I should start this post about our month in Australia with a paragraph which subtely alludes to the content, while it leaves open questions so you don’t close this tab in your browser before the second paragraph. But I can’t contain my grin…… Australia was absolutely bloody amazing!!!!!

Ness has been to Australia twice before, once for a 6 week trip in her gap year with one of her best friends, and then again for a family holiday staying with her godmother and namesake, Nessie.

I asked Ness what she liked about it, and why she wanted to go back. This wasn’t for doubting our trip, but to try and understand it, and decide how long we’d spend there. From reading travel books, I didn’t really ‘get’ what Australia was about, and what I wanted from it.  All I knew was that it has a lot of beaches, but growing up my experience of the beach was Jaywick, recently named as Britain’s most deprived area for the third year in a row. This Essex beach town is always grey, brutally windy, and the sand is more like gravel, it is so grim that Donald Trump used photos of it in his campaign as a scare tactic. I thought I hated the beach, and so the idea of travelling somewhere just for beaches didn’t enthuse me.

Turns out I was wrong, I love beaches, and Australia is awesome.

Not only does the Kangaroo Kingdom have the most amazing beaches we’ve ever seen, but the climate is amazing, the towns are so functional, the people incredibly welcoming and everyone is beautiful.

There are a few downsides, like drought, bush fires and an awful lot of animals that want to kill you, but we’ll brush over them for most of this post.

On 28th November we flew into Cairns in Northern Queensland. We really felt the culture shock in coming from 5 months in Asia… We felt outraged at having to pay the marked price for things, unable to haggle… We felt a little empty amongst the anonymous people passing each other by, random greetings on the street no more…. And we felt a little cheap knowing that we had left the rich and diverse cultures of SE Asia to spend the next 6 months in Western cultures not dissimilar to our own.

This was soon overcome. First of all was the practicality… We could speak the language, pay with card (no more huge quantities of cash!!), and buy things that fit us!

Our first stop was the shopping mall across the road from our hostel. Ness was dying to look and feel like herself again after months in grey trousers and grey t-shirts. Cue a small shopping spree! With some jeans, shorts, and vest tops, Ness felt much happier. She had taken makeup when we left home, but after less than 2 weeks her shade of makeup was far too light for her skin, so she had sent it back home, and was unable to buy makeup for a pale white girl in Asia. A trip to Myer (like Debenhams in the UK) and she looked all made up.

We didn’t plan to stay long in Cairns, after a couple of days we were collecting a hire car to begin our roadtrip. Other travellers had suggested that we look at relocations (we used transfercar.com) where you can apply to relocate one-way rentals back to their home. This was generally free, just paying for fuel, though you were given a time window to get it back. We went to Apex in Cairns to collect our car, feeling that the whole thing was a little too good to be true, and expecting some hidden costs. Nope, we were given the keys to a Hyundai Tucson (big comfy 4×4) with only 24,000km on the clock, and given the address for their office in Brisbane to drop it off 8 days later! It had actually been a 6 day relocation but we paid an extra $50 / £25 for 2 more days… Still an amazing deal.

We set off, heading South. I had grown up with the myth that in the UK we are weird for driving on the left, yet of the 9 countries we’ve been to so far only Cambodia and Vietnam drive on the right. The roads in Australia are like the US, very wide, very long and very straight, making long drives in a comfy car very easy.

We arrived in the village of Mission Beach, and had our first taste of Aussie beaches.  We enjoyed sunset on an endless stretch of beautiful sand, then after dinner went back out and layed on the warm sand gazing up at an incredible sky of stars.

We had arrived after the fires of Queensland in Northern Australia had died down, but the area was still struggling with a drought. We stopped off at a creek known as a local spa, but it had dried to a small stagnant puddle. We then went to a waterfall, Wallaman Falls (Australia’s tallest single drop waterfall – another contender in the competition of best landmark at an obscurely specific thing). It was still flowing and spectacular, though apparently far less so than normal.

We spent the night in Townsville, which despite being the most unimaginative name for a town ever, was the capital of the region. The town itself wasn’t much more interesting than the name, but was a pleasant place to spend the night, and we enjoyed a morning run up to Castle Hill before continuing South.

The next two stops were to be highlights of contrasting nature – the sleepy town of Bowen, and the cool dynamic town of Airlie Beach.

We spent a couple of nights in each, as ever we chose our accomodation on the drive there, and after falling in love we stayed a second night.

Bowen is known in Australia as the Mango town. Mangoes are such a big part of its identity that they built a huge statue of a Mango on the waterfront, hoping that it would attract more tourists. I doubt it has attracted anyone, but apparently caused some controversy over whether it is the right way up. Decide for yourself…

What was truly special about Bowen were the beaches. The peninsulas around are dotted with idyllic coves hiding beautiful beaches. A couple of these were serviced with toilets, showers and barbeques, while others were isolated and we could enjoy the whole cove to ourselves.

We relished a couple of days on those empty, peaceful beaches, before moving to the hubub of Airlie Beach.

As a backpacker haven and the staging point to the Whitsunday Islands, this town was wonderfully vibrant in a laid back and self assured way.

Ironically, there isn’t much beach at Airlie Beach, and few people use it since the sea in Northern Queensland isn’t safe for swimming. Not only are jellyfish abundant (they litter the shore), but the water is so warm that crocodiles are even a risk. Thankfully though, that does mean that it’s too warm for sharks, so it’s just the stingers and crocs to worry about.

This is where we introduce the utterly unbelievable facilities in Australian towns. Not only are there parks everywhere, with free outdoor gyms, epic play parks (I had a lot of fun!!), water fountains and free electric barbeques, but most towns have a ‘lagoon’. This is a swimming pool set out like a beach. The reality of an actual beach can be a little impractical at times, but you can lay on the grass beside a lagoon, go for a swim, use the park, buy a coffee, and not end up covered in sticky saltwater or sand. These social centres have a wonderful vibe and are great places to spend far too much time.

From Airlie Beach we found a good deal on a day cruise around the Whitsundays Islands. This is a ‘must see’ attraction which we decided we wouldn’t see due to cost, but at the last minute we changed our minds. We skimmed over the water through the beautiful archipelago and out to Whitsunday Island, the biggest of the islands and the home to Whitehaven Beach. This beach ranks as one of the best in the world (I don’t know who actually ranks these things), being some 7 kilometres long and formed of silica sand so fine it feels like icing sugar, and with crystal clear water.

After a couple of hours on the beach, listening to the sand squeak under our feet, we were  back on the boat around to a cove where we did some snorkelling, before returning back to Airlie Beach via a short stop on a beach resort. Admittedly the snorkelling was a bit dull after the scuba diving we’d done over the previous months, but there are worse disappointments to have.

As we’d rather suspected, The Whitsundays was a missable experience, it was beautiful but not quite worth the hype. We were glad we’d done it at such a good price, and also glad we hadn’t paid lots of money for it.

While in Airlie Beach, we were also lucky enough to meet Hannah and Ben, old friends of Ness’. Hannah had gone to school with Ness and with her partner Ben they were also travelling the world, with a similar itinerary to us but in reverse (they are also spending some time in South America and Africa). We crossed paths in Airlie Beach, us going South as they came North, and we had a lovely evening sharing our travel experiences and saying how we seemed so old compared to some of the gap year travellers in Airlie. I hadn’t met them before and it was great to spend time with such a genuine and lovely couple.

We continued South through the pleasant but unremarkable beach towns of 1770 (named for being the site of Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia in the year 1770 – which I suppose makes it remarkable), Agnes Water and Hervey Bay. Driving down the Capricorn Coast we were sad to realise that we were leaving the tropics after spending most of the last 6 months in them, and wouldn’t be returning to them for the rest of our trip.

Ness’ godmother Nessie lives in Brisbane and with her husband Gary they were so kind as to let us stay with them for a week as we arrived at the border between the states of Queensland and New South Wales.

If we weren’t in love with Australia when we arrived in Brisbane, we certainly were when we left!

Brisbane itself is just a beautiful laid back city. Set on a river a few miles from the coast, and only a few hours drive outside the tropics, it has the vibe of a beach town and the facilities of a big city.

We’d been unable to climb in Queensland due to the smoke and remnants of bushfires, but revelled in making use of Kangaroo Point, a huge cliff in a waterfront park in the city centre. We could lay by the lagoon in the day, climb when it cooled off in the late afternoon, then go for drinks or dinner in the evening. A easy, wonderful life.

Brisbane sits between the Sunshine Coast to the North, and the Gold Coast to the South. These huge stretches of coast are as beautiful as they sound. Surfers Paradise was only a 40 minute drive to the South of Nessie’s house, a surreal place where skyscrapers meet miles of golden sand. No longer really a ‘paradise’ in the peaceful sense of the world, rather a monument to bronze skin and six packs, but a really cool place to chill out.

On our final day in the area, Nessie and Gary took us to O’Reilly’s, a rainforest resort in the hills, where a novel highlight was feeding the local birds, who are pretty comfortable being around people.

We reluctantly left Nessie’s, but for the next part of our Aussie road trip we were relocating a campervan from Brisbane to Sydney, so we had a great van for no money at all. We thought it would be a great warm up for New Zealand where we planned to live in  a van for 2 months.

Setting off, we tried to visit Mount Warning, the highest mountain in the area, but the smoke from the bushfires was so bad that we couldn’t see the mountain from a nearby village, so we decided to knock that idea on the head.

We continued down to spend the night in Byron Bay, a haven for hippies, surfers and travellers. The place has a lot of hype, and it deserves it for being just a nice place to hang out.

We continued South, spending nights in South West Rocks and Elizabeth Beach, two beautiful quiet beach spots where we could just relax and enjoy beautiful golden days and clear starry nights.

The last stop in Australia was Sydney, where we were to spend 10 days. We arrived in time to have dinner with my cousin Hugo, and his beautiful wife and son, Caitlin and Fraser. We enjoyed a lovely evening with them in their flat in central Bondi, and they offered that we could stay there when they went up to Brisbane for Christmas in a few days!

Until then we spent two nights with Ness’ friend Kirsty and her partner Richard in their beautiful flat. Kirsty showed us around the Eastern beaches of Bronte and Bondi, equally beautiful compared to what we’d seen on our way down Australia, but very different in style. Whereas we had laid in vast empty beaches, and occasionally busy but laid back lagoons, this was like an all day beach party. Everyone on the beach looked like a model of some sort, and whether they were listening to music, playing volleyball, surfing or soaking up sun, everyone certainly had strut. Pull up bars along the beach were packed with men and women competing to show off,  and long haired teenagers rode huge curling waves into the shore.

Avid readers of this blog may remember an extroverted kangaroo called Fab who we met in Vietnam. Fab had been working as a climbing guide in Cat Ba when we met him, but has since returned to his home of Sydney. It was great to meet him again, and he showed us around Sydney city centre. We took the ferry into the city and saw the Opera House (not as iconic in real life as is portrayed in photos) and the Harbour Bridge (a nice big bridge, but also I didn’t quite see why Aussies love it so much). We explored the older parts of the city and a museum of the history of Sydney, then Fab took us for dinner.

A big part of our plans for Sydney had been to spend time climbing in the Blue Mountains, unfortunately they were on fire.

There has been a lot on social media about the bushfires in Australia, but I feel that the hype largely misses the point.

The fires aren’t necessarily as some social media graphics would suggest, but the bigger picture is devastating in a broader way. The fires are undoubtedly terrible at the moment, destroying homes and polluting the air in huge areas of Australia, while killing and injuring countless animals. People have sadly died in the situation, though often these aren’t directly from the fires rather many are from things like car crashes in fire stricken areas. The graphics we’ve seen tend to highlight any part of Australia which has been in fire at any point recently, which is sadly a lot, though one fire icon can cover a lot more ground than the fire necessarily does. Much of Australia isn’t actually on fire at the given moment, and is still perfectly safe and accessible. Australia isn’t a ‘no-go-area’ as some have suggested. What the Facebook posts don’t show are that while this year’s fires are especially bad, they are an annual event, regularly causing devastation across the country. Towns are built on the premise of ‘how do we survive worsening fires’; people live with this hanging over their head every year; meanwhile the government denies climate change. Much of Australia has been in a drought for years, there are children who have grown up never seeing rain, a concept which totally blew my British brain away. While cities generally seem to have enough water to get by, in rural areas the drought has had a profound effect, and the food supply is at serious risk as farms lack irrigation.

Our plans to go climbing in the mountains were off, so instead we went to a local indoor climbing wall for a fun couple of sessions.

We hadn’t seen as much Australian wildlife as we’d hoped on our trip. We’d been surprised to open the van door in one campsite to find a kangaroo as tall as Ness looking at us, and had seen some wallabys beside the road, but our attempts to see all other manner of creatures had been in vain.  So we took a trip to the Featherdale Wildlife Sanctuary.

After receiving our ‘passports’, we excitedly went around the sanctuary and got stamps for seeing cassowaries (big flightless birds), wombats, Tasmanian devils, dingoes, and best of all Koalas.

There was also a small dark building showcasing a big drawback to Australia. The reptile building was plastered with signs saying things like ‘world’s most venomous snake’ and ‘most deadly spider’. Seeing how good the camoflage was of these deadly animals made us a little bit thankful that we’d been unable to get into the bush.

Whilst at the sanctuary we decided that the Koala was Ness’ spirit animal, sleepy and very cuddly. We also discovered that kangaroo fur is surprisigly soft.

It turns out that you can’t cuddle a koala in New South Wales without a license (would love to know what the test involves) but we were told by my cousin Tom that they aren’t quite as soft as they look. We were lucky enough to be in Sydney at the same time as Tom and his lovely wife Katharine, who normally live in New York. Katharine is from Sydney and they showed us around more of the city, sharing a great day and then a lovely breakfast on our last morning.

Christmas was a strange affair. Travelling the world is an incredible and joyous experience for 364 days a year, but on the one day which is all about being with family, it reminds you of the drawbacks to this lifestyle. We went into Sydney on Christmas Eve as Ness wanted to sing some carols, but I was slightly trying to pretend that Christmas wasn’t happening so as to avoid thinking too much about missing friends and family.

Kirsty and Richard were kind enough to join us for some lunchtime drinks on the beach on Christmas day, so we had someone to share the day with. Christmas on Bronte and Bondi beaches was a strange experience. Beaches rammed full of people in red swimsuits and santa hats, all of them British tourists or ex-pats.

We’d spent a wonderful 10 days staying in Hugo and Caitlin’s beautiful flat, absolutely loving the luxury of a whole flat to ourselves in such a great area. Sydney wasn’t the part of Australia which suited us the best, but it had nonetheless been an amazing stay.

On New Year’s Eve we made our way to the airport, we were to fly to New Zealand overnight into New Year’s Day. This had been done purely for cost reasons, that particular overnight flight was cheaper than any other flight by hundreds of dollars, yet it was conveniently significant.

We finished 2019 in Australia, a country we had fallen so in love with. The friendliness and kindness of the Aussie people had warmed us, the climate had been wonderful, and the towns, villages and beaches had simply been amazing. I went into this month not really knowing what Australia had to offer, but came out crystal clear.

2020 would begin in the air for us, as we crossed the time zone into New Zealand and the new year. When the pilot came onto the radio to announce that we had just flown into a new decade, we were filled with excitement as to what would come next in a country known for being adored by adventure and outdoor lovers. We touched down at around 1am in Christchurch, and set off on a new adventure!