I imagine we made the same mistake as a lot of folks do when they visit Aaustralia. They look at the map, think it is a lot smaller than it really is and think – yeah sure! Sydney to Cairns in one days drive is totally doable!

We crammed both islands into 17 days and given the airfares were so expensive, we aimed to go everywhere. The end result was some horrendous 12-16hr drives, often in abysmal conditions. We still enjoyed our trip but arrived home absolutely shattered.

This time we have 19 days but visiting the South Island only. Hopefully this will allow us more time to get off the beaten track and see more of the fabled “real” New Zealand.

Time will tell whether this is doable or not.

The first part of the year has flown by but at the same time it has felt incredibly long and draining. Strange considering the abundance of public holidays on offer. I blame the late appearance of Easter for needing to get away for a holiday in May. Usually in the first half of the year, I get a constant run of 3-4 day weekends, thanks to a particularly awesome 9 day roster. With Easter and Anzac Day combined, there were just far too many 5 day weeks in between for my liking. What can I say? I’ve been spoiled.

So I’d put in for my leave but still hadn’t decided on anywhere to go. Given we really only had 5-7 days to go anywhere, I didn’t fancy any 14hr drives to get to where we were going. The Sunshine Coast is a little too close to home to feel like a proper holiday so we decided on a little further up the coast at Noosa. I was remembering what it was like years ago and thought it was what we both needed. A bit of peace and quiet away from the city, somewhere relaxing.

Only Noosa is not how I remember it. Not that this is a bad thing necessarily….it’s just more commercialised than it was many years ago. It’s something that the local tour operators commented on a lot – the closer you get to the river mouth, the more expensive everything tends to get. Having said that, we were lucky enough to have a decent 6 day stretch of fine weather to enjoy the place and it was wonderful to just kick back and play it by ear. Being the low season, there wasn’t a lot of crowds to compete with, apart from at Hastings Street for the Food & Wine Festival (which we didn’t even visit) on the weekend.

We even had a cruise out to the Noosa Everglades which ran with a grand total of six people on the boat. It was almost like having a chartered cruise, except with people you don’t know. Our skipper Andy was fantastic and even when we had some unexpected troubles with the boat, he kept his sense of humour and just got on with the job. He even got us back to the jetty after the steering went, somehow shifting the twin motors with his feet at the back of the boat while another passenger helped out with the throttle. It was a wonderful afternoon and because of the slower speed coming back in, we had a gorgeous sunset to drink in during our return.

On a less windy day, the water is like glass

Fishing from the Spit at sunset

Unfortunately the dinner cruise wasn’t running while we were there which was a shame because I was really looking forward to it. But hey, it just gives us an excuse to go back, maybe for a long weekend.

We did the right thing and stayed away from the affected areas at the height of the floods. After all, there were photos galore on Flickr and the media coverage was almost non stop. There was no need to go and see for ourselves to believe it was happening. I was just grateful it wasn’t happening right on my doorstep. But last weekend, we hit the road and went north to Nudgee Beach aka the river’s dumping ground. There is an amazing amount of trash that has accumulated there, most noticeable is the pontoon floating just off shore, complete with  what looks like a lamp post and guard rails. Ironically, it looks like it still has the no fishing sign fixed to the post.

Just around the corner there was another piece of pontoon washed up on the shore. The locals and visitors didn’t seem to care – it just meant that they had an extra fishing pontoon to spread out on. It’s just a bit broken and a long way from its original home but it’s still good for something.

Above: Floating pontoon just off shore; Below: A trashed section of what appears to be the old Riverwalk washed up on Nudgee Beach makes a good fishing pontoon for locals

Most professional photographers will say that a holiday is not the time to test out the capabilities of a new camera. But hey, I’ve never been inclined to play by the rules. Holidays are a time out from the every day grind and I have time to go snap happy. I did take my DSLR with me but the majority of the time, I tended to use the Lumix. It’s significantly lighter in weight which makes a really big difference on those long walks through the bush.

Some of the very low light shots suffered a little, in which case I used the DSLR and tripod if I had them readily available. Overall I was pretty happy with the shots I took with it and we have brought home some beautiful memories from our time away. It’s always hard to pick a favourite place when we’re travelling but some of the most beautiful places we went were the ones we stumbled across accidentally. Visiting Emerald Beach and the nearby Look At Me Now Headland in Moonee Beach Nature Reserve just on dusk was just magical. It is a very special place and one of the few areas where I have walked among grazing kangaroos without there being any semblance of a fence. In the surf below, we could see dolphins playing, almost dangerously near to the rocks. There are a few memorials up there – I could think of no better final resting place.

Red Rock (below left) was another little beauty we stumbled upon. At the southern end of Yuraygir National Park, it would be a top spot for swimming in the summer. The water is crystal clear so you can spot that bull shark coming to get you from a mile off. We went for a bit of a wade there and at Wooli (below right) further into the National Park – very brisk water temperature so no swimming this time but I imagine in the warmer months, they both would be very popular.

And then there were places that just were plain beautiful but demanded payment by a bit of effort on our part – it certainly tested our fitness levels visiting the lighthouses on Smokey Cape (bottom center) and Sugarloaf Point (top left). And not to be overlooked, Muttonbird Island Reserve (top right) in Coffs Harbour which seemed to be the favourite of tourists and locals wanting to walk off any over indulgence at the yacht club from the yummy fare on offer.

Now I just have to wait another ten months or so before we can go on holidays again! Unless I get that winning lotto ticket of course! If you want to do some more armchair travelling, the rest of the photos are on Flickr.

I had planned to have a bit more of a laid back visit to Tassie this time and just take things as they came but still we covered almost 4000kms travelling around one small island. Even so, there are some things which we had to leave for next time. We have family there now, so it gives us an excuse to go back again – hopefully it’s not another ten years before we go again this time.

There’s possibly only one thing I don’t love about Tasmania – the lack of reliable high speed broadband! Consequently I am doing a fortnight’s blog entry at once whereas I had planned to update it along the way. It is a small price to pay for the many wonderful things the island has to offer.

Two weeks means two photos….so I had to choose two out of the many in my Tasmania set on Flickr. It’s the Devil’s island, so I had to have one of the iconic Tassie Devil. The other I chose for one of the things I loved best about Tassie – bright sunshine and a clear blue sky and still able to enjoy the day out and about without sweating buckets!

One of the breeding devils from Devils@Cradle - one of the many places that are successfully undertaking a captive breeding project for devils free of Devil Facial Tumour Disease

One of the lovely bright sunny days we enjoyed in Tasmania.

Now this photo is of a cold place. I took it in Te Anau in 2004 in mid-August. It snowed down to sea level on the South Island of New Zealand, coinciding with our departure from Dunedin to Te Anau. Having never seen or felt snow before, I thought it was pretty awesome! And to be honest, I still do because it is a novelty for me. But the next morning when we were due to go to Milford Sound and the road was completely blocked due to an avalanche, I started to feel just a little bit over it. We waited the day out and hoped to go the next day but no such luck. It wasn’t until we were almost about to leave Queenstown (3 days later) that the road was finally clear. By that time of course, our time in New Zealand was drawing to a close.

I love the snow but I’m very thankful that I don’t have to live or plan my life around it. I’m very grateful to live in Queensland where the winters are very mild and we can generally conduct business as usual. So to my fellow Queenslanders moaning about the cold – go put something warmer on and consider yourself lucky that you can still get out your door in the morning and not have to shovel a foot of snow out of the way to do so.

You see, it seems a common thing in Sydney for trains to not arrive when you expect them to. My experience with public transport is fairly limited but I’ve always thought that if you had a choice between buses and trains, go for the train because they don’t have to contend with peak hour traffic. The trains in Brisbane are for the most part very reliable and I’ve never had one turn up more than maybe 30 seconds late. Consequently, when I look up at the departure board and see that a train leaves in 1 minute, I really do think that it will leave in 1 minute, so I’d better hoof it to the platform in a hurry or I will miss it.

Consequently, over my three days in Sydney, I did a lot of running back and forth between platforms and was almost disappointed to find that it was for no reason when I got to the platform and the train was late, yet again. Oh and by the way, if you see a bloke who looks remotely Warwick Cappa – don’t ask him what the time is. His watch is still stuck on daylight saving time and all you will achieve is bolting from one end of Circular Quay to the other to catch a train that doesn’t leave for another full hour.

  Part of the cafe area at Parramatta Park

My most frequent subject was our resident peacock – he just loved to show off and made us felt more at home because his frequent calls reminded us of the cats announcing their presence around the house. I love peacocks….especially the colours of the male but I’ve honestly never seen a bigger poo come out of a bird as the one he left on the roof of my car.

And not gorillas in the mist, but roos in the mist instead. There were eastern greys galore up there but also a plenty of pademelons…..we even saw a northern brownnbandicoot coming back late one night from dinner. There was so much birdlife, not all of them I could identify. I believe there were also platypus in the creek at some stage because I could see some old nesting sites along the creek bank when I went for a wander early in the morning.

And a few shots of the property…if you look closely in the first one, the orange area is the house we stayed in WAY down the bottom of the gully. And a shot of the track you have to take to get down there. In the third photo, towards the top of the slope, you will see where the track has been cut into the side of the hill, where the orange soil is exposed. That’s where I took the shot of the house from part way up the hill. I thought I would put it in to add a little bit of perspective

Our nearest neighbours weren’t even a loud cooee away….no landline, no mobile reception and the only noise to be heard were all part of nature. Instead of the hum of the motorway, we slept to the sound of a gushing waterfall and maybe the odd moo of a cow or the crowing of a slightly confused rooster at 3am.

And the best part?? We didn’t even have to lock the doors because let’s face it – who’s going to rob us?? The peacock?