Final Australia times.................
The Lake Mouduran Holiday Park at Gin Gin and the Recreation Ground at Canungra gave Ben a huge area to practice with his boomerang! We all nursed our mosquito and sand fly bites – especially the girls who must be sweeter! At the Southport Olympic Swimming Pool, near Surfers Paradise-Jemma and Ben were very pleased to swim their furthest distances ever. Considering Ben was only just allowed to join us on Macswayround – by managing to swim his 50 metres, only weeks before we left......we are proud to say that Ben achieved his 1000 metres and Jemma achieved her 1500 metres! (not to be outdone – Mum & Dad did 1000 metres each too!) After a night at Brunswick Heads Terrace Reserve, we continued travelling down the East coast to Nambucca Heads. The weather was still rather wet along here, after having suffered terrible flooding a few weeks ago. One more extra long hit and we made it back to Sydney Tourist Park. We went along to Caringbah and met up with Phyllis again – this time at her son and daughter –in –law’s house. We met Jim, Sally and family and their decorator friend – Alan. We went to Cronulla and around the local area and we saw the place where Captain Cook first stepped foot on Australian soil. There was an information centre in the Botany Bay National Park. We came back and had a lovely BBQ and we would like to thank everyone for finding room for us- amongst all of the decorating work that was taking place. We said more goodbyes and travelled back to Lane Cove National Park (where Ben had his 7th birthday back in February!) Our final Australian Possum search was very fruitful that night and Jemma got the close- up encounter that she had been hoping for! We returned Aussie to the Sydney Depot and were then kindly dropped off by them at the nearby railway station, with all our bags. This is where the trouble started as we had rather a lot of bags. We have accumulated a lot of extra baggage along our way. As we would have a change over train journey to get us to the airport we practised loading ourselves up. After we all had armfuls, back-full’s and pull along luggage attached to ourselves, we were not actually able to move very far at all. Which -ever way we tried- it was to no avail. We had to resort to a maxi-cab with a big enough boot for all our luggage! – woops! As our time in Australia has come to an end, we would like to record how much we have enjoyed this extreme and diverse country. Our highlights have been the wildlife, the views, the most amazing colours that we have ever seen, and many friendly people along the way - to name but a few! Many people have commented to us about the deceptive size of Australia and have said- ‘it is SO big – people don’t realise’ and YES – it is BIG! However, we have managed to cover enough miles in our 3 months to travel from Sydney to Perth and back again –twice! This doesn’t mean that we won’t be back to explore some more......Because we will!! During our travels we have been surprised by the number of fellow travellers who have either burnt all of their ties and bridges or kept some link to home – but have set out for a lifetime of timeless travel. At that point, we think that this becomes more than a journey and is eventually a way of life.............until next time – HOOROO!!
Wednesday, 13 May 2009 07:46:56 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  Australia