So, you’re aware of my plans to take Dave on the ferry from Manly, to arrive in the heart of Sydney, Opera House one side, Harbour Bridge the other, all the while the sun sparkling off the harbour waters. Well, it didn’t quite happen like that. The day we chose to go, it had been […]

Eight years ago, I lived in Manly, a beachside suburb ‘seven miles from Sydney and a million miles from care’, for four months. One of my travel goals was to visit my former home, and take a ride on the Manly ferry, the boat service connecting the town with Sydney city centre. I was keen […]

I don’t believe it. You’ll recall that we drove through almost every brutal Australian heatwave from Perth to Melbourne a few months back. So hot–and thus so difficult to sightsee and camp–was it that we threw in the sweaty towel at Melbourne and flew ahead to New Zealand. Where it rained. A few days ago, […]

Ratty. That’s how I’d describe my mood this morning. For the second or third night in a row, neither Claire or I have had a decent night’s sleep. The night before last, we suffered an slow-puncture in our airbed. So slow was the leak, that we didn’t even notice until the following morning when we […]

We’ve left Victoria and have entered the state of New South Wales on our way to Sydney. Along the way, we stopped off in Canberra, Australia’s capital which itself resides in its own territory; the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Many travellers skip Canberra altogether, writing it off as dull, but I wanted to visit the […]

Our last stop in the ‘Garden State’ of Victoria was Beechworth, a goldrush-era town made famous by the apparently infamous Ned Kelly. I say ‘apparently’ because, I’m afraid that I didn’t have much of a clue about who he was. In the impressively-stocked local confectionery shock, we bumped into Mr. Brumby and his security entourage […]

Echuca prides itself on being the ‘paddle-steamer capital’ of Australia. I didn’t know that Australia had any paddle-steamers, but there were certainly a lot here, all fully restored and in working order. In fact, they claim to have more paddle-steamers here than anywhere else in the world. Echuca, situated on the Murray River, which runs […]

Thank you to our host Ian, who very kindly managed to wangle us some complimentary tickets to Ballarat’s most famous and award-winning attraction, Sovereign Hill. The site is a living museum which recreates the local area as it was in the 1850s, at the start of the gold rush era. As I love all that […]