January 31st

We're back! We had a great last 2 days in Sydney - went shopping, went to Bondi beach and even got to climb Sydney Harbour Bridge on our last day!! What an experience being able to climb a bridge, being so high up and seeing the amazing harbour views.

We left Sydney on the 28th and had a stop-over in Seoul for 1 night on the way home. It was quite a shock to the system going from 27 degrees to -5!! But at least it meant that it didn't seem that cold when we got back to the UK!

We have a couple of days off to catch up with jetlag and unfortunately we're back to work on Wednesday but what an amazing holiday!

January 27th

We've had a fabulous week in Melbourne. We got to see the Australian Open tennis on 3 days and saw some amazing games. We got to centre court on Australia Day and saw Kim Clijsters and Andy Murray play, in between canon fire and low flying planes to celebrate Australia Day!

On Tuesday we took a day trip on the great ocean road and saw the amazing 12 Apostles rock formations. They were really nice but the weather was pretty wet & miserable. And on Friday we took a tram trip out to St Kildas beach. It's a really different city to Sydney, lots of old buildings, trams and people from every nationality you could imagine.

On to Sydney next for a couple of days and then back home on the 30th :(

January 23rd

We've been up at 4am for the last 4 days in a row & feeling exhausted now!!

On Wednesday we travelled to Ayers Rock on a 6am flight - went to see the Olgas (another rock close to Ayers Rock), walked through a gorge (where the park ranger recored a temperature of 51 degrees C!) and then went on to see the amazing sunset over Ayers Rock. Well....I watched the sunset while Dave took about 600 photos!!

On Thursday, we got up early to see the sunrise over Ayers Rock (really stunning), did a cultural walk around the base of Ayers Rock (we weren't allowed to climb it as the temperatures were too hot!) and then travelled on a 4 hour bus trip to Kings Canyon.

On Friday, we got up at about 4:30 (lie in) to do a 3.5 hour sunrise hike around the rim of Kings Canyon. Actually it took us about 4 hours because we were waiting for Dave to take photos :) It was absolutely spectacular there - an amazing canyon in the middle of the desert with nothing else around for miles and miles. Then we took another 4 or 5 hour bus trip on to Alice Springs.

On Saturday, we got up before 4am to do a sunrise hot air balloon trip in the outback! I've always wanted to do a hot air balloon trip and it was incredible!! We saw the sunrise over the mountains, saw lots of kangaroos hopping around through the trees, and even had a champagne breakfast when we landed. Then flew on to Melbourne for the next stage of our journey.

January 18th

We were planning to travel into Queensland and visit the Whitsunday's & Cairns but decided against it & two days after we left Brisbane, the whole city was pretty much under water! I managed to get a resort on the Gold Coast through work last minute - right accross the road from the beach and amazing sea views from our apartment so we stayed here and had a fabulous relaxing week! The rain stopped afer a few days & we had fabulous sunshine :)

We are so struck by the sense of togetherness and community spirit in Australia, especially through really difficult times with the Queensland floods. We travelled around the Gold Coast by bus for the last week and the bus company decided to give everyone free travel for the week in return for a donation to the flood relief appeal. In Brisbane, the council asked for volunteers to help with the clean up operation after the floods and 20,000 people volunteered! And listening to all the news coverage it was amazing to see the reporters in tears when they were reporting on how the floods had devistated people, homes & whole towns.