An Australian Adventure

So my time at the Camel Farm has come to an end..........

Even though the 10+ days and 6 day weeks are very hard to deal with i will miss the place, i will miss the camels and being woken up to our dingo howling loudly for 10 minutes everytime the phone rings..... espically on my day off at 6.30am, god damm that person who rang at that time!

At first my time here was hard, it was hard to get used to the fact that you have no telephone signal and the power goes off between 9.30pm and 6.20am, that if you forget something in the food shop you can't just go and get it... you will just starve! and it was lonely at first, coming to a place where there was no-one to talk to for hours at a time and you HAD to get on with the people you worked with as they were like your family. I remember on my first couple of weeks i used to watch the tour busses drive out of the driveway and think 'ohhh i wish i was on their tour or even just on the bus going somewhere where there is life'! ha i didn't even unpack for at least a week. but then i got used to it and i made really good friends with Anna and Femke and we had alot of fun times they were like my sisters! Anna had a car so sometimes we would drive the hour into town to go to meet some of the tour guides that came to the farm.... after our night out we would have to get up and leave for the camel farm at 5.30am to make it back in time for work......those journeys were very funny if you could've seen us. the car had no heating either and at that point it was very very cold in the desert at night so i would get in my sleeping bag in the car lol and we would each have a cup of tea. I don't think i could've worked the first 6 weeks without them and vice versa.

On the 9th of July it was Camel Cup wooooo, this was one of the best days of my life..... yes my life haha. I rode on Haley and we came third place in race 7 i think and i won a trophy (which i will send home). it was so scarey riding a camel plus my helmet fell down over one of my eyes so i could only half see! At one point i though 'shit this is it, i need to try and jump off now i am going to get trampled on and die!' but i held on and it was sooooo much fun i loved it regardless of the bruises i got! people were getting thrown off though and camels were bucking so i was lucky...very lucky. of course we had the best camels compared to the rest that were there and we had spent alot of time training them for this day so i was soooo proud to be part of the winnnng and best team. we really came together and i loved it. We won 8 out of 9 races all 1st,2nd and 3rd wooooo. we added the trophys to all the previous years haha not showing off or anything.

Then it was Anna's time to leave and a week later it was Femke's time to go too...... this was a sad time and very hard, i thought i would be following shortly but things started getting easier at the farm, there were new people so i was the oldest one there for the rest of my time, i got to go into town and help with the food shop where we met with Anna and I even got a McDonalds, it was such a fun day even though all we did was food shop, there was sooo much food to get for the workers and we were on a time limit.... if felt like Dale Winton was going to pop up and start counting down my last minutes haha.

The next 5/6 weeks went quite quickly, me and Alan became good friends (even though he couldn't speak proper english with his northern accent!) and we kept each other going to the end ........plus i turned him into such a girl haha, he secretly loved dancing with the stars! We would get excited about the stupidest things like the tour guides bringing us food and we would be like ' OMG we got cheese!!!!' haha and we would laugh at how ferral we became....some nights we wouldn't even shower and we would find it hilarious at how disgusting we were.

So on the farm there are about 50 camels, some we don't work as they need training and not enough staff to train them plus some are retired, we have a Dingo called Zari, she was rescued as aboriginal kids took her away from her mother when she was young so can't be released into the wild, we have an Emu called Glump (because that's what sound he makes) glump is a very strange animal (i think he is just lonely) and he follows you around if you walk near his cage....this is a little bit creepy..... and he pokes his head out the cage, if you stand there long enough though he always gets his willy out which is funny (this is espically funny when he does it to the asians haha). we have two llamas called Merlin and Lawrence and they escaped once which was sooo funny, we had all the afternoon tour buses in and was busy doing yard rides when suddenly i heard over the radio 'does anyone know that the llamas are out?' and then suddenly the tour groups started pointing and shouting 'there's the Shamels!!!'. Now theres this ongoing joke that the tour guides tell their group that we cross breed a camel with a sheep = Shamel and the first time i heard this i was like 'wow that is amazing i want to go and have a look at the Shamel's'.....yeh i was a dumbass!! anyhow so the Llamas are running around on their little adventure, jumpinjg around haha, and everone is going nuts and all i can hear is the Alan shouting 'Merlin you fooking bastard' in his northern accent, at one point i though Merlin was going to spit in his face...in front of everyone haha. While all this was going on our Alpaca Oscar was running round their pen looking for Merlin and Lawrence wondering where they had gone haaaaha silly Oscar the Alpaca duhhh. We have a rescued Galah and three kangaroos called Jack, Jill and Connie who are really sweet and hop up to see you when you go into their cage so you can pet them.

Sometimes I would see other animals, when I was out running sometimes I would see BIG kangaroos and once I nearly ran over a snake, it was a brown one therefore called 'brown snake'. when i was cleaning i would always see these spiders with red backs..... again very well thought out....called 'redbacks' (the australians aren't very creative with what they call anything here! it's hilarious) these have a bad bite but it's all very casual here, as if it's normal to nearly die every day! Once we had to rescue a Wedgetail eagle as it had landed in one of our paddocks with a broken wing. AND once i was sitting in the TV room in the armchair talking to Alan to the side of me, on my other side next to my head i was playing with what i thought was the string of my hoodie.....but i wasn't wearing a hoodie and it slow motion i turning me head round to find i was playing with a grey furry catapiller....... i went crazy haha i was screaming and jumping about shouting ' i touched it!!! i touched it!! why is it so weird?? why is everything here so weird??!!!'.

The day's on the camel farm would start at 6.45am and end at 5.10pm so it was a long day but mainly my IPod would keep me going (occasionally i got caught out singing along...loudly), in the evening's there wasn't much to do and most nights we would go to bed at around 8pm, we sometimes watched TV or read books or just chatted, mostly we ate lots of food and became gigantic beastly people (well i did) i have a major J-Lo going on!

In the last few weeks on the farm i really enjoyed it we had lots of funny moments and scarey ones too. Once when one of the new girls was in the ride yard a camel walked out, through the barrier and through the shed, past all the people and headed straight for the shop hahahaha this was great, it was Marindy and he is so naughty he probably would've tried to go in the shop if he hadn't been caught in time lol, we had a fire in the paddock next to us as our fire got out of control from out tip, but it was okay we caught it in time and the guys from Orange Creek station came to help us put it out, although it was scarey how quickly it went up! and they were so chilled out about it all considering Alan nearly set their house on fire!

For the last couple of weeks on the farm there were alot of bushfires, scarey bushfires, big one’s and the sky would glow orange at night and you would hear and see helicopters flying over and around us. We would listen to the bushfire radio at what was going on out there and most day’s and nights we had Alan and Neil fighting them along with the guys from Orange Creek station. The nearest one we had was 2k away but we had winds blowing it away from the farm, however going to bed that night worring that the wind could change direction was probably the scariest time. We had bags packed ready to grab and run everday for the last 10 days. On my last day off me and Jayne drove to the fires to have a look and I don’t know how they stay so calm about them, we were like ‘but there’s flames right there that are bigger than a house’ and they would just shrug it off ‘it’ll be alright’ haha only a few times over the radio when they would get in a sticky situation would you hear them panick and it had to be bad for them to be panicking. They would always look so smart and rested even though they had been up until 4am fighting and ready to go again at 9.30am in what looked like their best shirts and hats haha. Sorry I didn’t tell the truth Mum and told you to stop being silly and worring but I couldn’t tell you how bad they were until I was back in Alice and awayish from the bushfires, otherwise you wouldn’t have slept at night……. I wasn’t sleeping at night!!!

In my last week i went to the meatworks with Neil to save some baby camels (unfortunately their mums stayed at the meatworks) but i thought it would be a simple process , that they would be ready to collect and they would just get on the tralier, job done! but nooooooo we had the job of seperating them from their mums and then catching them with a rope and pulling them onto the trailer, it was a long process but i'm so glad i got to see how it's done!!...... that night i was very grateful for my earplugs as they cried for their mums loudly all night, and the next night and the next night..... then on my very last day Neil caught and brought back 6 wild female camels (one of whihc was pregnant) and another little baby, my last evening at the camel farm was spent driving the toyota backwards and forwards with a rope around the bull bar and the other end around the camel and dragging them out of the truck and down the race into the paddock, this was also a long process while i did this the others were constantly trying to make the camels move by banging, pushing, shouting at them haha it was great fun and we got there in the end. All of the baby camels were male so they called one San (after me as in su-san). I think he will be the best camel ever and very handsome lol.

and so now i am in Alice Springs, last night i drank alot of beer and today i have done alot of nothing! however i miss the farm and don't really know what to do with myself......i had the best time there and the best experiences, i had to do things that scared me but i feel so much better for it, i feel like a different person and a better person, for once work was my life and the farm was my life, even after work hours, work hours didn't really exist, you just was ready to work whenever because you wanted to and cared about it, i got up and helped out in the kitchen on my day off twice and it didn't even bother me, i didn't even expect the time back , i didn't want the time back, i was happy to work (shocking i know!!)

Me and Anna will go on a road trip tomorrow morning and it's currently 8.30pm and we still don't know where we are going, we will just get in the car and drive and see where we end up...... who know's we might see some camels along the way!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOO SELECTA SYDNEY! i'm keeping this one short and sweet.....

I can't believe i've only been away for four months! it feels like sooo long ago i came....and i still have so much to do. My plans change on a daily basis so i can never plan my life....which is great! i love it! Everyday i wonder where i'll end up next.... just wish i was a liitle bit closer to home so i could pop back for a weekend and sleep in my lovely bed hmmmm!

Although it's been cold here (18degrees!) its been fun trying to beat the lakes that the rain creates on my way to work with only 3pound shoes that have a hole in them from walking too much......nice! this makes the cheapo shoes smell, even more....so i have become the smelly girl at work, espically as once my lunch spilt in my bag on the way to work and that day of course i had......TUNA....FML!

I have enjoyed work (can you believe i am saying that) maybe it's beacuse i don't want to be at 'home' because my room is moldy there and we have no TV...... i'm living the dream remember! i have made lots of friends here, ones i think i'll probably stay in touch with although most will be gone when i come back in the summer :-(. It's become mandatory to go to the Greenwood Hotel for drinks after work on a friday......and possibly some other nights too ;-) and i've had some quality nights out...with my scooners of beer only $4 in happy hour!! i always get backlogged!

I feel like i need a bit of a change now though and how different can you get to going to the Outback to work on a Camel farm!! I'm not entirely sure how i am going to last the full three months but i will give it a shot and if not it'll still be an experience....but i will let you know once i return to civilisation!!

So it's bye bye Sydney.....Hello Camels! but i will be back......just not sure when yet???!! watch this space sydneysiders!

love to ya'll x x x x x x x x x x x x x x xx

I know I haven't updated this in a while!! i'm crap I know!!!

So I have much to tell you about most of it i can't atcually remember so will try my best and apologise if i repeat myself from my last entry. We lived with the guys for a while and it was really nice and we felt at home, i got in a bit of a nice routine of walking the dog for a good hour after work and going to watch the sunset which was lovely, i had my allocated time slot in the bathroom in the morning i think it was.....erm 6.15am to 6.30am? and although it was a good set-up and convenient as i caught a lift to work and back with Tom everyday it wasn't ideal long term and i wanted to unpack and hang up my work clothes.....also there was a mouse that lived in the bin so we were shit scared of that, i had nighmares that while i was asleep on the sofa it would come out and get me and run on my face. haha but the guys were as scared as we were, on the first sighting i was the one pulling out the cupboard that the mouse was in and they stood back and 'were ready to catch it' with the tea towel....i'm sure!!

then we finally found an apartment wooohooo!!!...... and after what they call 'inspecting' aka viewing too many 'interesting' places it was like a dream come true!!

Our housemates are thai, they come from Bangkok and they give us free rice, chocolate and sweets so as you can imagine i am now obese! we moved in on the Monday and realised about Wednesday that there was atcually someone else living there too, behind a curtain in the living room!!!haha we didn't get to see them untill the Sunday due to us all working different hours.... i was a bit worried that i would bump into them in the night and think they was a burgular or something.

Our room is big enough but sometimes it is a bit of a squeeze espically when we are both trying to get ready for work in the mornings, we have these single matress things on the floor like japenese stylie, which sounds nice but when you start to excercise again after having two months of eating cheese/peanut/jam/butter sandwiches then it's awful having to get up and down on these things haha we were like old people FFS!

I have been at my job for four weeks on Wednesday and am really enjoying it however i haven't managed to save much money as i keep on buying luxuries (tupperware, mouthwash, nail varnish remover, fake perfume, fake sunglasses!!) who ever thought tupperware would become a luxury item!! not really sure how long we'll be here or what the rest of the plan is yet, think we will just take each day as it comes and when we get fed up just leave??

This weekend the 9.04.2011 i went to Newtown with Claire and it was so nice and sunny, we spent a few hours on a roof terrace and a few hours in a gay bar without even noticing ha, i don't really know how we couldn't have noticed however i'm going to blame it on the few jugs or Blonde we had drunk! we even made friends and ended up sitting with a scottish man and his daughter and her girlfriend and we had such a good time. On the Sunday 10.04.2011 i got the bus to Palm Beach (home and away) which was lovely and hot aswell but on the bus ride home it started to rain and as with everything else even the rain is bigger and wetter, so i got a little bit soaked!

It's started to get colder here now and have had to invest in a couple of hoodies and cardigans, luckily our flatmates have a colection of umberellas so didn't have to buy one of those however think i might have to invest in a coat :-( boohoo, sometimes when i hear the rain it feels like england and then i wake up in a funny little room and realise i'm still here haha.

Anyway my lunch is over now so must get back to it, i will try and update you soon love you all x x x x

Soooooo.....

Our bus was cancelled from Cairns to Bundaberg so we booked into a cheapo hostel (that was atcually really nice) and carried all our bags and food back (FFS!!) and then didn't really know what to do with ourselves, we watched a film in the film room, ate our sandwhiches before they went funny, can't tell you how weird it is eating sandwhiches at 8/9 a in the mornining! espically tuna ones haha, although I do remember a girl on one of our bus trips getting off at a service station stop at 3am in the morning and buying an ice-cream (so weird).

Anyhow we didn't have a lot else to do and not really any money to spend so we decided to ........... get a box of goon for $3 each and get drunk! however when we went to the liquour shop to buy the box we were told that in Cairns they aren't allowed to sell goon before 4pm and it was then 2pm...DAMM IT! so we bummed about for a bit and finally got our goon at exactly 4pm.... the guy must've thought we were raging alcholics haha.

The next day the bus was cancelled and it didn't look hopeful the rest of the week (which it turns out it wasn't) and we were wasting money staying in Cairns and just not getting anywhere, it was crappy weather and just not a positive vibe between us all so at 5pm after finding out we couldn't get a refund on our bus ticket, GUTTED!, we booked a flight to Sydney for 12hrs later so 5.20am and because it was a shocker of a time we decided it wasn't worth booking another night at the hostel (not that they even had any room ahh) , so we slept at the airport. Now maybe it was because I had a cold and felt rough or because I hadn't had a decent night sleep for about a month but I slept the best I ever had since travelling on that bench in the airport, could've carried on if I didn't have to get up for the flight!.

Claire and Hannah's suitcases were severly overweight, (flashpackers with flipping suitcases,irons,hair straightners, dressy cloths, mouthwash ... etc) however very handy friends to have!!ha so we spent a good twenty minutes trying to distribute all they stuff between us all and hand luggage but finally got on the plane and had a little sleep.

SYDNEY!!!
We landed in Sydney early on Wednesday morning and started looking for jobs straight away, I got signed up with an agency the next day and had a job interview for the following Monday wooop! Our hostel room in Base was soooo small and with 8 of us in there we all became friends fast! our second room was soo much bigger and nicer and we made friends with these two Korean girls bless them, they were lovely however on this night (friday) whilst in the middle of my prescious sleep i woke up and thought i could hear the fire alarm... but in the distance, i poked at Carla who also thought it was down the road at a distance but then the air-con shut off, and i could hear sirens and ppl outside the room! That day me and Carla had bought two 'australia' hoodies at some tourist giftshop because they were cheap and they were still in the bag and it wasn't till outside (in the street sitting on the kirb) that we realised we both had them on, it was awful and if i wasn't so tired i would've been embarrassed that we were twins haha, we took the essentials incase our building was burning down, our phones and passports (although we would've had to fly home as twins haha) and also had to get the flipping Koreans girls out as they were trying to take their whole backpacks/suitcases with them!!

6 fire engines and 3hours later....... we found out it was some silly boys smoking in the room 302 and the sprinklers had gone off and flooded the room, which had then flooded 202, and then 102 GUTTED! am sooooo happy it wasn't us with the bad luck this time! we had a free breakfast at the bar next door/joined on to the hostel and again was so weird everyone being in the club in their pyjamas eating cereal and toast at 4.30am with bed hair!

On the saturday morning we left! and there were people sleeping everywhere in reception....drama! we got the bus to Narrabeen in the northern beaches to stay with a friends house who was away for the saturday night at a wedding, this was AMAZING! having a house and a cooker and a bath!!!! can't tell you how excited we were, shame we couldn't stay awake late enough to enjoy it! on the Sunday they came back (all four guys) and we stayed on the couch for the rest of the week, or in their beds if they were away for a few days.

I got my job WOOOOP and celebrated by spending my last free day (wednesday) at the beach on my own as everyone was working haha larry! I'm currently on my second day and don't want to jinx it by saying i'm liking it but it seems good. I communte in with Tom who also works in North Sydney and we have a coffee in the morning before saying bye and meet him later to go home again (luckily we work the same hours) my team that i work with are realy lovely and i have made friends with them all and already know all the gossip!(suprise).

Not that hot here and i atcually get cold sometimes even though it's still 20 degrees, i've obviously adapted and can't imagine beinig at home in them temperature anymore, but it's nice to be able to put a jumper on (making sure it's not the same one as Carlas).

Got to go back to work now as my lunch break is over and really should get on haha!

will keep you up to date bye bye my lovelies x x x x x x

Have seen so much in the last few days this is going to be hard to remember, i may have to google some things haha....

I LOVED Cape Tribulation/Port douglas it was b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l!! Cape Trib is home of the oldest tropical rainforest on earth and the only place on the planet where World Heritage-listed Daintree rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef. (i just googled that ha)

I did things i though i would never do, i stroked a peppermint stick insect so it squirted it's peppermint stuff and i licked it (it tasted like peppermint suprise suprise!) i ate black ginger and black tongue from the rainforest and other odd things that i can't remember the names of, i went crocodile spotting, and we made friends with Claire and Hannah's guide who took us to this (i want to say secret) river/stream thing, secret as in no-one was there but then again you atcually had to walk though swap-like mud to get there so maybe that's why! when we were there we painted ourselves with the Ochre rocks that the aboriginal's paint themselves with and it was such fun!

In the night we went on a tour that consisted of only me and Carla into the rainforest, it was soooooo great, and when we turned off our torches it was so dark you couldn't even see your hand infront of your face! scary with all the animal noises in there! we saw water dragons and white tails water rats, i even drank out of the water streams in the rainforest ..... suprised i'm still alive to tell the tale. Anyway was such a great place and so chilled out and it was definately worth ruining our converse for!

We also had free food at PK's where we stayed and it was good food too so that was a massive bonus!

On Sunday 6th March we went on a boat to the Great Barrier Reef which was one of my favourite trips even though i wasn't allowed to scuba dive because of my Asthma and having scarring on my lungs from inhalers so could let bubbles into blood blah blah blah so was a bit gutted about that however i still went snorkelling and was GREAT! saw stingray's and Nemo fish and held a big blue starfish, also touched (didn't want to hold ewwww) a Sea Cucumber which is like a MASSIVE slug at the bottom of the sea errrr lol. The only person ever to have died from a stingray in Oz was Stevie and it was just poor luck, we were near where he died and they explained that he went up behind it and took it by suprise, so then it flicked it's tail to hit it with their like hook and it caught him in an artery and he just bled. Also they told us only 15 ppl die from sharks every year and 250,000 sharks die every year, if you think about it 15 ppl from the whole world is not really that many..... just keep telling myself that fact! Their animals are mad over here though, it's like everything from home just on steroids, they have gowana's in their parks.....like newts but on major steroids, even their birds are fecking big things, they sound and look like dinosaurs! you should see us run away from them haha (such tourists), this Oz guy we made friends with thought we were so funny. They got these massive beaks too, wouldn't like to be homeless out here that's for sure. Also in the Rainforest we went to they have Cassowary's, now these birds are 5 to 6 feet tall!!! imagine going to feed that thing some bread, you's probably get your arm eaten fuck the bread!

So this morning is the 7/3/2011 it's currently 10.30am and we've been up since 6am waiting for our bus to Bundaberg that didn't turn up and was canceled, we found out by some random girl (they just assume you'll find out at some point here!) so we were in a right pickle, had checked out, packed all our stuff, got food ready for our 24hr bus journey ahhhhhhh so much stress carrying it all back to a cheap hostel (probably have bed bugs!) and eating our sandwiches at around 9am for breakfast (yuk), pretty gutted we will have to wait to see if the road is open tomorrow and the bus goes.

Okay so will try and keep you updated to whatever happens to be from here on, have no idea what to expect from Bundaberg or working.... x x xx x x

Lets start with our last night in Airlie, we went out withy thes rest of our group to Beaches and got some free drinks (Mr Beans didn't turn up but rest of Eurotrash did!) for lunch and dinner we treated ourselves to a foot long sunway i had.........tuna suprise suprise!! am so over tuna, other things i am over include:

Jam sandwiches
Peanut butter sandwiches
Cheese spread sandwiches
bread in general
would atcually go as far as to say would rather starve than ever eat bread again!!!

got riduclously drunk and sweated uncontrollably while dancing but was a great night, stayed untill the lights came on (not something to be proud of) then we went to shennanigans next door where we had such a giggle witht he amount of wrongens in there, Carla met and danced with what we called the 'baby bouncer' (his dancing technique was to die for) ended up ijn McDonalds sharing a $5 feed, Carla had the burger and sundae and i had the chips and what looked like a radioactive Fanta. was very much looking forward to bed but when we go back someone had stolen my cover/sheet so i kicked off untill someone else gave me theirs (such a cheek greedy fookers!) these beds are bad enough with their non existent pillows giving you such a bad neck you walk with your head tilted to the side untill midday! We never solved the mystery of my missing sheet though as had to get up and leav early the next morning (yaya perfect day for a hangover Carla and Susan, long walk to the coach, 6 hour coach journey and the choppiest Ferry to Maggie!!)

Maggie (Magnetic island)! we got what was called the sun ferry and then the Sun bus to our hostel which was ironic as it poured with rain all night and there was no sign of the sun! talk about jinxing it with your names! Now i can most definately say that Maggie has the potential to be a really lovely holiday destination, or place to live if you a little into the inbred scene, for the 320 days it's sunny there but when your there on the other 45 days......FML! Not many options for hostel there so we stayed at base which would've looked lovely before Cyclone Yasi hit, our room was possibly smaller than a prison cell with eight beds in, it was a little cosy therefore we made friends with our roomies pretty sharpish, there were two guys from Rome an Aussie and three germans. They were all lovely ppl but still the amount of space per person could not have been legal (seriously it was like the size of three double beds put together!) we shared this room with Cockroaches, lizards and Bed Bugs!!! luxury to say the least but because it rained so hard alll the time was so hard to leave the room (it really was like being in prison) even to go to the toilet you were held hostage as you got so wet going, no-onbe likes to sleep in wet jammies! On the plus side we got a free meal and drink which was fabulous, i had Nachos (which i've really got a craving for here for some reason??!!) while eating dinner the overenthusiastic bar man tried to get us invloved in bar games so we could get win a big bar tab....seriously was the last thing we wanted after the night before, so we gave him the look of death and he avoided us thereafter haha miserable english!! sorry mate!

best thing about Base and that day, there was a possum that lived there and it was soooooooo cute even if it is known as a pest, was like a little kitten but bigger and really sweet looking, i want one!

Next day we bumped into Clair and Hannah!! yay, but they were leaving that day, they got the ferry to Townsville where you catch the greyhound but there had been a flood on the road up to Cairns so they had to stay put, we kept our fingers crossed that we would be able to leave the next day for our bus as really was so over Magnetic Island and the rain and nothing to do as everything ruined from Cyclone :-(. we attempted to walk to Horeshoe Bay but only got as far as Geoffrey's Bay after taking the path 'footpath' leading us up cliff edge, and through a river whilst in our flip fops, carrying our shopping bags (we had found some bargains), and like 150% humidity FML! however once we were on the air conditioned bus and could breathe we could appreciate the beauty of the Island, Horeshoe bay was a building site :-( but still interesting to see and hear what happened there suring the cyclone.

On the way home we went in the supermarket and we must just have 'gyppos' written accross our heads (or maybe it was the fact that we spent a good 10minutes digging through the bargain busket of food) but people kept coming up to us to show up reduced things to see if we wanted it!! (was so embarresing!) We walked home from the supermarket and it Poured! never felt so gorgous walking throuhg the bar to our room....

next day we left YAY and now we are in Cairns and have met up with Clairn and Hannah. will be in touch soon

love you and miss you all, thank you for you'r messages, sorry about spelling mistakes never have time to read through and check

Shout Outs:

• to fidgety girl that had a really squeaky bed thanks, sounded like we had a baby chimp in the room all night!

• to girl attempting to be sick outside our hut/room in Maggie and to her friend that was reeling off lists of food to try and make the girl sick....Chicken Schnitzel, fish and chips, curry, ice cream, pizza..... luckily i had my little mesh window/vent near my bed that i could shout through and tell them where they could shove their chicken schnizel!!! classic!

Key words (for you mum sorry for language but at least you know what i'm talking about now)
FFS = For f**k's sake
WTF = What the F**k
TBH/TBF = To be honest/to be fair
FML = F**k my life!

PEACE OUT X X X X X X

I still feel like i'm on a boat whilst writing this!!

So the Whitsundays..... they were amazing, we left at pm on the Friday and the weather wasn't that great for the rest of that day, we just got to know our group (most of who were a bit odd and European, two also looked alot like Mr Bean!) so we made friends with all the english and stuck with them girls who were lovely. That night i slept like a baby sooooo good and the boat swayed me to sleep, the next day was HOT!YAY! we went to White Haven Beach which is like Heaven and it's been there for 80,000 years so has been through the ice age and dinosaurs which was impressive, we went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in the afternoon, it was fantastic and there were so many different fish was so much fun, my favourite fish was the Maori Wrasse fish, the male one called Elvis in particular, he had such a lovely face and eye's and a really nice shade of blue, he was the biggest fish i'd ever seen and i stroked him awww. Just as we got back on the boat though we saw a White Tip shark!! but the Oz's didn't seem that bothered, we even saw it again later on in the evening so he must've been hanging round our boat possibly looking for food??

The second night was so hot and i didn't really sleep that well, by this time most of us felt a bit sick of being on a boat for such a long time and i have to admit even though were were probably all the youngest on the boat we all went to bed first and didn't hardly touch our drink!! such GEEKS! In the middle of the night me and Carla went up on deck to cool down and it was so peaceful and the sky was all lit up with stars, how romantic haha! we kept hearing splashing in the water and got a bit concerned the shark might climb the steps aboard the boat ...... so we went back to our sweaty beds!

We did however jump in the water the next day and went for a swim but were among the first to get back out........yes we were worried about the shark but i think that's understandable, we come from England where we just have goldfish! the last day was hot and we all went a lovely pink/brown,

well i better go have a shower now and go sit by the pool until it's time to go for free drinks at 7pm with the rest of our group (hopefully the weirdos won't turn up?)

x x x

This morning I'm pleased to say that I atcually managed to get up and have a 'normal' breakfast, i'd bought some cornflakes from an Aldi we found for $0.99 which is about 75pence and some milk and i was sooooooo looking forward to my cereal, miss it so much, miss fresh milk so much! Now me being me nothing is this simple and when i got out my cornflakes they were covered in ants!....... FML. Anyhow these ants were only small so I just ate them anyway and tried not to look as i was eating, I thought I could also possibly get some protein from them??

Also this morning we had to walk quite a way with our bags to put them in storage ready for when we go on the boat to the whitsundays, i had my big backpack that is about my body size and weight, my frontpack (yes i'm very embarrassed to admit i have one of these and yes i look like a gay wearing it!) then i had another sodding bag of food/general shite and i don't know WTF was wrong with me but at this point i decided to bite into my apple (i couldn't resist any longer you know how it is!) so you should've seen me i'm like a camel eating a flipping apple!

Last night was a pretty quiet night and we staying in with our roomies discussing food we miss, trading tips on cheap ways to cheat Oz prices, McDonalds is our new best friend for the 50cent ice cream cones (about 35pence) and we found a machine that sold cold cans or pop for $1 (about 70pence) so we stocked up on these and kept them in the fridge, otherwise the only thing we drink is warm/sometimes very hot water, not very refreshing as you can imagine, even water that comes out of the tap, no matter how long you run it for, is always warm :-(

Anyway must go and see if i can look for some jobs for when i get to Cairns, have avoided looking at my bank balance since i've been here.

LOVE x x x

Hey Everyone, had a bit of time (shocking i know) so thought i would update you on general gobshite, you know really keep you on the edge of your seat kinda stuff!

am in Rainbow Beach atm and waiting for our greyhound bus that we will be getting in a few hours, we will be on that fecking bus for 17 hours (and you thought it was all fun!) no really it's not just fun we have hardship here too you know, we carry our lives on our backs in the heat through bars/streets/cities/tiny towns/poolsides and no matter how much you try and act like its normal and your not the only one you still feel like a knobhead!

Other bad things include never being clean/when your next going to eat/ where you're going to stay/ having to say hi-bye to people whithin a few hours/days (some sadder than others)/ seeing your bank balance disintergrate/not doing what you want even though you think we have more freedom than you! we don't get to watch a film if we feel like it and if we do we don't have a choice what, we don't get to eat what or when we want usually it's just cheapest goes in you're mouth, you don't get to choose you're roomies so if they snore like a trooper tough luck!

Anyway on the brighter side these are also the best things about travelling, these make the memories!!!

We've been up since 6.45am as they have free pancakes for breakfast (we can't miss them as they are FREE!) but to be honest it's so easy to get up here, we wake up early every morning and spend all day being busy bees, and with not really eating vital nutrients we have to have a nap before dinner, although my favourite nap is always ont eh second night as the bed by then smells a bit more like me and not the person who slept in it before. The mornings are also our time to get our own back if we have had bad roomies and the've been dickheads the night before......dickheads!haha for example them all having a shower at 4.30am (don't worry we are very outspoken if someone gets on our tits!), so the next morning a couple of hours after that we got up and even though we could think of such evil things to do being a typical english person we still couldn't make that much of a fuss, we'd got over it by then and it's all part of sorm rooms (joy).

i could talk about gobshite alllll day long (as most of you already know) but really i have to go to the beach haha, speak soon homies, keep it real x x x x

I haven't had signal in days and i feel so cut off from the world, i'm in Rainbow Beach atm and the biggst shop is the size of Bar Rouge in Hertford!

From Brissie we caught the bus up to Noosa for two nights, we did a 8km walk round the Noosa National Park which was a killer but well worth it as it was all along the coast line and we saw turtles and some great views and on our way back to the hostel we bump into.....Claire and Hannah again YAY! Noosa was great although we had some weid swedish roomies (we either have great roomies or really bad ones, these were bad) and they were taking showers at 4.30am (weirdos!) so we had a good moan at them haha, after a day walking and laying on the beach we had pretty much covered Noosa, t's a real chilled out place and would be cool to have stayed for longer but we had to catch the greyhound up to Rainbow beach to have an EXTREME camping trip at Fraser Island!!

So Fraser was wickedy wick wick even though we had to dig a hole to wee and live like bush people (not very well) and there were awful fly's that looked like they had been on steroids, My favourite plac we visited was Lake Mackenzie which was like heaven (and had no fly's!) and staying with the Dingo's were cool, one came and made a hole in our tent in the night and tried to take Jess' toothpaste (they did have some god awful breath in their defence!) in our group was three 'guys' from Manchester, Jamie the giant, Andrew and John (the biggest girl/princess who camped with an eyemask and an inflatable pillow! Ben who was the alpha, an Irish dude who we couldn't pronounce the name of so we i refered to him as 'irish' (i think it was something like pochahontas but he didn't look to happy when i called him that) and our other female bush women Jess! (you've got size 9's?!!)

I would like to say i have lived though the EXTREME camping trip and am now clean and in a 'civilised' environment, there were times however where i considered sacrificing myself to the Dingos just to get away from the fly's god damm it! i need to just say here that the trip was only three days and two nights so not really that hardcore but enough to take it's tole on us english roses (lets just say i'm not a natural beauty,you wouldn't have even recognised me.....no not even you mum!!)

so now here i am on Jess' laptop in the bar with the rest of the group being very antisocial so i will have to end here and go play some ping pong, have fun at work tomorrow everyone haaaha muff luff x x x x x x x

also requests :

Claire's gay kiss was with a gay man!
Jamie is a badman (yeh right!)

We are geeks.....yes we are! we have our geek bag's (little backpack or daybag) that we carry round and we have our geek books that we keep things to put in them, we are typical tourists taking typical photos, to be honest all i'd say that 80% of travellers are geeks so it's okay, the other 20% are just not human.....no one can look that cool all the time?! sometime's we think we look cool and then realise we are wearing a dress that we dropped ketchup down last time we wore it...... i am already sick of all my clothes and want a wardrobe sooooooo much!!!!

so Byron Bay and Nimbin............ it was so chilled out and relaxed, we met some really nice girls from Manchester and a couple from Gold Coast that were there for the weekend and we went to Cheeky Monkeys and CocoMangas, they were pretty inpressed by our amount of free drink vouchers that we had collected (GEEKS). On the Saturday we went snorkelling with turtles which was cool when we got the chance, unfortunately there were loads of bluebottles (jellyfish) and us being typlical English were afraid of the stings......and them being Aussies were just like 'it's only a tiny sting, nothing really' so we spent most of the time on the boat watching the turtles, we then maaged to get our money back and spent the rest of the day like princesses!!! this consisted of a big burrito (still from a takeaway, no restuarant...i miss them) then we went and bought a top for $2.50/ about 1pound50 and then had the BIGGEST icecream from Baskins Robins, i had one scoop of rainbow, one scoop of strawberry cheesecake and once scoop of caramel crunch hmmmmmmmm!!! and yes we were sick!!

On the sunday we went on a tour to Nimbin in a rainbow coloured bus with LOUD hippy tunes playing, Nimbin was cool and the drive there was beautiful so much countryside, we stopped to have a BBQ picnic in this park where there are MASSIVE lizzards just roaming around (try and imagine that back home) but the Aussie's don't seem to mind! We also found a bargain dinner and drink for $2 which is like 1.50pounds (the dinner was like two mouthfuls!

We then rushed for our bus (we always end up rushing for our flipping bus) and caught it up to Surfers Paradise, we arrived at 8.30pm and didn't know where we were staying so we made friends with a couple at the bus stop and went where they had booked in it was the Islander and it was .......... paradise (literally) it was only a 4 dorm room, there was a TV and the bathroom was in our room YESSSSSSS, then i realised our roomies were.............BOYS oh noooo, i have shared with boys in the past and have never had a problem and i'm happy to say these were top notch Brazilian roomies! they even brought my towel in from the balcony when it rained.... luckily they didn't touch my lovely heart knickers coz that would've been a bit weird, i did notice them looking at them though (i no longer have no shame!), it was a shame we only stayed one night as it was a great room and we had great roomies, it was like luxury to us to have a TV and wardrobe (even if they were skanky as).

The following day we caught the greyhound to Brissie (Brisbane) and tryed to catch up on some sleep and get an early night, unfortunately thoguh we were sharing with boys AGAIN and they were foul so we changed rooms at 4 in the morning :-( but good news is that our new roomies left early the next morning and they left behind some deodrant and an adapter plug (which we now have and use).... again we have no shame!

Now Brisbane we caught up with Hannah and Claire again from Surf camp and they even managed to talk the reception into letting them stay in our dorm, that night it turned into party room and the two poor girls that walked had to check into it with all our shite around and music on haha, we went to the backpackers bar that night which was SO much fun, we danced to classics like Cotton Eyed Joe and Steps (funny how you remember the words to all of these), again we had some drink vouchers so only bought some goon beforehand which came to $2.50 each / about 1pound 50 so all in all a pretty cheapo night, we ate some crisp sandwiches and conked out ready to get up at silly o'clock the next day to go to the Zoo, me and Carla went to the Lone Pine zoo and had our photo's taken holding Koala's which was pretty cool however it was raining which was crappy but still was good to see all the Oz animals.

My Internet time is now used up will update asap much love x x x

So I firstly have to tell you what I thought would be my lowest moment of my travels (it turns out I was wrong)...... on our last day in Sydney we went to manly but weather was not great, so we decided to play one of our favourite games in an Aldi we found there called 'what we could have' - I'm sure your able to guess how this works from the title! Anyway while looking through the sweets drooling over them we found some that were opened.........and yes we ate some!!! Now I know what you're thinking....'tramps' but we were desperate haha and I'd like to say we have now invested in some sweets so that we don't stoop that low again.

On Monday night we got the overnight Greyhound coach that felt like Antartica so you can imagine how much of a nice compfy night sleep we got on that! we arrived at Wollgoolga at 6.45am and went to the surf camp at a place called Spot X, this was sooo good and met some really fun ppl, we had such a giggle with the girls in our room, the only thing not so good was the weather and it rained 2 out of the 3 days we were there!! so photos aren't that great unfortunately, still great food, great movie room, great nights spent by the fire getting drunk on goon (cheap wine in a box), at this point would also like to make a shout out to Laura (whoever she may be) for your goon that we kept drinking by accident! we also got cake passed round one night as it was someone's birthday there.....LAURA! oh no haha poor Laura! this is where our roomie Claire had her first kiss with a gay man (not sure how many she intends to have) but we were all very proud of her haha.

We left surf camp on Thursday 10th a little braindead (their vocabulary consists of 'Hot Dang' and some funny hand gestures ha) and came to Byron Bay...... waited an hour for our transfer bus to 'the arts factory' where we are stying in Teepees (still dorm rooms of course) but uber cool! this morning was atcually the lowest time of my travels so far......

for breakfast/lunch we took a long walk round Woolworths trying to think of something cheap to eat.....we ended up buying a cake of the discount counter for $2.89 which is about 1pound each and ate it (in our defence couldn't quite finish it but made a good effort)! how awful are we?! we were sick as dogs. After this we went into one of our favourite shops..... a charity shop!!!!.... and found a bargain book to read on the beach today ha can you imagine us doing this at home?!

So please don't judge us on this, we are actually being cool tongiht and meeting up with the girls we met at surf camp and going to a bar (where we get free entry and a free drink) so will update asap!! byeee x x x x x

Okay so here goes my very first blog! not sure how good i'll be at this so it may not last haha. It felt a bit weird arriving at first but i think now i've settled back into the backpacking world......showering with your flipflops on and surviving on meals under $5. It was also quite hard as it reminded me alot of my sister and when we were here so made me a little homesick at first.

The first couple of days I got here (wed 2nd Feb & Thur 3rd Feb) were pretty standard and not very exciting as had to get sim card and bank a/c's etc so we will start at Friday the 4th when we met up with my friend Shannon from Melbourne and went to stay with his parent in Penrith which was soooo good as we got to eat lots of yummy food and use a nice clean bathroom and sleep in a nice clean bed hmmmm, his parents were really lovely and did so much for us we didn't want to leave! On the Saturday the 5th after a HUGE amazing breakfast we went to the Blue Mountains walking for about 3 hours, luckily the temparture was a little cooler in the Mountains and was 35 degrees but it was still a killer! was great to see though and we went on the scenic railway which used to be used for the coal miners, it was really steep but fun, after this we drove back into the city where me and Shannon climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge at Twilight, this was fantastico and I'd highly recommend this to anyone visiting Sydney, however I thought it was a bit odd that I was the only 'foreigner' there, all the rest of my group were Australians although I admit they were from out of Sydney but I just assumed it would be the other way around.

We went out for a drink after this even though we was shattered we still managed a bit of a dance but not for long and we drove home and slept for a long time! On Sunday the 6th me Shannon and his mum went to see 'Jersey boys' at the theatre in Sydney which was great, I've been wanting to see it for ages and think i'll prob end up going again once I get home. Me and Carla had to check into a hostel which wasn't great but we met some nice girls so not all bad. That night we went out to celebrate Chinese New Year and as the asian community is BIG in Sydney there was a big parade and celebration, the parade was fun and after me and Carla got interviewed by a Chinese television crew (not telling which one as we sounded like halfwits in the interview and you might you tube it) which we found halarious....atcually still laughing about it now! in the excitment we then tryed to treat ourselves to some juice as we were so bored with water, hoever when we opened up the carton and started drinking we realised it was one you mixed with water so we were nearly sick on George street haha, we had to carry it all the way back to mix with our water, such tards! Last night's sleep was a bit odd aswell as me and a german girl were sleep talking (not sure to each other as I don't speak German) and at one point I woke up crying in my sleep and I remember i was dreaming about saying bye to my friends and family........and the cast of Coronation Street!!!! HA

Today we are going to Manly on the Ferry, although it's not that sunny today.....yet, i'm still looing forward to it as it's ment to be lovely, we will then leave Sydney tonight, which is a shame as there's lots more to do here but you can't do everything (that's just an excuse to come back), so TTFN and i will update you all very soon, much love and kisses x x x x x