G'day mates :)

Well we thought we better update you on the saga that was Australia and fill you in on what we got up to and why we left early...

We arrived in Sydney after a 4hour flight from Fiji and after going through customs, we were greeted by Steph's uncle Neil, cousin Tom, his girlfriend Caroline and Kiran's boyfriend Graham. We were both really excited to see some familiar faces and after the initial hello's, hugs and kisses we sat down to have a drink together. It was suggested that we have a group photo so as we both along with Tom and Neil got together...unbeknown to Steph that Carol (her Mum) was standing right behind her and was here on a surprise visit!! As you can imagine, when Carol tapped Steph on the shoulder and Steph turned around to see her mum it was all very emotional!! Once all calmed down we both went our separate ways for 4days as Steph was going to stay with her uncle and mum in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney and Kiran was to spend 4days in Sydney with Graham.

Steph's 4 days with her family were amazing, especially as she was able to meet at long last her 3 cousins who she hadn't met before. After 3 nights in the Blue Mountains Steph came back to Sydney with her mum and spent and evening in Sydney with her cousin Tom before her mum had to head back to Brisbane. Kiran spent 4 incredible days touring the sights of Sydney (mainly the amazing shops!!) and sampling some of the local nightlife with a family friend, Shakira. Trippers were then reunited (it was very surreal being separated for 4 days having spent the last 6months together day and night!!) We were also joined once again by Charlotte, who we spent a week with in New Zealand, and her friend Roberta from back home who was on a long 4 week holiday in Australia, and so over the next 4 weeks it was the 5 of us.

In Sydney we all had separate things to do and see however we all at some point saw the must-see sights such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. We went to Bondi beach, Manly beach and caught up on some shopping!!! One morning we all decided to go on a city-walk with the hostel we were staying with...especially as there was the incentive of a free drink for when we got back after the 3hour tour!! So off we went however after an hour or so we decided we wanted to do our own thing and went and had lunch, sat in the botanical gardens with the thousands of fruit bats (noisy bloody things) and then made our way back to the hostel on the designated route...only to bump into by pure chance the walking group we had left with!! The guy leading it was like "where did you guys go?!?" Whoops...we just smiled and managed to blag the free drink!! Drinking became a favourite past time in Sydney, with many a nights spent drinking the infamous goon in our hostel room before heading down to the hostels attached bar!! "Goon" for those unaware is wine that comes in a box and as such doesn't taste that great....particularly after we noticed that on the side of the box it said "May contain traces of fish guts and eggs"!!! That should give you some clue as to how delicious it tasted!! We also enjoyed a few civilized evenings out in Darling Harbour, which was really pretty as the sun began to set!! We spent a grand total of 12days in and around Sydney and the majority of it was spent catching up with people we hadn't seen for months...some of whom had flown miles to see us!!

From Sydney we caught a flight to Melbourne, with the intention of spending the Easter weekend there. Graham had met some friends travelling (Pete and Jacob) and it was Pete's birthday when we arrived on the 2nd April, so they had arranged to pick us up from the airport and take us to Geelong, a coastal town about an hour out of Melbourne. Geelong has been dutifully renamed G.Long after Steph revealed that was how she believed it was spelt...no comments necessary she's received enough ridicule ever since for her sillyness!! The plane journey was interesting to say the least, mainly because of the addition of "Beth Piney". On departing from Sydney Kiran and Graham realised they hadn't managed to eat the pineapple they'd bought, so decided to take it with them as a birthday present for Pete. Hours of fun at the airport then ensued taking lots of pictures of Piney in different places and with different people!! Definately the most fun we've ever had at an airport before, particularly as Piney managed to accumulate a face, pink bow and a pair of earrings by the time we'd landed in Melbourne!! We spent 2 nights in G.Long and made sure that Pete well and truly celebrated his birthday!! We went out one night in particular to watch the much-anticipated Manchester United versus Chelsea game (where much to the dissapointment of Steph and much to the pleasure of Kiran, Chelsea won 2-1) and afterwards continued the night in the club upstairs. When we had got to the bar Steph had realised she had forgotton her purse (muppet) however managed to sweet talk the the bouncer to letting her in. At the end of the night Steph managed to lose the group and when she went to call them she also came to realise that she had not only forgotten her purse but also her phone. Ah. Slight problem. No money, no purse and absolutely no idea where she was staying as we were staying with Grahams friend. What to do??! What she DID do was manage to get a lift in a police car with two very nice Ozzie policemen who drove her around G.Long trying to locate Pete's house with the only clue being that he lived somewhere near something called "The Big Shed". Unbelievably she somehow managed to get back to Pete's and was waiting on the door step when the others came back. Safe to say they were all very-surprised to see her there!! Only Steph could manage to go out without her purse or phone and then get a lift home with coppers!! You certainly wouldn't catch any Noonan's getting a lift back with a policeman!! After all the drama in Geelong we spent two further days in Melbourne, by the beach in St Kilda and then caught a flight to Alice Springs.

So after arriving in Alice Springs we managed, after A LOT of hassle, to arrange a rental car for three days in order to drive the 1500km round trip to Ayers rock and Kings Canyon. We could have done a pre-arranged trip however since there was 5 of us it worked out slightly cheaper to do it ourselves and we also were then able to do things at our own pace. After lots of driving we arrived at Ayers rock. We went at first to go see the Olga's (similar to Ayers rock but a different formation of rocks), got literally attacked by flies as we did where we decided that we had to each invest in a fly net thing to put over your head as you literally walked along and about 10,000 flies would land on you!! We then drove back to the Ayers Rock viewing platform to see the magnificent sunset. We spent the first night in some inbred hill-billy convention which kept us all amused for hours as the people-watching was first class!! The following morning we got up very early to go and watch the sunrise over Ayers rock, which in all fairness wasn't that much different from the sunset. We then all did the 10km base walk around Ayres Rock...and ran out of water after about 10minutes!! We therefore spent most of the walk power-walking in attempt to get to the water point!! After the first kilometre of the rock it was pretty much all the same and all the interest points and rock formations you weren't allowed to take photos of as the locals thought it would destroy the spirituality of the rock. We then drove the 500km to Kings Canyon arriving in the late afternoon. The next day Steph got up early (and Kiran to drive her there!) to the 3/4hour rim hike around the canyon (only took 2hours though) and the others met her later on where they did the shorter walk. King's Canyon was similar to Ayers rock, particularly in the reddish colour of the rock, apart from the fact it was a canyon of course! We then all bundled back in the car to embark on our 500km back to Alice Springs.

From Alice Springs we flew down to Adelaide where we caught up with some friends we had met over New Year in Buenos Aires, Will and Chris. We arrived in Adelaide on Saturday 12th April and that night went for a really nice meal and then onto a house party with the boys. The following day they took us to Cleland Park which is a wildlife park with all the traditional Australian animals!! There were hundreds of semi-wild kangaroo's and wallabies hopping around which we got to feed!! Sooooo much fun!! We also saw Koala's, wombats, dingo's and a tasmanian devil!! They boys spent the entire day laughing at our fascination with their creatures and talking about how they couldn't wait to go to England to see squirrels!! Hmmmmm squirrels vs. Kangaroo's...It's safe to say that the latter wins!! Chris gave us a fantastic quote in a deadly serious tone..."I think God really f@#%$d up when he came to Australia, I mean look at all the animals here! They're just so strange!" Genius!! The boys also took us on a tour of the city and showed us the 3 universities and some of the other sights of Adelaide. Charlotte and Roberta had ventured off to Kangaroo island at this point so we spent the remaining few days in Adelaide looking around the shops. The only thing we did buy was some amazing chocolate from a shop called Haighs. Kiran and Graham ventured to Glenelg beach and attempted to sunbathe, but Australian weather's not as good as you would think, and it turned out to have a similar temperature to Brighton beach in March....i.e. not warm enough to sunbathe on!! All in all Adelaide was a relaxing few days but a few days after we left they experienced an earth tremor. The first in 20 years or so, looks like we're still causing carnage after we leave places!! Then we flew off to Perth, which is where everything changed...

So without realising, Perth was to be our last stop in Australia. We arrived in Perth and pretty much went straight down the coast to Fremantle which was a little beach town. The other reason for going there was to go to Rottnest island, however when we found out that the trip to the island was going to cost us $85 each (about 50quid) so we decided we couldn't afford to do that. We still had a nice time in Fremantle, chilling out on the beach and sampling the local nightlife...which was pretty dire!! One "club" we went to was ridiculous. Before entering the club they required a finger print scan!! We were in a small seaside town on the West coast of Australia...although thinking back it might have been for hospital records, as the dancing that we were subjected to looked like it was conducted by mental patients!! The staff didn't believe Steph's passport picture was her so after the third degree and having to provide a driving license, credit card etc we finally made it in...and we wished we hadn't bothered!! We spent the whole time laughing at the beings that frequented the club i.e. more hill billys, wanna-be gangster and some very very bad dancers!! We had more problems trying to get into that club security wise than we did getting into the bloody country!!

Once back in Perth city we went to see the red bull air race, and walked around seeing the various sights. In Adelaide we had managed to arrange an amazing campervan relocation deal that we had to pick up in Perth on the Monday. We had managed to book a 6 berth campervan for a bargain of $5 dollars per day!!! All we had to do was get it up to Broome in 6 days. Fair enough it was a lot of driving but we were given a $320 fuel allowance and the only other way of getting up there was gonna cost us at least 500quid EACH!! You can imagine how excited we were when we snapped up the deal and found out that it had a toilet/shower and cooker!! It was like an ultra delux version of Bruce!! Anyway we then decided to advertise for some other people to come with us as there were 3 spare beds as at this point it was only Kiran, Steph and Charlotte that were remaining in Oz and we thought it would be a laugh and be cheaper if we got a few other people involved!! We ended up arranging to go with a German and Finnish guy and were all set to go on the Monday when we get a phonecall saying that some plum had crashed the campervan. This meant that there was no longer a campervan to relocate!!! We. Were. Gutted. This was the same day that we found out about the volcano situation in Iceland and the cancellation of all flights and found out that our friend Roberta who was meant to be flying home on the Wednesday couldn't and wouldn't be able to get a flight back until three weeks later!! It seemed like everything was going wrong as if it hadn't fallen through she could have come with us in the campervan. We decided instead that in order to make sure we could stay out until our proposed end of the trip date that we could no longer afford to stay in Oz. Travelling from Perth to Cairns was going to cost far too much now and it was either do that and fly home after Oz or leave now and spend longer in Asia. As we had now managed to accumulate an extra 6weeks more in Asia than originally planned we decided to visit Indonesia as well and flew to Java in Indonesia on Wednesday 21st April. Ironically we had to fly from Perth to Sydney before we could get anywhere else, so we arrived in Sydney and then departed from there a month later. We had to pay an extra 300pounds each for the pleasure of leaving Oz early as well so thanks STA travel for that!! As 300pounds is roughly equivalent to 2weeks accommodation in a dorm room in Oz we thought for the sake of our bank balances it was the best option.

On the flight from Sydney to Jakarta, a couple of hours in the pilot gave an announcement that he had some bad news. We looked at each other and promptly burst into hysterical laughter....we thought we weren't going to be able to leave after all!! Turns out there was some bad weather and the plane didn't have enough fuel to get us to Jakarta, and so was going to have to turn back...the hysterical laughter reached a higher pitch and severity although neither of us have any idea why this was our response!! Eventually he went on to explain that we would be turning back and heading for Darwin to refuel before continuing onto Jakarta. This was one of the places we had planned to visit but unfortunately spending an hour sitting on the runway in the airport wasn't exactly what we had planned to do there!! we left Perth at 4.30am and had managed to get as far as Darwin 12hours later in a long roundabout way...if you look at a map of Australia you'll see it would've been MUCH easier to fly straight from Perth to Darwin. It's a similar detour (although much longer) to flying from London to Paris in order to get to Edinborough!! Eventually we left Darwin and arrived in Jakarta to commence our Asian travels.

Six things that characterised our Australian experience are:-
1) the sheer cost of everything!! Even a lettuce is more than 3 pounds!! And you couldn't get a bed in a dorm room for less than 15pounds, even in a disgusting and grotty place!!

2) "Awwww Yeaaaaah.....but naaaaah....but..." in an awful Australian accent!! This provided hours of amusement and unfortunately was present in EVERY conversation we had the entire time we were there (thanks Graham and Pete!!

3) Pineapples - dearest Beth Piney...RIP...we all love and miss you!!

4) Putting "dots" into words for no apparent reason e.g. G.Long, Mel.Bourne, G.oon, basically everything!!

5) Having a phone again!! We all got Oz simcards when we got there and after not texting anyone for about 6months we used and abused this service. Kiran lying in bed next to Steph, Steph gets a text message, "Can you pass me the water please?". Steph replies "Yes".

6) Goon - cheap wine from a box cherished by backpackers as the cheapest thing to drink in Oz. Many messy hangovers resulting from this!!

We'll send an update on Asia soon, promise we won't leave it as long this time!!

lots of tripper love

Kiran and Steph
xxxxx