Beautiful Fraser Island

We decided to visit Fraser Island, a World Heritage Site. We had to leave our van behind as only 4 wheel drives are allowed. We stayed 2 days and one night and saw wild dingoes, humpback whales, a couple of dolphins, rays and a few sharks.

This is the 'mean machine' that we travelled in.

On the first day we had gorgeous sunshine and we went swimming in Wabbi Lake, an emerald green lake full of fish.

We also went for a walk through the lush rainforest. Here is Nic doing a bit of tree-hugging with a 1800 year old kauri.

On the second day we had a 15 minute flight. As you can see the weather was overcast but it was great to get a birds eye view of the island and see how huge it is.

These are called the Pinnacles - cliffs made only from sand. There are 72 different colours apparently!

They have about 150 wild dingoes on the island and they have a pretty tough life. It is illegal to feed them or leave food in a place they could get to it i.e. a tent. They could attack humans, especially children.

Here's me paddling at Eli Creek. 4.2 million litres of water flows thought it to the sea every hour.

Our vehicle broke down on the way home, luckily the tied didn't come in before we got a replacement and during the wait we got to see a fab sunset.

A fabulous birthday at Australia Zoo - one of the highlights of the year so far!

I got to feed an elephant.
The zoo was 40 this year too.
Look at those teeth.
A 7 metre beast - can you believe that they can grow to this size?

A very pampered wombat.

Relaxed?

My Mum making a new friend.


A cute red panda.
A stunning cheetah being taken for a walk.

The tiger show was the highlight of the day.

Hello Big Eyes.

Nimbin/Border Ranges NP/Tweed Heads/Gold Coast/Toowoomba/Roma/Carnarvon Gorge/Cracow/Gympie/Caloundra

As you can see my parents have arrived. Here we are in Brisbane.

Due to the excitement of meeting up with loved ones we've failed to up date the blog for ages.

The week before we met up with Mum and Dad we finished off our travels in New South Wales which included a visit to a place called Nimbin. Nimbin is a very 'interesting' place which is hoping to sell cannabis legally. They had an Aquarious Festival in the 1960's and some of the residents never left.

We have also carried on visiting the National Parks. This is Natural Bridge in Springbrook NP - a waterfall that has ended up in a cave due to years of corrosion - awesome!


We also went for a long walk in Springbrook and got to walk behind this beautiful waterfall.

This is called a Stag Horn Fern. They grow from a spore that attaches itself to a tree. We've seen lots of these weird and wonderful plants.

We went on a road trip with Mum and Dad and travelled hundred's of miles. We visited a Japanese Garden with turtles in Toowoomba, met a very drunk priest in a pub in Roma, walked for miles in the fabulous Carnarvon Gorge and met some extremely interesting people in an old pub full of character in the mining town of Cracow.

This dog was travelling at 100km/hr and having a great time!

The highlight of the trip was Carvarvon Gorge NP - think Grand Canyon! Nic and I walked for 25km through the gorge and it was amazing. Here is some ancient Aboriginal art.

This is the first snake we've seen whilst walking. It gave Nic a fright!

We walked up this ladder and through a crack in the rock and ended up in a Cathedral on rock. The echo was fab.


One of the many fields of cotton seen on our trip. The sky over here is big!

Yuraygir National Park

We spent a week in different camp sites in Yuraygir NP. We did a few walks, a brief canoeing trip (and got rained on) and a lot of lazing about. Here is a rather large guanna. I nearly had a heart attack the first time a saw one of these! They wander around the camptites looking for left over BBQ.

These are coastal emus - much smaller than their bigger relatives. We had the mum and 4 younsters running about in front of the van. Nic took a video of them and their crazy legs. They were hilarious.

This is the first head of a joey we've seen in a pouch. What an adorable family.

Diving at Fish Rock

Here is me with a bat fish. He wasn't very big!
This is the emormous turtle that swam at Nic. He was so beautiful and graceful.

You can just see Nic behind the shark. We dived with nurse sharks - harmless we are told!

Limeburners Creek NP/Hat Head NP/South West Rocks/Nambucca/Nymboi Binderay NP/Coffs Harbour

We've been staying in a few National Parks recently. It's been freezing at night as we've been so high up. I never expected to be so cold in Australia!

This is a kyte - we've seen a few of these recently.

The kangaroos are getting friendlier!

Just a taste of the coastal views that we're getting.

This is fish rock where we went diving. This is the first time that we'd been diving with sharks (photos to be added on a separate entry). We also saw turtles and one was about 3 feet long and swam right into Nic - a bit scary! We went through a long cave and had to use torches (again a first for us). As we were so late setting off (long story) our second dive ended up being a night dive and because of this we got to go back 2 days later and do the same 2 dives again for free.

This is the lovely beach at Nambucca.

This is me hugging an 800 year old Tallow wood tree - Isn't he amazing! There are pockets of the most amazing rainforest here. It's a shame so much of it has been destroyed.

Here is Indiana Jones!

Moree/Bingara/Gunnedah/Tamworth/Oxley Rivers N.P./Werrikimbe N.P./Ellenborough/Port Macquarie

We visited the Wildlife centre in Gunnedah and saw 5 cute koalas sleeping, eating and poohing.

We also saw this baby wombat with its mum

and this rather scary emu.

We spent 2 nights in national parks; beautiful, peaceful places. One night we had a campfire and sat out until it was too cold. We heard lots of strange noises in the forest and dingoes howling at night - very eerie.

This is the stunning Tia gorge.

In Port Macquarie we visited the Koala Hospital and saw lots of impossibly cute koalas with very sad stories to tell. They feed milk to some of the koalas twice a day with a syringe. They have 130 volunteers here and I'm not surprised - what a great job!

Here is Bea, she fell 20 metres and weighed 445 grams when they rescued her.

This is Barry - looking a bit sad and bedraggled - it was raining on the day that we visited!

After the hospital visit the sun came out so we walked to the beach to watch the many surfers.