Blue Mountains

Not quite sure where to start with the Blue Mountains, but they are the most beautiful ones I have ever seen. When we decided to go to Australia, this was the second thing I knew I had to do after the Whitsundays and boy was it worth it. 

We stayed at Katoomba Campsite, which is located within walking distance of Echo Point and the Three Sisters and the points that the Blue Mountains are most famous for. In terms of weather during our stay, you would really not believe how freezing it was. I feel like I can now truely appreciate an Australian winter. I mean people are wrapped in scarves, proper jackets, gloves and hats. It's almost bizarre to see, especially after wearing a bikini and swimming in the sea a few days earlier. 

After doing a bit of Google searching, I discovered an Aussie website called 'weekend notes' where we found out the not so touristy areas within the Blue Mountains. However we still decided to see Echo Point and the Three Sisters as it was so close to the campsite. 

We also hiked to Witches Leap, where we went below the trees and saw lots of huge waterfalls. 

Sublime Point was the first recommended by 'weekend notes' and wow we were blown away. It's almost crazy the views and how intense they are. For a good picture, if you are to visit, I would recommend hopping over the railings for that untouchable photo. We only picked the rocks that looks stable enough and that people had graffitied on, hoping that they lived to tell the tale. 

The next spot we visited was Govetts Leap. It just crazy how so many of the points have a similar view but each time you still feel amazed.

Flat Rock/Lincoln's Rock was named after a famous mountaineer who I think recently passed away but don't quote me on that. This was our absolute favourite spot. 

On the way back to the campsite, we stopped by the Blue Mountains Chocolate Factory (obviously) also recommended by 'weekend notes'. It was totally not what we expected it was tiny and a little old house but was obviously adorable. The only thing that put a damper on the occasion, was we had a treat at the cafe and I let Nathan decide because normally I do and you'd never guess what he picked, only a Strawberry Cheesecake. I mean who orders a Strawberry Cheesecake from a chocolate factory. Anyway I may sound like I am complaining but I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. We also had a hot chocolate, which was basically hot milk, with a candle heating it from underneath and then we had to put in chocolate buttons and hey presto it became a cracking hot chocolate. 

I also treated myself to ONE (please note the emphasis on 'one') chocolate from the huge selection and I went with a Kir Royale white chocolate and guess how much it cost me, $1.50 for one chocolate and it was only OK.

All in all, Blue Mountains was unbeatable.

Xoxo

Brisbane

Our trip to Brisbane started terribly. We woke up ridiculously early, around 1am (we did go to bed at 7am) from our free rest stop around Australia Zoo and drove for around an hour and a half. 

See the plan was to get to Brisbane for just before 3am to find a parking space as we had to get to this pub Nath had found online by 3am because of licensing laws to watch England Vs Uruguay at 5am. Due to several wrong turns, we arrived and parked in Brisbane and got to the pub for 2.55am, with a mere 5 minutes to spare. We ordered a pint, the atmosphere made us!! And settled down to watch the game before, we did have 2 hours to spare.

Not the clearest picture but a picture at least. So basically the pub was your classic British football hooligan pub with extreme chanting and swearing, so I get football passion but it doesn't mean you need to swear 20 times in a row. Anyway as you can probably tell I was getting slightly annoyed, but I enjoyed the game and especially loved when Rooney scored however it would have been better if he could have scored again so we could have maybe gone through. So around 7am when the game finished we sleepily trudged to the car to find another car park so we could go and explore Brisbane. 

After consulting my Lonely Planet Guide it looked like SouthBank was the place to be and the most likely place to find a shower which we most desperately needed. Did I mention we were on day 3 of no shower, those poor people that had to sit near us. 

We found the local showers and they looked brand new and super clean so you'd expect a hot shower right? Well no, not quite what we got, absolutely freezing more like and I had to wash my hair so I ended up with brain freeze too. So as you can imagine I was not a happy bunny after this, but luck was on our side as I spotted a Max Brenner across the way. 

Several people I know who live in or have been to Australia have instagramed pictures of their Max Brenner feasts. Now for those that don't know Max Brenner, he is the chocolate god! Anyway the initial plan was to have one in Sydney just before we left, but we were cold and miserable and what better way to cheer one up than to have a chocolate feast at 8.30am in the morning.

Nath had a chocolate babka which was basically a chocolate bun with cinamon and chocolate and a pot of melted chocolate and I had a waffle with melted chocolate and we shared a thick hot chocolate. Woah that's a lot of chocolates in one sentence. Anyway it certainly cheered me up if not made me very full.

We walked along the South Bank, which had lots of little cafés, restaurants and shops and even a swimming pool, before crossing the bridge into the main city, fully equipped with our Lonely Planet.

The weather wasn't the best we've seen, note the jeans but like true tourists we saw it out, even when it drizzled quite a bit. We had planned on doing a suggested city walk, but that soon went out the window when I discovered Topshop and a sale, poor Nathan! No seriously though we didn't actually spend much time in there because we don't have enough money to buy cheese let alone a Topshop sale item. 

After a miserable first half of the day weather wise, we headed up to Mount Cooth-tha which an amazing lookout point overlooking Brisbane and luckily the sun was shining.

Next stop Surfer's Paradise...

Xoxo 

Fraser Island 4x4 tour

Fraser Island is best described as 'out of this world' and has been Nathan and my highlights of the east coast so far.

Fraser Island is an unusual combination of rainforest and sand which makes it perfect for a bit of adventure. It is also 4x4 territory only because the entire island is made of sand and other vehicles just wouldn't be able to hack it. 

A few facts about the island:

🔘 Home to more than 230 species of birds - one of the largest and most varied in Australia

🔘 25 species of mammal present and isolation has ensured there is also the purest breed of dingoes (wild dog)

🔘 Native mammals included wallabies, possoms, flying foxes and echidnas

🔘 During the migration of Humpback Whales they stop by some of the sheltered bays of Fraser Island

🔘 The waters which fringe the island have been home to more than 50 shipwrecks including the famous Maheno shipwreck

So we had an awesome group of mainly girls. 2 nurses from Taunton, another girl from Taunton but living in Oz, a guy from Germany, a girl from Netherlands, a girl from Staines and another girl from Norwich. These group tours work so much better if you actually like everyone in your group. 

So our first stop was Lake Mackenzie. The clearest water, which this picture doesn't necessarily show.

We weren't allowed to go in with sun cream or have a quick wee in the lake in order to keep the water as pure as possible, as the only water to go in is rain water and it leaves by evaporation. 

Our next famous area we visited was the Maheno Shipwreck. It is the most famous of Fraser's shipwrecks and has become a landmark attraction. The SS Maheno was one of the first turbine-driven steamers which was built in 1905. Normally her route was Sydney to Auckland however until she was commissed as a hospital ship in Europe during World War One. In 1935, she was sold to Japan for scrap, her rudders were removed and they were been towed to Japan. When they reached Queensland Waters, a cyclonic storm snapped the tow chain and the Maheno drifted onto Fraser Island's Ocean Beach. 

That night we stayed in an Aboriginal campsite where we all stayed in tents and cooked food within our groups and drank lots of goon (cheap wine). 

Early the next morning our group went on a walk along Ocean Beach from our campsite.

 

Later that day we travelling to Indian Head overlooking the Ocean where we spotted a few Humpback Whales, turtles and a sting ray.

Our next stop was Champagne Pools, which gives the 'illusion' of champagne as the waves crash over the rocks, but it was way too cold for me to swim in but it was our first chance to sun tan in while. 

That night we cooked up a feast of steak, buttery potatoes and salad.

On our final day we headed to Lake Wabby, on parking up it took us a good 40 minutes to actually walk to the lake.

It was quite a tough walk up hills and through sand but it was worth it when we got there. There was this huge and I mean huge sand dune with Lake Wabby sitting at the bottom. It was slightly eery and creepy, like you could imagine it on a high school horror film. 

We spent quite a long time here, topping up tans before heading to the mosquito infested Eli Creek! I don't have any pictures of this. 

Anyway we had an awesome time with some awesome people and I'll just leave you with a few more photos! 

Xoxo

NB: all of the facts and bits of information about Fraser Island were taken from the Fraser Island website.

Rainbow Beach

We had a relatively short drive from Agnes Water to Rainbow Beach. As soon as we arrived at the little town, we headed straight to the hostel where we had to go to book onto our Fraser Island tour. However luck was not on our side as we had to wait around 4 days until 2 slots were available. 

It was a bit of a pain as the weather looked pretty dire however Nath saw the positive in being he could watch the first World Cup game and potentially England's first game. With our Fraser Island tour, we got 2 free (or included) nights at the hostel which we decided to use the 2 days before we left. So we had to find a place to stay for the first 2 days. We headed to the information camping centre and they recommended Inskip Point. Now for those who haven't been to this area please google as it is possibly the most gorgeous place that you'd want to camp and it only cost us around $22 for 2 nights. To get to some of the Camping points you needed a 4x4 however there were a few that we could still get to. 

We picked a spot located right on the beach overlooking Fraser Island, but hidden under trees incase of rain. Once parked up we decided to go on a little explore. This little explore then turned into a 2 and a half hour beach walk. Nathan spent the majority of the time teaching me all about the World Cup and I can now recite all of the England team's names, clubs and ages. We did also see tons of wildlife including a Pelican, lots of Dolphins, birds and we even saw a shark which was accidently caught by some fisherman. The shark then proceeded to break the Fisherman's rod before he or she sped off. I couldn't tell you the type of shark, only that it had 3 fins, was sandy coloured and quite large, maybe you could work it out. 

We cooked a vegetarian curry for dinner and ate dinner on the beach with a rainbow (how appropriate, right by Rainbow Beach) as well as watching the sunset.

After watching the sun go down, we gathered up some firewood and made our first campfire using the cheat's method of a bit of spray deodorant.

We also made very chocolatey hot chocolates. It was a pretty perfect day and we felt like proper little campers.

Over the next few days, we explored more of Inskip Point, also Rainbow Beach and we went Dolphin Kayaking. 

It was freezing on the day, plenty of rain and wind. We started the trip with a 4x4 drive along Rainbow Beach where we got to see the famous Rainbow sands, which to be honest were not the colours of the rainbow like you would expect, rather different sand colours, still pretty though. We then parked up close to te sea entrance to Double Island Point.

We made our way out to sea on the kayaks but the sea was pretty rough so we got soaked quite quickly which made us more cold but it wasn't long before we saw a turtle popping it's head out of the water. Then within 10 minutes of been in the water a pod of around 40 plus dolphins swam by, it was insane to see so many like that in the wild. We proceeded to then spend the next 2 hours following them around, we also saw a couple of Humpback Whales breaching in the distance. Unfortunately we only took videos of the dolphins and I can't seem to work out how to attach them into a post. 

After a while the roughness of the sea started to make us both feel a little sick, so we were ready to head back when the instructor said. 

That night we stayed at Fraser's at Rainbow Beach Yha which was by far the most revolting accommodation I have ever stayed in. There were cockroaches crawling out of broken sockets, not sure you get much more gross than that, but it was free so we just had to stick it. 

The following day, we rented a sandboard (after watching the first World Cup game at stupid o'clock in the morning) for $15 for 2 hours and headed over to Carlo Sandblow. Which was this ridiculously bit sanddune overlooking Rainbow Beach. 

At first we struggled to actually get the board going because there was a fair bit of wet sand, but eventually after realising you needed loads of wax on the board we got the hang of it. 

We completely lost track of the time it was that much fun but thankfully we were only 7 minutes late back to the shop. 

We the spent the rest of the day at the beach, with me running up and down the beach like the village idiot trying to get some exercise in. 

That evening we had our briefing for the Fraser Island tour and we also met our group. Unluckily I had been feeling pretty ill since lunchtime with some sort of stomach bug, so I found standing on my feet for 2 hours trying to concentrate pretty horrific so I went to bed, hoping that I would feel better for the tour the following morning. 

Xoxo 

Bundaberg Rum Factory

So after leaving Airlie Beach, we spent a few days getting some miles under our belt whilst the weather wasn't as good, which included quite a few rest stops. Our next major stop was Bundaberg, primarily for the Bundaberg Rum Factory as picked by Nathan. 

So this is what I learnt. By the time Australia was settled by Europeans in 1788, run had become a sought after commodity. Sailors in the first fleet were provided with rations of rum and spirit was widely used as a bartering tool within the British Colonies. 

Bundaberg Distilling Company was officially incorporated on 22 November 1888 and despite having 2 serious fires since then that threatened to ruin Bundaberg Rum, it has done the opposite and has thrived and become one of Australia's favourite rums. We also learnt that 120 bottles of rum are created per minute. 

After the tour of the factory, we got to the  best part, the tasting. Unfortunately for me, I was driving so I could literally only taste the tiniest of bits. I settled for a dessert style rum tasting of chocolate and coffee and it was delicious. I also had a sip of a carbonated rum flavoured rum, similar to Rekorderlig cider (Swedish sweet flavoured cider) but rum flavoured. 

Nathan tried a blended rum to start with, which had been barrelled for 4 years before it was bottled. It was barrelled in a variety of different alcohol barrells including Jack Daniels and Port. The last one he tried was a spiced rum. Both he said were good but didn't quite match Captain Morgans. 

So this ended up being our only stop in Bundaberg and we headed to Gin Gin a free rest stop not too far away. 

Xoxo 

Gin Gin & Agnes Water

From Bundaberg we headed to a free rest stop in Gin Gin, (only wish I could have one of Dad's Gin and Tonics in the bath *dreaming*) where we stayed that night and saw a beautiful sunset. 

The following day we went for a very hot and sweaty run through the local park and up some killer hills before going to the local swimming pool to swim a few lengths and obviously use their showers. 

Around lunch time we headed to Agnes Water and Town of 1770, which was a little out of the way but I wanted to go here because it marks Captain Cook's first landing in Queensland. It is also the first area where it is safe to surf at when travelling down from Cairns.

The beach was lovely if not a bit chilling and it was here we first discovered 'squeaky' sand. We later learned that this is to do with the compactness of the sand. This area was also where we also saw our first glimpse of a proper hippy. 

Unfortunately I have let you guys down and I don't have any pictures of Agnes Water.

Next stop Rainbow Beach...

Xoxo