The folks at Queensland Tourism have now processed my application for The Best Job in the World — to be the caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Watch my application video on their Website and don’t forget to vote for me if you think I’m up to it! (Mum: Please don’t vote […]

We would like to offer our sympathies to the people of Victoria, who have lost their homes and families in the horrendous fires. Just watching it on the TV, it’s quite hard to believe. As you know, it’s only 6 days ago that we left Victoria as we couldn’t cope with the temperatures there. We […]

At our campsite in Adelaide, we had the good fortune to make friends with two couples from the Victorian city of Ballarat, Judy and Ian, and Julia and Dave. Judy had insisted that we look them up when we got to Melbourne, so we thought “why not?” Ballarat’s past revolved around gold and–‘scuse my pun–revolution, […]

Our kind Melbourne host, Mark, had a brilliant idea for escaping the city heat: let’s spend the day underwater. What a stroke of genius! He drove us to Mornington, a seaside town with a pier that is a well regarded starting point for shore-based dives. Unfortunately, the busy dive shop could only rent us full […]

Joining the roads in Melbourne shocked us a little bit. It’s the biggest city in Australia that we’ve been to yet (4 million people) and we were unprepared for the weight of traffic and the number of lanes it filled. Add trams trundling along and across with navigating the roads for the first time and […]

I’m awarding Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park as the winner of Escape the City’s hastily created “Worst Caravan Park/Campsite Award”. Every country has it’s bad caravan park and campsites; France and Italy have more than their fair share. On the whole, the campsites in Australia have been above par: cleaner than average bathrooms, reasonable camp kitchens, […]

From the Fleurieu we took the coast road south-east, towards Melbourne. On arriving in the small town of Millicent, we found a lovely owner run camp site where, for the usual cost of pitching our tent, we were able to hire a caravan. Whilst not very glamourous (it was a brown and orange left over […]

We’re on our way to Melbourne, it’s over seven-hundred kilometres away on the main road and we’ve chosen to travel on the longer, but hopefully more picturesque, coastal roads. First stop, Tourist Information to find out on which day the Nude Beach Olympics at Adelaide’s Maslin beach are being held. My guidebook only says “around […]

We headed out towards Gorge Wildlife Park to do what seems only right in Australia: to hug a Koala. Factoid 1: Koalas are not bears. Calling them as such is an insult. Factoid 2: They are indescribably cute and if the park hadn’t offered Koala hugs in a controlled manner, I’ve no doubt that most […]

The day started with a tour of Haigh’s Chocolate factory. Haigh’s is not a well known brand outside of Australia, but within the country it’s a bit of an institution. From the buzz in the waiting room, it was clear that people were excited to be here. Unfortunately for us, the tour was very rushed […]