Travel Post

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Australia travel

Me and three other close friends took on Australia and loved it! All filmed on my go pro!

Here is Australia the way I saw it. so much love for this place.

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I dont know if its a Kangaroo or a wallaby 

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Back in Sydney

We made it back too sydney from cape tribulation in good time. The advantage of working our way up the country quickly meant that we had time to work our way back down at a nice slow pace, still doing a minimum of 400 kilometres in a day. We hadnt booked any accommodation in syndey before we started working our way down or even before we left syndey, this meant that the only accommodation we could find in our budget was on one night thirty minutes on a ferry and another forty minutes on a bus from central sydney. For the last two nights it was only a thirty minute ferry and a five minute walk from central Sydney. Staying outside of Sydney has really changed my perspective of the city. I love the fact that people walk down the streets not wearing shoes, it seems like the done thing. I also love the fact that people walk down the streets in there wet suits and a surf board under one arm, just about to catch some 'rad' waves.  

Arron, Mollie and kurt have left, which means its only four days until my flight out of here. Im a little sad that I'm not gonna be traveling again until I can afford it. Im also so excited to see my sister and family. It will be nice to finally get on with my life, traveling has made me so much more independent… Its one of those sink or swim things, unless you pay a travel operator to think for you. I need to think of some things too do for the next few days, maybe blue mountains. 

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There is only one actual asphalt road into Cape tribulation, it involves getting a ferry across.  

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Turtle on the Barrier Reef. 

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Cape tribulation and the way there.

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Cliché idea of paradise.

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22 September.

Last night on arrival to the campsite, there wasn't any spaces... We ended up sleeping besides a beach. The sounds of crashing waves and the smell of salt in the air accompanied our sleep. The plan was to rent some surf boards and catch some waves. We ended up getting some surf board and chucking them in the van and driving to the beach. The beach was empty, the wind was going in the wrong direction and was blowing way hard for out novice selfs. I tried one wave, it picked me and the surfboard up in the swirl and chucked us out.. I was pretty disorientated, so left the water. We all basically gave up on surfing that day. What a better way to end a day than buy a election of local Australian beers and some classic foreign beers. Byron bay beer is another local beer that I have absolutely loved, it was a light beer with a subtle fruity after taste.

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From Sydney to Cairns in 3 drives. 1800 miles - Land’s End to John o’ Groats twice!

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Crazy road trip!

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Two photos from Australia zoo.

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Australia zoo

We, well when I say we I mean Kurt and Aaron drove from Arlie beach to 90ish km from the Australia zoo last night. Which meant we only had to find somewhere to stay and then go too the zoo in the morning. There was a petrol station which had a large parking area, that worked well as a place to stay and it was also free. I didn’t wanna risk it with bed bugs so I slept in my silk sleeping bag. Once awake it was a small drive to the Zoo. It’s strange how Australians eat there national animals (kangaroo and emu). I don’t really like zoos, I would rather see the animals in the wild… That said, I would rather little kids were given a sense of awe and gave them the knowledge to maybe help endangered ones. The zoo was really well kept, it was nice to be able to see animals that I have only seen as road kill so far. I will have some photos up of the zoo and other things once I have sorted out some decent wifi.

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Australia travels

Australia in places has been exactly what I was expecting and in others it has been completely different. Driving basically from the south to the north has been a big eye opener, I found with Asia just driving a few thousand kilometers was the done thing. In England driving just two hours is considered far! As Australia is so vast the climate really changes all over. In Sydney when I arrived at night it was about 11 degrees at night. I hadn’t felt such cold since leaving England over four months ago. Up in the north the weather has been gorgeous. it was defiantly warm enough to walk round in just your underwear,If you could get away with it. We have started making our way down south now, stopping at places of interest. I don’t really like captive animals, but we are stopping at Australia zoo… On the pretense that it’s had so much media coverage that it must treat he animals well. After the zoo we are heading too Byron Bay To do some more surfing. All along this epic adventure I have been testing, trailing and tasting all sorts of things. Hopefully when I get back to Blighty I will get my pickup fixed and get on the surf scene. This morning, mollie woke up with 14 familIar looking bites. I hate it when people judge things just by one familiar characteristic, but it looks the van might have bedbugs and I really doubt I brought them from asia. It’s not just a hassle because they bite you but the new jumper that I got won’t wash above a low temperature. I thought that I had seen the end of them in Asia. Other that being bitten I think last night was the best night sleep I have had in the van. I sleep Facing the other end, which meant mollie didn’t wake me up 3-5 times during the night.

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Cape Tribulation

We have driven through so many small towns that I can't really list them all. The journey has flown by.. When we were all talking about how far the journey would be somehow we decided that the journey to cairns would 1500km. We massively underestimated how far the journey would be. As I missed out on posting what we have been up too I will try and summarise what has been happening in the past week. We have driven from sydney all the way to Cape Tribulation. Im not sure on exact figures but thats roughly 2700km. I know we have driven three times the length of Britain and more. Along the way we have stopped off for surfing multiple beaches. Originally the plan was to drive to cairns and then chill there for a few days. Whilst on a camp site in Airlie beach me and aaron got chatting to some other happy campers. They suggested that instead of scuba diving in Cairns we should drive an extra 200km to cape tribulation. Im so glad we did that. Kurt and aaron were driving the majority of the way. Just before Cape tribulation there is a little ferry which takes you across a crocodile infested river, the ferry takes about five minutes to cross the water. Sadly we missed the last ferry and had to stay in daintree, The campsite was really small but situated in an absolutely stunning location. The owners of the campsite didn't bother charging us a full night either. In the morning I woke up and went for a wonder were I got chatting too some australians. One was about 70 and the other about 65, it was nice just listening to them. wherever you go in the world people

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The drive

The journey to cairns. I haven't been up too date with the blog as its pretty hard to get the laptop out in a campsite or in the back of a van. that said I'm currently typing out all of the adventures with the smell of fuel entering the van from the fuel pump. The start of the journey was relatively simple. The van was collected and we hit the road. The van its self is pretty unglamorous. That said its still pretty nice. It has two double beds, the bottom one consists of the table laid flat between the two benches and three planks of wood also laid besides the table. The top double bed is another story, three pieces of wood pull out and padding is put onto.  The padding is so thin that its kind of pointless having it. The whole journey has been pretty well sign posted, I think if you wanted to get from the south of Australia to the north you could definitely do it without using any form of direction other than the road signs provided and a reasonable sense of direction. 

The first stop after sydney was a little lay bye, besides the road. It had all the emanates one would need to rest. As you would expect. After a few hundred kilometres we stopped at the first campsite. to get some sleep. It was about eight PM and we had to ring the bell to get the old women to let us in. I could tell by this time that close quatre living is going to be hard. we settled down for some food, Quickly realising that we didn't want to stay there and wanted to get on with the crazy journey that lied ahead. We packed up all of the stuff and headed for the exit. 

The old lady must have gone to bed, we couldn't just go back to the site and sleep as we were all ready to drive. The gate was locked and the women wouldn't answer the door to let us out. I know we shouldn't but we decided as a last ditch attempt we would beep the horn. Still with no response Aaron decided that he could squeeze the van through the palm trees besides the gate. With millimetres to spare we made it through, I'm pretty sure kurt was pushing on the side of the van so that it didn't rub.

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Alone in sydney and feeling it. 7th

Today has been a strange one. I haven't done much, much like my other days here. Im slowly getting more used to my skate board, even if it is a flimsy piece of shite. I was speaking to an English girl about Art yesterday and she mentioned the Museum of contemporary art. I ended up skating down there, it is soo nice skating here! most of the paths are really smooth and everywhere gently undulates. So, usually Im a massive fan of amazing modern up too date art work… but this stuff was definitely out there. I think I would be a really good contemporary artist. Which I can't decide would be a good or a bad thing. I think I'm probably one of the youngest people in this hostel, Everyone seems to be in there mid twenties.. possibly trying to recapture there lost gap years… the realisation that life is meant to begin. A pre-life crisis or a well 'needed' break. Its strange all the confidence that I had built up from traveling round south east asia has started to evade me. At the moment I'm just cruising through the days until the other join me, not to say I'm doing nothing just not cramming my days full. Solo travels is gonna get some well needed familiar faces… 

So I've been thinking about traveling and how I would do it properly next time… I think that I will do Europe next time, Ive kind of had it with hostels. I want to get to raw backpacking, a cheap tent and barely warm at night sort of place.

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Sydney opera house and the harbour bridge. 

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Decided to buy a cheap skateboard. You miss out so much when getting the trains in a big city. The paths here are super smooth, perfect for cruising.