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6th February 2010 Like most of Australia’s cities, Adelaide has a Botanic Garden. Opened in 1857, the lovely gardens boast ponds, fountains, wisteria arbours, statues and heritage buildngs just like a clasic English-style garden, but with plenty of native trees too. This is where our Saturday began, with one of the free walking tours of the gardens. Our guide started by walking through the Australian bush section of the gardens pointing out interesting plants used by the Aborigines for various medicinal and food purposes. The Australian forest in these gardens is actually an example of sub-tropical bush from further north than Adelaide, which has very dry bushland which doesn’t require a lot of water. This forest actually needs to be watered because it comes from areas of Australia where they have a higher annual rainfall. ...

7th & 8th February 2010 The last time I visited Australia ten years ago, I elected to do an outback tour from Adelaide to Alice Springs via Coober Pedy instead of taking the Ghan. While I don’t regret this decision for a moment, I’ve always still wanted to take one of Australia’s most famous journeys. In the end, it has worked out for the best because ten years ago, I would only have been able to get as far as Alice as the last section of the Ghan from Alice to Darwin has only been completed in 2004. So finally, we’re taking this epic journey on the longest north to south railway line in the world. ...

3rd February 2010 This morning our road trip continued with a visit to Port Fairy, once an early port and whaling centre. Andy has decided to accompany us all the way to Adelaide. I think the sight of the small station at Warnambool and the fact he may have had to wait a few days there for a train helped make up his mind! So all three of us set off in high spirits for a walk around Griffiths Island in Port Fairy. ...

4th February 2010 We’ve had two lovely warm days of clear blue skies but this morning we woke up to rain. From Robe, the highway once again turns inland where for miles and miles we pass more scrubland and not much else apart from a giant lobster on the side of the road at Kingston SE and a couple of inquisitive kangaroos. ...

2nd February 2010 Our first stop this morning was Avis to pick up our hire car for the next 3 days in order to drive up the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide. Having successfully retrieved the car it was back to the apartment to load up our kit and check out. With all the jobs done we headed out of Melbourne picking up Andy along the way, who was going to join us for the first leg of the trip to Warrnambool, and after a few wrong turns we eventually made it out of the city and onto the freeway heading west towards the start of the Great Ocean Road. ...

1st February 2010 When we bought our tickets for the IMAX, we got some reduced price tickets for the Melbourne Museum at the same time so this morning we decided to check it out. The museum is housed in a modern building, full of natural light across a wide open plaza from the Royal Exhibition Building. The first thing you see as you enter the museum is the skeleton of a junior blue pigmy whale, the largest living mammal on the planet, right next to this is a pair of 12 metre long pythons. We continued towards the Wild exhibition through the dinosaur walk, charting the lives of the various dinosaurs right up to the Australian megafauna, thought to be the distant relatives of todays crocodiles. ...

31st January 2010 This morning we went to explore St Kilda and its craft market. St Kilda is Melbourne’s seaside resort with its strip of beach and pier stretching out to sea. We started off by walking along Acland Street, St Kilda’s main drag where the cafes and cake shops were packed with people enjoying a Sunday morning coffee and cake. Then we headed to the beach where we wandered along the broadwalk before going up to the Esplanade to check out the market stalls dotted along it plying their arts and crafts. ...

30th January 2010 Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria, and also Australia’s second largest city. It is widely known as Australia’s cultural capital due to its dedication to the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, sport and tourism. Since Melbourne is very much a city with a vibrant cafe-culture which prides itself on its ’livability’ we decided to spend the morning walking around, getting our bearings and getting a feel for the place. ...

29th January 2010 Today we spent 9 hours crossing the Bass straits from Devonport in Tasmania to Melbourne on mainland Australia. The crossing time past relatively quickly and it didn’t seem long before we could see the Melbourne CBD on the skyline. From the ferry port it was a straightforward tramride to the apartment we have booked for 4 nights not far outside the city centre, which should do us nicely as a base for explorer Melbourne from. ...

26th January 2010 Today it’s Australia Day, the day to celebrate all things Australian and a public holiday, and the folks here in Tasmania are certainly flying the flag. Many of the homes we pass on our way out to the coast have their Ozzie flags out and loads of the cars too. After yesterday’s mammouth trek, a quiet day today with the car taking the strain. We head out to Burnie on the north coast. Burnie is Tasmania’s third largest city and a very industrial area with a large container port. Our first stop was Fernglade, a platypus reserve on a peaceful, forested stretch of the Emu river. A beautiful setting where we saw many birds but unfortunately no platypus, which is hardly surprising as they are most easily spotted at dawn and dusk and we were there late morning. ...

27th January 2010 From our window in the cottage we have a fabulous view of Mount Roland and since we arrived the plan has always been to do the summit walk which is about a 5 hour return hike. Unfortunately, the weather conspired against us today, which was the day we had planned to do the walk. When we woke up the summit was shrouded in cloud and although the cloud thinned during the morning we decided to do a shorter walk to the summit of Mount Claude instead. ...

28th January 2010 Like many ports we’ve previously visited in France, Devonport is kind of a non-descript transit location with some slightly weird people hanging around. We’re staying here tonight, right next to the ferry terminal and at first glance the hotel didn’t look like very much, but our room was very nice. From our window we could see the Spirit of Tasmania leave at 9pm (and feel it because the whole room shook!) and our boat arrive at 7am. ...

25th January 2010 One of the things on our ‘must-do’ list for Tasmania was to visit Cradle Mountain. Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, to give it its official name, is Tasmania’s best-known wilderness region. One of the most glaciated areas in Australia, with many lakes, the park covers some of Tasmania’s highest land, with craggy mountain peaks such as Cradle Mountain. We started our day early, arriving at the visitors’ centre at about 9am, then driving to Dove Lake carpark after paying our entry fee. There are many walks within the park itself, but we had chosen to do one to Marion’s Lookout, a point about halfway to the summit of Cradle Mountain. From the carpark, which was the start point for our walk, the sight of Dove Lake backed by the jagged outline of Cradle Mountain was a breathtaking sight. ...

24th January 2010 Fifteen minutes from the centre of Launceston is the magnificent Cateract Gorge, our destination this morning. Access to the gorge is via a nice park area with a public swimming pool with views over First Basin, a large, deep canyon worn away by the river and filled with water. Standing at the entrance to the gorge is the decorative, wrought-iron Kings Bridge with a span of 60 metres. Before we crossed the bridge, we took a short walk along the side of the gorge with its cliffs rising almost vertically from the smooth river of the South Esk River. Then we crossed the bridge and took the easy twenty minute Cataract walk around First Basin. ...

23rd January 2010 Time to explore the beautiful Freycinet National Park. On our way, we passed some familiar place names which made us wonder if we were in the right country! Having established we were indeed in Tasmania and with plenty of water, sunscreen and insect repellent we started up the strenuous, gravelly walk to the lookout over the exquisite Wineglass Bay with its perfect curve of white beach. ...

22nd January 2010 Another glorious day, and we headed out from our lovely studio unit towards Taranna to see some Tasmanian Devils at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park. We arrived just in time for the 10am feeding session so went straight to the appropriate area where we quickly spotted some Tasmanian Devils, a mother and two cubs, a boy and a girl. The cubs were running around the pen making cool noises, not quite a growl and yawning which is apparently common behaviour in devil society and a way of showing off the size of their mouths. ...

18th & 19th January 2010 In preparation for our leaving the Gold Coast, yesterday was spent sorting out our clothes and relaxing in the pool. When we arrived in Australia it quickly became apparent that a lot of our clothes were too warm for the climate so we’ve been lucky enough to leave these at Aunty Mary’s while we continue on our travels round Oz. Bidding a fond farewell to the pool was easy as the temparatures topped 38 degrees, so it was the coolest place to be (at least outside). ...

21st January 2010 Port Arthur was chosen as the site for a prison settlement in September 1843, as a place for secondary punishment for convicts who had committed serious crimes in other settlements in Australia. Built by convict labour, gradually Port Arthur became a self-supporting industrial centre with convicts able to learn trades and contribute to this society. Our entrance fee included a guided walking tour and cruise around the inland harbour. We started our day with the walking tour where we learnt much more about the history of this impressive site. The regime was harsh, with convicts being subject to lashing with the cat’o nine tails for such things as insubordination. The belief was that work would grind the badness out of a man so there was a hard work routine also. However, convicts also had access to free education and all were taught to read and write and also taught trades so that they could make a contribution to society. For many of them, this was the first time they had had any sort of education. ...

20th January 2010 Hobart is a small city and quite easy to walk around, so this was what we decided to do this morning. Hobart is Australia’s second-oldest city after Sydney, but has managed to escape the worst excesses of development and so it’s many early buildings are remarkably well-preserved. In fact most of the buildings in the centre feature colonial Georgian architecture which gives it a quaint, slightly old-fashioned air. The more ‘modern’ developments seem to date from the sixties and seventies, with lots of concrete and only serve to increase this feeling. ...

9th & 10th January 2010 We had a wonderful relaxing weekend with blue skies and temparatures in the 30s while we heard about the freezing temps back home on the TV. Saturday morning was spent relaxing in the pool while we waited for Nathan and Anna and 2-year old Sofia. They soon arrived and we sat down to catch up while Aunty Mary and Sofia wandered around looking into everything and feeding the birds (best fed birds in Queensland!). Nathan loved his t-shirt from Wales which said ‘Cymru… probably the best country in the world’ and put it on straight away, while Sofia identified the Welsh dragon as a dinosaur, but she’ll learn. Unfortunately Anna’s gift of some Welsh soaps was the only casualty of the 4 months on the road, but I think she’ll enjoy the bath bombs we got her instead. ...