Comfort Inn Marco Polo Taree

... demanding the evacuation of Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. What a great time to visit, I thought.<br><br>The world economic collapse didn't help our Australian dollar value and just for good measure, Swine Flu was just declared as a pandemic by the World Health Authority. What a great time to travel anywhere I moaned to Alan.<br><br>Well, there was no use in worrying at this stage. We were committed and we were off on an amazing adventure!

April 6, 2009 Our first day on the road!  We started out in the rain at about 5.45am in the morning.  Our first stop was a few minutes later to get Steve a coffee from McDonalds!!  He sure needs his coffee to get going in the morning!  We then managed to navigate through the early morning Melbourne traffic and were safely on the Hume Highway an hour later.   We stopped in Holbrook in NSW for lunch and then passed ...

... Wollomombi (quando a água corre são das mais altas da Austrália, 260m), e quando chegámos a Point Lookout (o ponto mais alto da região, supostamente com vistas espectaculares) e nos encontrámos no mei de nevoeiro tivémos a certeza que tinhamos desperdiçado um dia e muitos litros de gasolina. O que salvou o dia foram as cataratas de Ebor, onde chegámos sem expectativas nenhumas, e demos de caras com umas cataratas espectaculares. A etrada entre Ebor e Dorrigo, onde pass ...

Accompanied by yet more wind and rain we set off south towards the alcoholic delights of the Hunter Valley. Passing through small sleepy towns and the infamous Big (although if honest disappointingly small) Banana at Coffs Harbour, we made it as far as the non-descript settlement of Taree, comfortably within morning striking distance of the Hunter.

... of rain forest to the left and picturesqueue (sic) creek to the right, the perfect springboard for an early morning hike. Sunrise was to be at 5:45 the next morning so we calculated a couple of hours to get up (the mountain, not out of bed) plus a bit of extra time for nibbling on energy bars meant we needed to leave at 3am. Crikey. Just to make sure we didn't miss sunrise though, we thought we'd do a dummy run the following day at a civilised hour. Galvanising ourselves into action ...

... woooh man. Nimbin wasn't as amazing as everyone had built it up to be...we were expecting hippies everywhere and people just hanging out, but it was a bit too commercialised. A scenic drive took us out to the back of beyond where an American hippie had taken it upon himself to grow every manner of plant and tree. Jim and I even jumped in his pond for a quick dip:) Was a pretty funny day...glad we did it with the tour we choose. It just wouldnt have been as fun.

... see pics). It was a great night, not like the paddy's day madness at home. Anyway i had intended on attaching piccies now but it seems the camera is dead so i'll attach them tomorrow! We'll be leaving sydney around the end of march and probabaly heading north and pretty much driving around the whole country hopefully so we should have more interesting blogs at that point! Hope everyone is well and keep in touch, Lots of love, Paula and Shane

... reason we didnt get to bed until 6.30am as we were up talking and realised the time! Travelling just allows you to do things you wouldnt whilst at home on any day of the week when your not working, just not good on a budget as always worrying about the money factor! Dunno how guys do it every single nite, they must spend so.... much money! The next day we all decided to have a BBq on xmas day (as you do in aus) so drove around looking for bbq stuff - to be ...

After a pretty sleepless last night in Sydney we were up at 5.45am to catch the 7am bus to Port Macquarie and start our travels up the east coast. The journey was fine , the scenery absolutely class. We arrived in Port Macquarie and two seconds later we were off to the YHA hostel booked in and ready to go . As it was mid-afternoon and the Koala hospital does there feeding tour at 3pm we ...

... boat to go, we saw this big "jelly fish" floating around. It is really huge...check out the proof, I've captured it on photograph. And off we go sailing...the area is really beautiful. Passed along a group on their sea kayak adventure. We saw several dolphin pods but they're so far. So I didn't have clear photos of them....just tiny fins on the water from afar. I thought we'll get a chance to see them up close and personal but we didn't. Our ...