Sydney & Deus Ex Machina

Sorry I've taken an age to write about what I have been up to since Byron Bay, but there is a distinct lack of
wifi in hostels down in the south of Australia. After Byron we took the night Greyhound coach down to Sydney and me, Izzy and Pete met back up with Nicola and Luke. We all booked into a hostel in King's Cross, to say it wasn't the nicest hostel in the world would be generous, but it was cheap and one of the few hostels around that had enough beds for all five of us.

As it wasn't raining we thought we'd go and get all of our sight seeing down at the obvious tourist spots like the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the Botanical Gardens.

The next day we all chipped in and hired a car (a surprisingly nice Kia Sportage to be precise) so we could drive to the Blue Mountains, or 'White Mountains' as we called them because of the cloud and fog. On the way we dropped into a shop that I've been dying to see for years, a custom motorcycle shop called Deus Ex Machina. They take classic bikes and give them a modern twist, I think they have the style down to a tee!

After I had calmed down in the Deus shop we got on our way to the Blue Mountains, which really just ended up being a picnic in the back of the car for Nicola's birthday. We took a bit of a detour home to find 'Red Hand Caves', some caves which have ancient Aboriginal artwork inside. I found getting there the most exciting bit! We had about a half hour off road drive (in our front wheel drive car) and then a 10 minute walk from the end of the road. It really felt about a million miles from any civilization, we even heard wild dingoes barking in the distance. Unfortunately my camera was too big to fit through the metal fencing to get photos of the actual artwork itself!

Back to the mainland, Townsville

Unfortunately the bad weather has moved south and caught up with us and yesterday it rained all day. We were lucky to have left Cairns when we did because there have been floods that have cut the far north off from where we are now, making travel impossible. Apparently this bad weather is going to continue moving south, so I think we might have more rain for the next week or so, but oh well!

Luckily our guest house had a 4x4 with a roof so today we took that out to see the rest of the island. Horseshoe Bay is the main resort area, but it was all very quiet with it being the low season here. We also went back up the West Point road which is only accessible by using a 4x4, although 20 minutes up the track the puddles started to become so deep that we had to turn back.

Luckily today we've had no rain while getting the ferry and checking into our new hostel on the mainland in Townsville. Along our travels people have kept telling us that there isn't much to do in Townsville, but I completely disagree! It doesn't have as many tourists, shops and nightclubs as Cairns but that wasn't really what we were looking for so we've been enjoying it here. There is a beach, although the sun hasn't been shining so we haven't been on it. We did go and visit the 'Reef HQ' aquarium which has a 2.5million litre tank with the world's largest living coral reef in captivity. They also have recently opened a turtle hospital to care for sick and injured turtles that are occassionally found along the local coastline.

Tomorrow morning we are getting back on the Greyhound to move further south to Airlie Beach - the main access point to the Whitsunday Islands. Apparently this bad weather is going to continue moving south, so I think we might have more rain for the next week or so, but oh well!

Arrived In Magnetic Island, Australia

We've had enough of the rain and left Cairns this morning in search of sunshine. We took the Greyhound coach  around 6 hours south of Cairns to Townsville where we could catch a ferry to Magnetic Island. On the way down we stopped off in Cardwell for a lunch break and got to see some of the damage from the recent Cyclone Yasi. Most of the way down from Cairns you could see damage such as buildings' roofs ripped off and strewn down the road and flattened rainforest. The driver of our coach gave us a bit of commentary on the way down, and was saying that part of the rainforest near Cardwell was so dense you could only see about two metres into it, but now it is completely flattened, even the leaves and branches have been ripped off the trees that were still standing.

In Cardwell many of the buildings, including people's homes, were totally destroyed. The cyclone stretched several hundred kilometres along the east coast from Cairns to south of Townsville, with the eye of the storm tearing straight through Cardwell. Some of the buildings in the town were 50 years old and had stood up to years of storms and cyclones, but had been flattened by Yasi.

By the time we got to Townsville the sun was shining with a small amount of cloud, which was so nice to see! The ferry left about 30 minutes after our Greyhound coach giving us just enough time to sort out the tickets and our accommodation on the island. We chose somewhere on the recommendation of Rich & Sara (who we met at our hostel in Cairns), that to our surprise came with a free collection service from the ferry terminal in a classic Rolls Royce Silver Shadow!

A lot of the island is best explored by 4x4 because many of the roads are dusty tracks, so after having dropped our bags off to our room we hired a Suzuki Vitara 4x4 to go for a drive. Apparently you can sometimes see wild koalas along a stretch of track heading north, though we didn't see any this time so we are going to go for another drive there in the morning.

Geoffery Bay, the beach opposite our guest house, is famous for its wallabys that visit the rocks near the shore at dusk. Our resort kindly gave us some wallaby pellets and said that quite often they will eat out of your hand! They were surprisingly tame and friendly, when you hold your hand out with food it would gently lick it off your palm.