1 Month Home!

Today I realised that we have been home 1 month today. 
I can safely say this month has gone quicker than any in Fiji America or Australia. I cant believe it was a whole month ago we left deb at the airport to come home! 
(This also means a whole month without blogging which is pretty shameful. Never the less I am amazed to say our page views are still steadily creeping up so we must have some pretty interesting stuff on here to keep people coming on (not sure if its family & friends out of habit or if google thinks we write good stuff!)

Well what has happened in the last blur of a month.
First few days was spent visiting family and friends, (the sad part is we still haven't seen everyone we want to! And for that we are sorry.. More on why this has happened later!)

Our first weekend home was a planned one, sort of family time when we went down to the Super Car Event as we have the past few years working and helping out supporting the childrens trust. Obviously we all had a little go in a car (Mercedes shooting break which was phenomenal for any car and especially a saloon car!) Laura was also very VERY excited to hear Myles had talked her into an Lamborghini Aventador which had taken place in the Gumball 3000 rally that year! 
With that our first weekend home was over! 

Monday morning came and we were all suited up for an interview.
By the end of day 1 we had jobs and were both starting the next day! Myles as a Pyrotechncian and Laura as a Web Designer. Thats when it all started to blur! Between Laura working for Force FX our new place of employment and still working for Ian it was all a lot to take on board whilst learning so much in a short space of time! Myles was equally thrown into it by being chief firer for B festival the weekend we started! 

You cant say we do things by halves! Laura helped out on her first show that weekend too setting up but mainly being a photographer (which is a new skill but got a few good shots for the website and thats what counts!)

The 2 weeks after that went by without us even realising! Again another weekend where Myles was working doing the effects for the Playstation GT Academy! With Laura spending the weekend seeing her family and friends after seeing Myles' the one before. This week has been crazy! I cant believe so many things have happened in one week. Firstly Laura set up her first website on the work sever (I don't know if this sounds like a small thing or not but for her it was huge considering 3 weeks ago she had never seen how a server really works let alone work on it!) So that's pretty exciting news. On Monday Myles also picked up his second baby, his new Motorbike Flynn! 

Isn't she beautiful?! 
So that's pretty big that we have a bit of our own transport again! This brings us to Tuesday when Laura got the most exciting text, Ian had sold her first website to a client! (She was so over the moon!)
This firstly means money but secondly a lot more work to get it finished for the client! Which means a new laptop is needed, which requires money.. catch 22 there! Luckily working so early when we got back has paid off and research can begin! 
Sad talk on Wednesday Myles bike had to go back to the dealer with an engine management light on. This has resulted in it STILL being there now! & a part being flown out from Japan specially! Luckily its still under warranty and we should have it back by Monday. They were kind enough to give him a loan bike.. It was a dirt bike! 
Oh yeah we both rode this twice! 
Only twice for Laura & Myles took it around the garden for fun. IT WAS BONE SHATTERING! 
Thursday arrived in a blur realising that it was Andrew [Myles' brother] prom! This required logistics to get home in time as Laura had made other plans sadly not realising that it was prom day. No matter though the hottest and busiest day in the office would make this a side thought! James [our boss] very kindly gave us some confetti cannons for Andrew for a bit of fun. This wasn't just fun for Laura.
Building the website and starting the social media for the company has required a LOT of photos and some areas just didn't have enough photos. This meant that the prom had to be photographed and made a show of! Myles was sent off to schmooze with teachers and get some great event photos!
That takes us up to today really! 

Here's a shot from the office playing with lasers !

Myles is working at another Festival called Mutiny in the park which has gone really well which is great and Laura had a birthday day getting her new shiny laptop from John Lewis. Big thank you to mummy and daddy for going halves on it hopefully it lives up to its spec and proves to be very good for work !! 

So there you have it! Lots of busy time and exciting things going on for the people who never seem to stop! 
Lots of love to you all x

18th June Coming home

For those that don't already know we are now home! Well we will be by the time you read this as we fly overnight by UK time.

On Wednesday morning we woke up rather early, 3am to be precise so only about 2 1/2 hours sleep! Waking up to the view of Sydney was amazing and I couldn't help but stare at it again. We got dressed and met a rather excited Deb outside our door (more excited than usual anyway) I made myself a coffee and it tasted awful so Deb decided she was going to work out the machinemabob eventually after adding water coffee was made and it was much nicer! Ian presented us with a card and both Deb and Ian had filled it with writing! I opened and read it and handed it to Laura trying to hold back tears... A sentence from Ian in the card which I will always remember is "I don't believe in goodbyes, only see ya laters" brilliant. Ian didn't want to come to the airport so we said our "see ya laters" at the apartment and headed for the car. I offered to drive for the last time, driving through Sydney at 3:45 am is a breeze! Only catching and timing traffic lights is the tricky bit, we got onto the short stint of highway to the airport only for the exit for the international terminal to be closed!! Bugger. So we took a quick scoot further up turned off and swung back heading into the city, and took the exit heading back instead. We found our way to the terminal and unpacked the car. We said our "see ya laters" to Deb this time not managing quite so well to hold back the tears.. We lined up and waited for check in. Then proceeding to fill our leaving Australia customs form, scanned for bombs and as we were walking through duty free our flight was called. The airport was empty as Sydney has a curfew with no flights allowed between 11pm and 6am. Our plane was due to be first out of the airport. We were booked on the latest Emirates, Boeing Airbus A380. The biggest passenger plane in the world! And by god is it a big plane! We were right at the back out the way from all the noise and babies so walked all the way down. Unfortunately we couldn't come up with the $12,000 each required for business class tickets but even so economy is still rather lovely! It was still pitch black outside and we were sat on the tarmac ready to take off. Engines spooled and we were hurtled down the strip, it was a long time before we could rotate but we left terraferma and were climbing happily. Laura and me always hold hands while landing and taking off. Being in the air we then kept our hands busy playing with the infotainment! Shortly after everyone on the left side of the plane was asked to close their blinds I assumed it was because the sun was rising and it was going to be very bright. A couple of minutes later I looked because I wanted to see the sunrise over Sydney and I wished I hadn't. Laura's hand was held again! I'm no expert but I'm fairly sure that sparks and flames shouldn't be pouring out the back of a jet engine?! I closed my blind knowing there was nothing I could do. And pretended nothing was wrong, I watched the interactive map closely to see if we were deviating from the planned route. I knew if there was a major problem that we would turn dump the fuel at sea and head back to Sydney. But we stayed the course and kept climbing 10 minutes passed and we were still climbing I checked again and there were not only the odd streak of orange coming from the engine. Being lucky enough to have 4 of the most powerful jets Rolls-Royce have ever made it wouldn't be a major issue if one was out or order. Once we were level I went the long way around to the toilet and went via the galley closest to the cockpit without going upstairs obviously. I approached the only male steward went in and closed the curtain behind me, he asked what in earth I was doing until I asked if I could have a word, my exact question was "what was wrong with engine 2 at take off" nobody else had seen it as the blinds were closed to avoid seeing the sun. As it turned out I was the only person to see it!! This worried the poor steward greatly and asked me exactly what happened and when. He asked me to wait while he went to speak to the pilots. Luckily they were aware as they had been contacted by Rolls-Royce in the UK and Sydney Control telling them that there was a problem. The most likely cause was a bird strike as we were first down the strip and the sparks I saw was just BBQ bird. I accepted the answer knowing full well what a bird strike can do to a jet engine.  I thought I would distract myself and went to watch a film with very sweaty palms, well when I say the the film was on, I was fixated on the engine...

However we are now 8 hours into the flight and sat at 38,023ft with a ground speed of 565mph. It's -50degrees outside and we are flying over the equator. Only another 3469 miles to Dubai then 12 hours to home. I still feel rather special knowing that only 1 steward the pilots and me knew what happened to the engine! Laura will know when we land to refuel in Dubai. Not the most relaxing flight we have had so far, but we did have a lovely omelette, beans, hash browns, mushrooms and tomato for breakfast. I had a salmon in lemon cream for lunch and Laura had the lamb couscous. We both had an Asian BBQ pork salad starter and a chocolate Ganash for pudding. It was very yummy! Emirates has impressed so far...

We arrived safe at Dubai airport and walked straight to the gate, we felt rather poor after seeing all the gold and diamond encrusted watches in the duty free. We grabbed some free Internet to pass on travel information before boarding our plane bound for London!

17th June - World Tower

Our last day!

So our last day! What a day to remember....

We were up fairly early and finished off our packing, and got our rucksacks weighed to make sure we were still within our limits. 

We seemed to be ok so we pressed on with what had to be arranged! First on the list was Vonnie (Debs mummy) we had a short trip down the road and said our goodbyes. What a lovely woman Vonnie is, she was our Australian Grandma. An even got us leaving presents and a card which was so kind of her!

Next up on the list was to collect Ian from Cambletown on the way to Sydney. It was now revealed to us that Deb and Ian had arranged a hotel for our last night in Sydney. Yet again our Australian parents going silly and over the top and doing things we never even contemplated doing in Australia! But we come back to that in a minute.

We had a drive down to Bondi Beach for a walk along the coastline. Ian still feeling rather sore from Wakefield park gave it a miss and had a snooze in the car. We returned and headed to our hotel. After a bit of a faff actually finding the car park we were in. We went to in to huge reception which was terribly acoustically designed. Eventually we were given the cards to get in. We got into the lift and made our way to the 74th floor. Yes Deb and Ian had booked us a room in the penthouse apartment on the 74th floor! It was huge. And I mean huge! It had 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms a kitchen and a massive living room with dining area. This was all very nice but drawing back the curtains we had the most spectacular view of central Sydney. We actually looked down on the CBD and were at the same level as the Westfield Tower! It's the highest accomadation in Sydney and it was breathtaking! 

We spent the evening relaxing, having dinner and drinking champagne of course! We had such a great time and couldn't thank deb and Ian enough when they took us to the airport the next morning at 4am! But that is another story...

Friday 6th to Monday 9th June

Over the long weekend we have been very busy, too busy for blogs even! 
We have basically spent all weekend in the city of Sydney
As we have done so much we shall save a little time writing so much up and do you all a quick summary. 

Firstly our 1st year traveling anniversary was spent in the city of course finishing the rest of Vivid we didn't see and retaking the photos Myles wanted to see! We had fish and chips in darling harbour watching the vivid aquashow. This time being friday it was foti day! You should all know that Foti means fireworks by now! Oh yes the show had fireworks with it this time!
We watched the show and enjoyed the fireworks very much but it did take away from the water a little as you would expect! 
We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the city & lights from land and sea! Another late night was had arriving home just past 12.
Saturday morning arrived and a note arrived under our door announcing 'adventure day.' Deb had another exciting day planned for us!
After breakfast we headed out down the back of the house past the garages and towards the national park. We had a beautiful walk to the furthest and biggest waterfall that we had not been to before. We took some photos and Myles tried to divert the course of nature as usual. Once we were back we picked up Debs mother and had lovely pies from our favourite pie shop in Bargo! Myles had cheese bacon and steak whilst Laura had curry. Both very very nice!
After this more secret adventures. We drove back into the city and after hitting traffic we arrived later than planned at 2:30. We went to the powerhouse Museum as it had an exhibition that deb thought we might like. A game exhibition :D
We had fantastic fun  playing donkey kong, pacman and all good things like that. Including things like angry birds on 14inch screens! 

A short time later we got kicked out and walked to China town. We had a good walk around and noseyed in the shops until a very well dressed asian woman told us "we had money back guarantee if we didn't like their meal no MSG money back come come" So we did as we were told and gave it a go. We didn't like their fish all crammed in the tanks and debated liberating them but at $199 per kilo for prawns we thought better!! We had a beautiful meal which was finished with cream puffs that we queued for 20 mins and were just pancake batter filled with hot custard. Yummy but not quite worth the wait. Obviously just something you have to do! 

Sunday was a different sort of day, Myles requested underwater day, but that was a tall order in the winter! Our day was spent visiting Debs daughter mel having the worst meal we have ever had in Australia (ahem dont ever visit austi beach cafe in wollongong its awful!)
and then having a relaxing evening after 2 days of busyness! 
Monday held the real underwater day as we awoke to pommie weather for the queens birthday bank holiday! We had a damp trip to Sydney again visiting manly beach for the first time! We had a unique visit as it was unlike most in the rain! We did a short part of the walk and headed back to the car. We carried on into the city where we parked up and headed to the ferrys. Still in the dark Deb bought some tickets and we boarded the ferrys. Laura clicked where we were going straight away. Bienalli! 
Deb had wanted to go since it opened and today was the last day! Lucky us..
It looks really good on paper and you get to cockatoo island in the rain and get let down. We raced into the que for the 'Google train!' 
sounds pretty cool huh? The idea is that its a train ride of what a google search is like. We jumped in and the lady at the front announced anyone in the que without tickets wont get on. LOTS of people then left as it just started raining again but we had an umbrella and waited it out. We knew that the train had only 2 rides left so drew straws to see who would go if we all couldnt. Laura drew the lonest and Myles the shortest. This didnt matter anyways because the lady shouted any singles to go on and Laura shouted yes and ran. This was the agreed plan and the person would then film the amazingness to come. I won't even put the video on because it was SO rubbish. It was a black tunnel with train noises and occasional flashing lights. THATS IT! Deb managed to get on the same train as me leaving myles alone to wait. OH I didnt mention it only goes one way to the other side of the Island. Yeah so we waited whilst Myles got wet and eventually on the last ride he arrived equally as disappointed. We went around most of the rest of the stuff poking fun at the whole thing and its rubbishneesss!! We mutually agreed how awful modern art is and that it is for people who cant do real art. Sorry but its just stupid! 
With that I will end our weekend! 
We also went to Ikea for meatballs and dinner and saw a mcclaren dealership! 

So yeah thats us keeping busy as usual! 
There have been blog updates in the gallery and videos department so make sure to check all that exciting stuff out!
Lots of love to you all x

Day 365! 1 Year!! (06/06/2014)

Hello Readers.

Today marks the 365th day of our travels. Yes it has been a year already! I'm sure it feels much longer for you all but time has really flown for us. It seems like only last week we were trekking down into the grand canyon or laying in Fiji enjoying the "Fiji time culture"

So we have been away for 365 days that equates to:
8760 hours or 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds.

In that time we have done quite a bit of travelling. Distance wise I have spent some time working it out for you....

So when we set off we flew from London Heathrow to New York, 9 hours, a total of 3485 Miles 
After that it was a drive to see Natasha in Canada, 12 hours, a rough total of 493 Miles
A week later it was back to NYC so another 493 there.
For the next 23 days we drove across America as you well know, a total of 10,594 miles.
San francisco to Los Angeles was an overnight drive, 380 miles there.
Our flight to Fiji was 11 hours and approximately 5534 Miles
From Fiji to Sydney was only a short stint of 4 hours - 1962 Miles.
This brings us to Australia. 
In our car we have done 9375 miles.
In debs car we have been roughly 1078 miles
Ians car hasn't done as much work only clocking up 312 Miles.
and a future calculation will be our flight home;
Sydney to Dubai is 14 1/2 hours and will be 7486 miles
And Dubai to London - 12 hours will be 3417 miles.

Including the flight home we will have travelled 44,609 miles (71,374km for our foreign friends)
To put that distance in perspective that's the equivalent of driving from brighton to london 841 times!

Here are some of our highlights...

New York

Niagara Falls

Ramen

The Grand Canyon

Monument Valley 

San Francisco

Sydney

The Blue Lagoon Fiji

New Years Eve

The glorious secluded
 beaches

The Great Ocean Road

 

Vivid

Ayers Rock

Dinner under the stars

And how could we possibly forget the amazing Deb & Ian. Who have made our trip into a truly once in a lifetime experience! Thankyou!

2nd June - Flashback!

This is a flashback blog!
Who can guess what happened on this day 1 year ago?

Wednesday 28th May - Vivid

 Exciting news today is Wednesday! We have been waiting for Wednesday since last Friday. The reason for this is this, Vivid!
Vivid is a light and music show that takes a hold of Sydney city each year. When planning the trip to Australia Laura was a bit sad to have missed it last year but now! Plans have changed and we are here and excited for it! We will be heading into the city with Deb at 4 ready for the start at nightfall.

Culture Day 25th May

You might ask what Culture Day is, we certainly did. We woke up and before we even got half way down the stairs we were greeted by the most excitable Deb in the world telling us that it was Culture Day and that we had to get ready quick. During breakfast we enquired as to what Culture Day was and the response was Culture Day. This could only be a secret day of doing stuff that Deb doesn't even know yet!

16th May - Skydive

About to Jump! (Well fall)

After a pants night sleep it was game day. Skydive today. After a slow start due to a cold start, we made a start to the day saying goodbye to Deb and we were playing the waiting game. Laura had to check in by 11 which meant we had to kill time until 10:30. This wasnt too hard with washing to do and the internet providing a good distraction for the morning. Laura went for a walk and the nerves started to kick in. She tried to keep what Ian had told her the day before in her mind and calmed down a bit.  Not long later we were on the road. An easy drive an we were there. We checked in and as we did I was set to be in the next plane. 

Reflection

Happy birthday to me. And why the heck not?

Looking around on Facebook I have seen how people have celebrated their 21^st birthdays and I realised Myles and me are some of the very few who haven’t spent theirs with their families. We spent our birthdays the other side of the world wit a family that isn't our own doing things we never dreamt we would be doing. 

This got me thinking about what else we have done differently. This year most people will be finishing their degrees and looking for their first full time employment in their chosen field after 3 or 4 years at uni. Well at the age of 21 we have had a full time jobs for 2 years after college and guess what we still have no idea of what we want to do! I have spent a year travelling, seeing the world and gaining life experience, but most of all I have found my confidence. I have realised that I have talents and that I have a voice and I can do whatever I put my mind to. I have cleaned boats, been a debt collector at an accounting firm, I have done data entry work and worked as housekeeping in a hostel. All of these things are totally different to anything I have done before and yet I have turned my hand to all of them. Granted it is not brain surgery but each one has taught me something whether it’s a skill or something about myself & for that I am glad I have done all of them. This month I am being a Web Designer. I have spent the last month teaching myself the basics and starting to build my first few websites. This is totally left field from what I have trained to do the past 2 years but I have support behind me & I’m enjoying it? I’m not getting paid to pull my hair out trying to read gobbledygook and yet I’m carrying on? After spending 5+ months with Deb and Ian I have learnt a lot but mainly that you can’t buy opportunity and experience. By sheer luck we found them on Gumtree and changed our whole experience in Australia. I don’t believe we were ready to travel Australia when we arrived and if we didn’t meet Deb & Ian we would be home by now. We had a great opportunity with Deb and Ian to learn about life and what’s important. Deb has a great outlook on life; I have only seen her unhappy once and that was when we lost Tara the dog. Her attitude is why bother being unhappy when you can do what you want to do? If she wants to go to Sydney to see a giant rubber duck then she does it. It’s this attitude that has rubbed off on us making us want to make the most of all of our experiences. Then Ian has this work ethic and eye for seeing talent in anyone and making use of every experience which has inspired us to push ourselves when we get home to use all of our experiences.

Where I’m going with all of this is that we haven't taken the “standard” or usual route that people take in life or whilst travelling; I am so glad of this, on a personal level I have become more confident and self assured of what I am doing and what I want. I am a healthier and happier person for coming away and what more can you ask for? 

We have had a ball being away and I am sad think about the end of this fantastic journey. I am excited to start thinking about when we will be coming home and seeing everyone again as well as planning our next adventure whilst seeing this one end feels impossible.

Ayers Rock

Day 1 - Arriving & The Olgas

Exciting times ahead the alarm set off at 6am

Well it's still dark. We rolled out of bed and finished putting the last few things in the suitcase we have borrowed. Laura was plagued with bad sleep due to thinking she had forgotten to pack something. This was with just cause, because the tripod hadn't been packed. Myles would have been grumpy indeed. We had a coffee packed the car and we were off. A speedy start to get to the train station in time was hampered by fog. This gave us some beautiful views of the sun rise on a positive note. 

Luckily we left super early and got to the train station with 10 minutes to spare. After a long fight with the ticket machine which wouldn't take a debit card we eventually scraped together enough money because it then wouldn't take a $50 note.. Nevertheless we arrived at the airport nice and early like we planned. Our check in was done on iPads which was easy. After this we skipped through security not even getting the little bags for liquids. Domestic flights are easy at no point were our passports checked! We had a mooch around the shops and got a breakfast subway and Krispy Kreme doughnut each which made a very satisfying breakfast/lunch. After this all the normal waiting things occurred. We saw the winner of Eurovision and Laura was gutted to have missed it as the beard lady seemed pretty cool! After this we had our tickets checked and found our seats on the plane. Bonus we had 3 seats between the two of us! This was very lucky we were thinking. Karma had other ideas because just after saying that a family sat behind us with a screaming 2 year old.. Oh joy. After 10 painful minutes and Laura starting to lose her patience it stopped. That's when it got worse. Laura's spine was forcefully relocated from the seat many times throughout the flight. The very soft no don't do that did nothing as you would expect. Lauras tolerance levels were at 0 and decided to sleep laying across 2 seats using Myles' head as a pillow. We have never had a bad flight and this was what most would call a bad flight. Well we did fly the easyjet equivalent. What can you expect I suppose?

May 4th - SNAKE

For those with a weak constitution we recommend that this blog not be read!

 Well today was meant to be a relaxing day after Melbourne before we started working again on Monday. This was not the case after lunch. 

We were tidying up the garden after some hefty winds whilst we were away, just little bits, for example a chair had been blown in the pool! Myles collected some logs from the top of the garden and chopped them ready for the chilly nights ahead. Laura noticed a small mound of soil by the poolside, we investigated and think that they might be termites so they will have to be eradicated soon! It was whilst we were looking Myles heard a small splash and looked around, it was a snake and it had got itself in the pool!

Myles is terrified of snakes, but even so got closer to see what it was, this would determine weather it would be rescued or not. 

2nd May Melbourne City

After an exhausting day on the great ocean road yesterday we had a well deserved lie in after a few early starts and late nights! We had breakfast and had a slow walk to the train station where we would get the train into Melbourne. Yes you read that right we got public transport! After the faff we had with the car yesterday and already having a 'Myki' (same as an oyster card) that we got given by backpackers previously we felt we should put them to good use. We wondered on the platform and checked the balance to see if it was negative. Bonus, $14 on each! Well that was us sorted for the day and we happily hopped on 3 minutes later. It took around 40 mins until we got to flinders street station where we would get off. We got to the top of the station to see a information center right I front of us. Easy we popped in there to get a few maps an directions and we were off. Being Melbourne and already knowing it's little England it was drizzling so we chose an indoor activity first. We went to the dreamworks expo at the acmi center in federation square.

The Great Ocean Road 1st May

So the day I had been waiting for. 

When most people our age go on holiday or backpacking it is a fun pastime to hire a 50cc moped and ride around a city as fast as possible. I thought I would give this a try but on something a little more... Adult..

I had booked to hire a Suzuki Vstorm for a day however when I arrived they asked about my age and licence and said I couldn't have it (this was fair enough as it was double the power I am allowed on my licence.) so they gave me its little brother. Same size engine just less power. we left our couch surf promptly at 7:30 for a 38minute trip across Melbourne. Long story short we arrived at the hire shop at 9:20... We drove around madly to find somewhere to park the car and eventually did.

It was then a 5 minute walk back to the bike shop to collect our machine and helmets etc. After all the bits had been done to ensure that I not steal the bike I hopped on to acclimatise myself to the bike before a big load of Laura go on the back. First impressions were good it was new so very smooth and being a 650cc single cylinder it had bucket loads of torque. Anyway Laura jumped on the back and we headed out to this amazing road we have heard so much about. 

30th April Phillip Island

We had a pretty bad nights sleep at our couch surf in Melbourne with a slanted futon mattress meaning we were both on slants all night! This was less than desirable but we were so tired it seemed to do the trick. We had no bread for breakfast so headed out nice an early. In the rain. This was the start of a great day! (Feeling slightly reminiscent of new york here?)
We set off and stopped for petrol which ended up being a stop for breakfast. The golden arches bought us in for sausage and egg mcmuffins & hash browns of course!!

After this slight detour we carried on our 80k journey to Phillip Island. Laura spotted a westpac and we made another little detour to transfer some good old english money into our ozzie accounts for our special treat on Thursday! (More about that later!) Finally we arrived at the Island and our luck was in the clouds had started to break! With that we popped into the tourist information center picked a few bits up and were on our way! First stop on Lauras agenda was a chocolate factory! 

Chocolate Penguins

Tuesday 29th Drive to Melbourne!

Another blog already you may be thinking? Well you lucky folks get more to read this week! 

An eager start for us today up and out by 8:30 ready to go! We are staying with a couple from Melbourne in Noble Park who we are looking forward to meeting!

Our satnav said we would make beautiful time arriving at 3:45. We knew this wouldn't be the case but it's nice to know it's possible! We planned to do a few stops just to swap driving between us as it is such a long way. To give you an idea it's the same distance between home and Brisbane to home and Melbourne! It took us how many weeks to do that? The difference here is it's not the east coast and there isn't a lot in-between! Nothing but farms and fishing villages really. Because of this we have opted for the highway route. We followed the same route we took to Canberra except this time we stayed on the same road. After this point this is what our satnav said..

Monday 28th April!

Hello everybody we are still here! A little news update..

Last Thursday Deb and Ian left for Japan, South Korea and China until the 11th of May where we will meet them at Ayres Rock. We are left in charge of the garden, fish and the house in this period. During the last week we have had a bit of a relax due to another long weekend for us for Anzac Day. Anzac Day is like remembrance day for Aussies. We had a weekend full of fixing proton rally cars and renault clios.

Easter Sunday 20th April

Happy Easter everybody!
We have had a busy 4 day bank holiday weekend so far,
Good friday was spent working for us Myles with Ian cutting up steel and Laura doing accounting work and learning more about website building.
After this was dinner and being good Friday no meat was allowed so it was a fish dinner!

Saturday another great day, Laura spent the day with Deb & her mother at the Sydney Easter Show.
Its a huge show with a funfair, showbag hall [ a huge room full of promotional bags?!] animals shows and general allsorts! It was great fun! I saw lots of ducks and chooks (chickens to you English folk) but no big hanging meat car uses because that upsets the modern day Aussies (wimps) for an agriculture show I thought that was a bit sad. But otherwise it was HUGE and very good fun. 

General update/ we are still alive post - Tuesday 8th April

Today is a work day. As we haven't spilled the beans on work of late we thought we should give you a little update. 

We are working for Think Software. We are learning how Ian's buisness and software works and what it is capable of.

To start with Ian wanted to see more of Laura's creative side so we were set the task of making a cartoon advertisement & demo for the website.

This is all fine and dandy very cute etc. This went down so well with clients we made a second for a new business venture to do with car parts:

Again same format seems to be going great. 

So onto bigger stuff! 

Myles is in charge of photographing one of Australia's biggest nurseries & biggest rose developer, Swanes. 

Aren't these guys beautiful? Wish we could bring some home they are just phenomenal in size, colour and smell!

This is an ongoing process alongside with making Ian's other website beautiful ready for release. Laura got as far as her knowledge would take her and realised the need to know HTML and CSS were upon her. 10 minutes finding an app and she was off. Aaron Ian's son and programmer set us up and we were off! So far Laura knows the basics of HTML and can read some code! This is all good progress but will be and is a steep learning curve! Here's what today's screen looked like:

With this will hopefully bring new change to the blog or a new blog entirely! So that's pretty exciting..

So that's us at the moment! 

We haven't heard from any of you except Kate Grandma and Mark so we assume you are all dead. Therefore no comments no need to write blogs! We feel like we are talking to ourselves a little! It would be great to figure out who is still reading! 

Update 2, over Easter we will be heading to Melbourne finally! This may be by plane, car, motorbike or train! We haven't decided yet and will let you know! 

Lots of love xxx

Australian Statistics

Hello all. If like me you like to know numbers we have spent a few minutes working some out for you. We have now been in Australia 8 months so what does that mean exactly? These numbers are for Australia only..

How long have we been in Australia?

8 months

Or 

34 weeks

Or

244 days

Or

5856 hours

Or

351,360 minutes

Or

21,081,600 seconds

How many meals have we had?
732 (on the assumption we had breakfast lunch and dinner every day) 

How far have we travelled?

12,516km (7,822miles) - in our car only, that excludes the long haul trips in 'borrowed cars'

What did that cost us in petrol?

$1431 

Friday 28th March

So an end of the week update for you all. Were at Deb and Ian's until we go to Ayres Rock (Uluru) for Laura's 21st. 

In between that we will go to Melbourne but until then we will be doing the usual working and chilling out. 

This week we have started working with Ian on his website. We are now video editors & animation people.

{Whilst I was writing this blog our videos have gone live!

They don't work on Apple devices due to flash player so look on your computers & have the sound up!}

http://www.thinksoftware.net.au

So anyways that's been us for the past week just working away. 

So that's today's excitement with the demo of Ian's software and our animation going live.

Have a lovely Friday because it's the weekend tomorrow!! (& we are going to Costco!)

22nd March Port Stephens

For once in a very long time we awoke to a day where we hadn't had rain overnight! 
You would think this meant a dry tent but sadly not dew had its way with the tent! Oh well. We had breakfast of cheese toasties from our leftover cheese from burgers the night before. This was a good start to the day and motivated us to get the tent down quickly and get a move on to Port Stephens. It was a long drive for Myles with not a lot of excitement in between but as ever we kept ourselves entertained starting to remember and recognise where we were. We had planned to stay in a hostel recomended to us by Georgia and arrived to find that it was fully booked out even though it wasn't online.. More than frustrating we grabbed our camps book and started to search for somewhere else to search. Laura found somewhere for $25 with a pool so we went for it. Turns out its pretty new and modern which was a lovely change! All booked in & a tent up the next thing on the agenda was lunch and sand boarding. We had more cheese sandwiches whilst Laura found out where the sand dunes were. Anna Bay just down the road was our next destination. When we arrived we were greeted by sand and camels...

20th Grafton

Only a short one today! 

Laura got a haircut. We had a maccas for lunch, then we left. We do not have fond memories of Grafton.

(Myles' blog for the week)

18th/19th Gold Coast & Byron

We are tired today after a 7am start. Myles has a 3 hour drive and we're going paddle boarding. What can go wrong?

Oh and today was raining. 

We started our day pretty chilled using some wifi gutted to see we don't have a couch surf in Byron which means the tent has to come out!! With that we waited for rush hour to end and headed off early. We were in the Gold Coast by 11 with the clouds above us but holding out! We cooked an early noodle lunch before paddle boarding and made a start. We had a briefing before we headed out and that was us! We both got the last 2 boards... PINK! Good thing Myles likes pink...

Monday 17th back to Brisbane!

On the road again..

We spent the morning being a bit lazy in bed with the cat which was nice. After this bags packed and we were off! Sort of.. Laura had seen a very nice dress in a window so we went to check it out. Turned out it was horrible but we found a nicer one. 

This also wasn't bought due to the zip down the front.

Friday 14th, Saturday 15th, Sunday 16th Sunshine Coast

Today was our last day working for the hostel, when we say we I mean Laura was finishing her hours that she hadn't done. This left Myles in bed watching new films & tv shows that terry gave us for our hard drive! It was a pretty easy morning cleaning thankfully! Once this was done back to our room for some chill out time! Myles was watching F1 practice so I had a lay down and watched some girly films we had acquired. This took up most of the afternoon between packing lunch and other things. We headed to play some pool before dinner and got invited to have some leaving drinks with some of the guys we had been working with which was lovely. We ordered our last meal from Wayne the chef who Laura had worked with lots. 

Thursday 13th Update!

Today has been a happy day! Firstly we have the day off from making beds much to Laura's relief..

Secondly this meant a well deserved lie in & long morning shower which is good too!

After this Laura proved that the car has an infestation of ants. Not so good..

This meant a trip to bunnings! (Laura seems to have bunnings syndrome..) 

Ant spray acquired Coles, Aldi and woolworths were all visited to acquire food stuffs for our departure on Saturday! This is another good thing. After all this food shopping Laura went to specsavers and left with yet another set of new glasses as Australia had rusted hers.. (Big up specsavers they do have cracking customer service!) 

Next stop flight centre! 

Don't get too excited only 1 flight booked today and we're off to Ayres Rock for Laura's 21st! Very exciting, but more so because Debra and Ian have also booked their flights to the big rock for Laura's birthday! 

Update 8th March

Yet again our plans have changed with the wind as usual.

So our 6 week stay has turned into a 2 week stay (leaving this Friday/Saturday) We have a drive back to the Sydney region of the world ahead of us. We're going to stop off as we go again picking up some places we missed first time & the few we loved. 

It's all a bit in the air at the moment but could mean possible work whilst were here or in England?! Very exciting times are coming for us! So watch this space over the next few weeks you never know what could happen! 

This is our rough itiniary as it stands thus far! 

Didgeridoos & Didgeridont's

This is a bit of a side post, whilst tidying up our new accommodation Laura found a great book called "Didgeridoos & Didgeridont's "

Sunday 2nd of March

After all of the excitement of Lady Elliot we hit the ground with a bit of a bump!

We have decided to hang around our hostel in Hervey Bay for a while. We aren't sure how long we will be here just yet but could be upto 6 weeks. 

We are working in the hostel doing general stuff like making beds to mowing and today Laura got her first painting job unsurprisingly! 

(Before they were a horrible terracotta brown.)

So in exchange for 4 hours work a day we get a restaurant meal & our accommodation, washing and all things like that! 

So that's us for a while! 

Just a short one to keep you all updated! 

Lots of love to you all xxx

Lady Elliot Island 26th/27th February

Hello all, a big blog for you all to read full of photos and incoming videos on the blog so keep checking back for more!!!

After a night of rain we were up at 6:30 as today we had a very very special trip ahead of us. We put down a very wet tent in record time. We were done and ready to leave our campsite/hostel combo to go to the airport. Today we had a scenic flight to Lady Elliot Island where we would spend 2 days and 1 night. It is an Eco Island Resort on the Great Barrier Reef. To get there we had to take 14 seater light aircraft to the island where we could snorkel the reef to our hearts content! Sounded perfect when we booked it and emptied our bank account!!! We waited nervously in the Airport hoping it would be everything that we expected it would be. We stole some airport wifi and were checked in and on our way! We got the back seats in the plane which we thought was pretty cool because we had so many windows to look out of! 

Fraser Island 25/02

Our trip to Fraser Island.

Today we had a day at Fraser Island booked. The bus was due to arrive at 7:30 and at exactly 7:50 it arrived. We had a short bus journey to the port, which was tiny. It was actually a boat ramp with a carpark. We jumped on the barge and it took us across to Fraser. Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world. So now w have been to the biggest and smallest sand island in the world! We were sorted into our groups and we climbed aboard a rather elaborate coach. There was a seat next to the driver an naturally I asked if I could have it. This later turned out to be not such a good idea. After asking a few questions about it and driving for 2 minutes I understood why it looked like it did.

(Man bit coming up) especially for Mark and Lindsay. 

This truck was the same spec as the support trucks used on the Dakar rally.
It had a 6.8L 340hp diesel twin turbo straight 8, however had 1250f/lb of torque. Basically enough to tow the moon. 
It had a 12 speed gearbox with paddles behind the wheel, 8 different diff settings, 4 drive settings 2 reverse drive settings (each with 4 gears). She even had launch control for when its stuck. if you were stupid enough to get it stuck!
It was a 33tonne monster.