The Sunshine Coast

Hey everyone!

Well, here we are on the Sunshine Coast (although it hasn't been massively sunny!) On the way here we stopped for a chat with Hugh Jackman on the set of Baz Luhrmans new film "Australia" in Bowen (he did actually speak to us, unfortunately Nicole wasn't around that day!). And had a couple of days in tiny but lovely Town of 1770.

We started off on the Sunshine Coast at a place called Inskip Point, as close as you can get to Fraser Island without actually going on it! Great bush camping by the sea, along with lots of fishermen catching not many fish. Stayed there for a couple of days and then wandered down to Rainbow Beach to see the very impressive Carlo Sandblow and Rainbow Sand Cliffs. From here we moved onto Noosa Shire, spent a night bush camping again by the sea on Noosa North Shore (it rained ALOT). We've just spent a couple of days in Noosa Heads mixing with the very rich and admiring the flashy houses (Pat Rafter lives there apparently)!!!!! But we've decided its much too posh for us there and now are moving inland for a couple of days (and also to escape the touristyness of the Sunshine/Gold Coast for a bit!)..........before we take a trip to Australia Zoo to admire Steve Irwin's handy work (has to be done!) and head down to Brisbane next weekend.......

North to Whitsundays coast!!

Firstly the Dub is running sweeeeet!!! Just in case you were all worried.

Well we have been bumbling down the top east coast at a very leisurly pace compared to the middle. We are now in Mackay for those of you in the know..

We've had a full on reef ecperience in the last week. We stayed a few days at a place called Mission Beach where they have a catemeran that boasts the fastest trip to the Outer reef (beaver Cay marine park) 1hr, so we went on it. full day with about 3 hours snorkeling all in all in crystal clear seas about 22 nauticle miles off the coast. Just amazing, millions of fish of all shapes sizes and colours! hopefully some pics of this too!!!

We then - for contrast - moved to a place called Airlie beach ( Bit of a party town) at the North area of the coast in the Whitsunday island region. From here (possibly the highlight so far) we had a day sailing on MAXI Ragamuffin, a world class, 3 times Sydney to Hobart winning yacht! It took us to Blue pearl bay, a fringe reef around Haymen Island for a spot more snorkling, then lunch, a few XXXX beers, and a leisurely sale back. Absolutely wicked day with top crew! and we got to hoist the main sale!!!!

Livivn' the dream!!!

xxj&jxx

Kakadu to Cairns....VW problems!!!

Yes, we made it to the East coast without too major a problem!! More to follow on that.....

After Darwin, we headed to Kakadu National Park, a world heritage area south-east of Darwin, famed for it's Indiginous artwork, wetland, spectacular scenery and Salties! (Easturine Crocs) We didn't see any( Crocs), and to be fair we didn't stay that long as it was still the tail end of the wet season, and most tourist options were closed. Instead - on the advice of Budgie our friendly camp hand at the Mary River Park campsite where we stayed before going to Kakadu - we headed to Litchfield National Park. a lot more accessible than Kakadu, with the same highlights and on an escarpment so no Salties. Some great rock holes to swim in and cool off (Still a bit to humid for us.) Namely the Buley rock hole and the florence falls, where we camped for 2 nights. Check out the Photos.

We then headed down to Katerhine Gourge, amazing Scenery but again not much to do due to high water levels and croc threat., so we did a walk and left. Sounds crazy but the humidity made it hard to do anything after 9am, we really struggled to motivate ourselves to do anything other than swim where we could, so this is what we spent most of our time doing!

After a week around the Darwin area we decided to head for the East coast... To escape the Humididty. Our best decision of the trip was to strictly stay on Bitumen roads, no unsealed, for our own and Van safety, and boy was it a good'un!! Thanks to some dirty/dusty petrol our pump broke!! resluting in lots of sucking on petrol filters (2 to be exact!!) both of which died and killed the valves in the pump!! This happened at the holiday weekend so no mechanics,,so we ended up staying 2 night at a really nice site in a little town called Richmond right next to a lake, so againa bit of swimming interspersed with spark plug/oil/fuel filter changing, just to eradicate a few possibilites. We then made it to Hughenden on minimal pumpp before it broke completely, resulting in more sucking on fuel filters and some pushing to add to the entertainment!! Then We found Bill our hero who said "Yes" when all the others said "no" and the next afternoon after a free night in the Yard of Bob's agricultural supplies we had a shiny new ELECTRIC FUEL PUMP!!!!! Woooooo Hoooooooo....

So here we are now in Cairns after a few days in the Daintree National Park (pics to follow as we are getting ahead of ourselves now!!) Cape Tribulation to be exact, the wet tropics, and boy is it wet. Nice to see a bit of water after the middle though, and not as humid as darwin..

Well thats all for now.

Hope you are all well you Facebook crazy kids!!!!!

xxj&jxx