Koalas, Great Ocean Road, Boxing Kangaroos, Great Barrier Reef and more...

G'day all!!

So here we are, half way through our trip...where has the time gone? We've been meaning to write this blog for aaggeess but just haven't got round to it! So we're making a special effort and taking some time out from drinking goon to update you with a few of our adventures from the past month or so!!

After Alice Springs we split up for 10 days...

Shelley went to Perth:

Getting up early after our night out with friends from the tour and without my left arm (Karen), I flew alone for the very first time, although i met one of the boys that'd been on the tour with us so I guess I wasn't completely alone. A half hour taxi ride to Melville and the place i'd call home for the next 10 days with Chris and 3 kiwi's. The weather was gorgeous in Perth, around 31 degrees during the day and never lower that 20 at night. When Chris was working i went off and explored the city centre and Fremantle and on his days off we spent a lot of time at the beautiful beaches, my favourite obviously being in the City of Stirling! Met up with Stevie Cruz-Martin one night and had a really fun/drunken night in Leederville. Was so good to catch up with her and the 3 of us enjoyed the busy mid-week nightlife. Went on a tram ghost tour in Fremantle one night and this included a torchlight tour of Fremantle Prison which was really cool. Went to a real live Aussie Barbie in Perth too with Stevie and all her friends. Had lots of Sangria and a really gd day. Perth is trully an underrated city and I had an awesome time with everyone there.

Karen went to Adelaide and Sydney:

When I got to Adelaide, the weather wasn't too great and so most of my time was spent looking round the Museum and Art Gallery and shops! I really liked it here though, even though it was a bit colder! I met up with Trudi (David's friend from uni) and we went for drinks and dinner which was lovely and I met some cool people in the hostel who I went out for pizza and $3 beer with which was really fun!! I spent 3 days in Adelaide before heading to Sydney to stay with Steph Dow in Paramatta where she has a flat while she works out here! It was great just to be able to spread my stuff out everywhere (although I'm sure Steph would disagree as there was a point when you could hardly see the floor!!)! It was also good to have a nice shower and do some washing in a decent machine!! While I was there, we went to the Sydney Olympic stadium to watch a rugby game, Paramatta Eels vs South Sydney Rabbitohs...not the most exciting of games but it was pretty good and cool to see the stadium, the atmosphere was pretty good too!! We met up with Sam Walsh and a few of the girls she's met here to go to Taronga zoo which was awesome! It's a ferry ride away from the city centre and really weird that you can see the city from the zoo! We saw koalas and kangaroos and wallabies and it was really fun! We had a night out in Sydney which resulted in us buying tickets to go and see Usher at the Acer Arena in the Olympic park! The concert was soo good, he was actually amazing!! I also got to meet up with a few camp friends when I was here and we went for Pancakes at the Rocks...delicious!!

We met up again in Adelaide and this time the weather was sooo much better!! We took a pedalo out on the river, we went to the oval to watch the international Rugby 7s and got the saltire painted on our faces to support Scotland who were absolutely rubbish, Trudi took us to Gorge Wildlife Park where we fed kangaroos and held a koala, we saw the biggest Rocking Horse in the world (very random) and we drank lots of wine at some Adelaide Hills wineries! We took a trip to Haigh's chocolate factory, very yummy chocolate and we went out to Glenelg where the beach is gorgeous!

Groovy Grape tours took us along the Great Ocean Road. Amazing! Dave our tour guide was awesome, he used to be a chef and so made us banana pancakes for breakfast. He also had loads of interesting facts about lots of different stuff along the way. We went scrambling at Mt Arapiles then made our way to the Grampians where there were Kangaroos walking around the town like humans. We saw kangaroos boxing in the wild and a wild kangaroo with a Joey in her pouch. There was no light pollution on our second night and we saw the milky way so clearly and millions and millions of stars including the Southern Cross and Orion's belt the wrong way round. We also saw some shooting stars. The coastline along the Great Ocean Road was spectacular. We saw an amazing sunset at the 12 Apostles (of which there are now only 8 as the coastline is constantly eroding), we also made stops along the way at London Bridge, The Two Brothers, The bay of Martyrs, Bells Beach (where Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves filmed South Pacific) and Cape Patton lookout which was soooo beautiful!

In Melbourne we stayed with Nicola (another friend of David's from uni) and she'd made us a little room which was lovely! Best bits of Melbourne were the Aussie Rule's game we went to at the MCG - Collingwood Magpies vs Carlton Blues. The stadium was packed...over 88000 people there so the atmosphere was brilliant. We picked up the rules pretty quickly and had some helpful aussies round us who could tell us about the bits we didn't understand! We went to a crazy all you can eat dumpling place for dinner which was really good! The comedy festival was on so we went to see Anyone for Tennis? at that which was hilarious...they had us laughing all the way through and for ages afterwards as well!! We visited Captain Cooks cottage in Fitzroy gardens which had been shipped over from England in boxes and rebuilt! We also went up to the Eureka Skydeck and saw the whole of Melbourne from 88 storeys up...the view was amazing and we saw a beautiful sunset over the city and then watched the whole place light up as it got dark! Nicola made us kangaroo for dinner one night too which was delicious! We took a trip out to St Kildas where there's a beach and some really nice cafes! The only bad thing about Melbourne would have to be the weather...it rained quite a bit and it was cold enough to have to put jeans on!! Other than that it was a cool place to see and we'd definitly go back...as long as the sun was shining!!

Next stop - Cairns where we spent 3 days/nights sunbathing/partying! The weather up this way is sooo nice right now...it was 25 degrees when we landed at 8pm and has been between 32 and 36 degrees during the day!! We are currently in Port Douglas about an hour north of Cairns in Queensland! It's beautiful here and we've heard this is where all the celebs hang out when they visit Australia!! There's a really nice beach and palm trees everywhere!! We went on Calypso out to the Great Barrier Reef where we snorkelled which was absolutely amazing...saw some really beautiful things!

From here we head back to Cairns for a week and then we're heading down to Brisbane in a campervan with 6 other people we met in Cairns...altogether 4 scots, 3 english and a german! 4 boys and 4 girls! Very excited for this, it's going to be soo much fun!!

Lots of love to all, we will be in touch soon

Karen and Shelley x x x