cool. We drove up to Daintree Rainforest, which you can only get to by crossing a croc infested river on a ferry. I was pretty nervous about parking in a small space with my monster truck on the ferry but it all went well and the drive afterwards, on winding roads, was really fun after all the long straight stretches of highway we've been on so far.

A view of the Daintree River from the ferry. Spot the crocs!

Here is a list of the fruits that we tried and a picture of the fruit. How many can you identify?

I tried all 10 fruits - I'm quite proud of myself! Let's face it, I rarely eat any fruit and when I do it is only green apples, cherries or the occasional orange, so this was really out of my comfort zone. I can't say I liked many of them! The pommelo was really nice, it tastes a lot like orange. The orange was actually created when the pommelo crossed with another fruit. The Davidson plum (not a plum) was very sour but I liked that too. It's an endangered species of tree but the owner of the farm found a seed in the wild and planted it and now he gets a lot of nice fruit from it.

Here is the Sapodilla. It tastes just like brown sugar.

Here is Mathias trying the Davidson Plum (I made him try everything first!)

And here is the Black Sapote. Its other name is the "chocolate pudding fruit". Let me tell you, that is a LIE. I was so excited about a chocolate tasting fruit :(

Here is the man that runs the farm. He and his wife started it 25 years ago when they got bored of teaching. When they turned up there was no electricity, no phone lines, no anything! He had quite an amazing story to tell.

On the walk back from the farm Mathias found a way to amuse himself...

We had a lovely little cabin all to ourselves at Cape Tribulation. It was perfect, except for one "little" thing...

There was a beautiful beach there. There were signs everywhere about not going in the water because of crocodiles but there were still people in there! I was not tempted.

After that we headed back to Cairns to give back the hire car and we've been here ever since. It's a nice city. Yesterday we went to the botanical gardens where I was bitten by some tiny tiny black creatures and I now have red spots on my legs, arms and hands (typically, Mathias didn't get a single bite)! We are now waiting excitedly to see if they turn gangrenous.

There is a year round colony of flying fox bats here in Cairns. We watch them head out for dinner every night, which is pretty cool. They hang from these particular trees next to the library and they screech all day long. They also poo a lot, so walking on the path under the trees is a little nerve wracking. Here you can see them chilling in the daytime heat:

Let's see if this works...

He's having a whaley good time!

Finally! Here is the video of my humpback friend!! :)

Airlie Beach to Long Island

After two days of long drives we eventually arrived in Airlie Beach, which is the launching off point to the Whitsundays. We stayed on Long Island because they have an amazing resort that also has some cheap hostel accommodation, where we could still use the resorts facilities. It was great! A swim up bar, free kayaks, loungers, hammocks... Heaven!

There was also a lot of cool wildlife. We saw our first (and second) snake! Some huge lizard type thing, wallabies and lots and lots of different birds.

We landed back on the mainland with a thump - our next stop was Townsville, which is a little rough around the edges and our accommodation wasn't great. We have now arrived in Cairns in time for free pizza night! The heat is INSANE but hopefully some bready cheesy goodness will get us through ;)

Picture spam:

Airlie Beach

 A cockatoo joined us for breakfast

Welcome to Long Island!

Beating me at crazy golf

Baby wallaby!

Pelican Island at low tide

 Pelican Island at high tide

I genuinely thought these were statues for the first day

 

One of the bays we found on the hikes

 

Our first snake!

 

Not even sure what this thing is?!

 

Huge bird footprints

 

That is one relaxed Frenchman

 

(check out the swim up bar! Making drinking even more fun!!)

Recipe Time

Hobo Rice

Ingredients

Ingredients can be changed around as necessary. The most important thing is that it is all left over from previous hostel guests and labelled "help yourself".

Rice
An onion, chopped
Garlic, chopped
Half a jar of leftover tomato and basil pasta sauce

Method

Boil rice then drain and put to one side. Fry onions and garlic until soft, add pasta sauce. After a few minutes add rice to sauce and coat well. Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese after sifting out the ants.

It was actually a really good meal as we've been eating only peanut butter sandwiches and instant noodles so something fresh was great! And totally free as it had all been left by others. Cooking facilities on the island are basic so it was a bit of a challenge but it was fun. Enjoy!

Whale watching!

But first... here is the promised picture of the sunset:

The bat shots are a bit dark and I'm on macca (Australian for McDonalds) wifi so uploading is a ballache.

For mine and Mathias' birthday presents my ma and pa paid for us to go on a whale watching trip at Hervey Bay. The pick up time was 7:40am, which we thought would be painful, however the plus side of jetlag is the ability to get up at 6am without an alarm. We even managed to go for an early morning stroll on the beach before the shuttle bus arrived.

Side note - there are so many birds here! They start calling at dawn and they don't stop all morning. There must be a lot of different varieties as there are many different calls. I was lying in bed on my first morning here enjoying listening to them when in entered the most annoying bird ever! You know when someone is testing all the different ring tones on their phone? Well this was the bird equivalent of that, except all its different calls sounded like different car alarms. He drowned out all the other birds and did a cycle through all this different WAAAAAAAHWAAAAAAAHWAAAAAAAAHs.

Anyway...

At about 8:30am we set off on the boat - the Spirit of Hervey Bay - and headed up the Fraser Island coast. We quickly came across a pod of whales, one of whom was slapping his pectoral fins on the water to attract females. He was obviously super horny because he was thrashing around in the water a lot. I have a video but, again, the wifi is too poor here to upload it. Here's a photo instead:

We moved off and found other pods later, and eventually came across 3 teenage whales that were quite interested in the boat. They were circling around us and diving under us, it was amazing! I waited around the front of the boat and eventually one of the whales came out of the water right by me! I have a video but the internet is too shit. I'll upload later.

Here it is showing us its belly and tail:

Just at the end we saw a fully grown female - she was HUGE - and her baby! It was funny that we thought it was so cute and small when, in reality, it was 2 tonne when it was born and it only seemed small because we had been watching these giant creatures all day.

Fun fact for you: Human milk is 2% fat, whereas whales milk is 42% fat. It is so thick it is almost solid, and the mother excretes it into the water and the baby then swims into it, drinking it up. Enjoy your cereal, folks!

(I've added a feature at the bottom of the page so you can enter your email address and get a notification whenever there is an update, instead of having to keep checking. Hopefully it works).

We're here!

We finally made it to the southern hemisphere! Im so tired I can barely speak, so dont expect too much from me right now.

After 20something hours of flying we arrived in Brisbane, headed to the nearest phone shop for Australian sim cards then jumped into a hire car.

Of course, I made a wrong turn exiting the hire car place and almost immediately crashed. Perfect! The rest of the 3ish hour journey went quite well. The car is... a big silver beast (not sure if thats the actual brand name, but it should be). They didnt have the car we booked so they upgraded us for free to a monster truck. Gee, thanks! Looking forward to trying to park it.

Eventually we arrived at Hervey Bay where we're staying 5 minutes from the beach. We got down there just in time to catch the sun set and then we saw hundreds of bats heading out for dinner. Brilliant start to the trip.

Pictures to come, once I can lift my head off this table.

Meltdown time

Just an hour until we set off to the airport and Mathias sent my boarding pass to the wrong email address!

At least he's keeping things exciting! Fingers crossed it's smooth sailing (flying) all the way to Brisbane now. Looking forward to making the next post, which will hopefully include a picture of me on a sunny beach and/or having a well deserved vodka.

One week to go!

Finally I am starting to feel excited rather than anxious! We watched Bondi Rescue last night - a docu tv show about the lifeguards on Bondi Beach. The episode was set on Christmas Day and involved lots of surfing Santas and a group of drunk, naked girls being rescued from the sea. I'm not sure what it says about me that this is what has finally started to get me excited about Australia :/

This final week is set to fly by in a whirl of train rides, beers, birthday parties, beer and beer. Then, this time next week, we will be emptying out our backpacks and repacking them several times; double and triple checking that we have our passports; and I'll be saying goodbye to my family (and, most importantly, my cat):